Guest author Robin Magruder worked at Showco for 29 years, rising from Roadie to Executive VP/General Manager. Today, Robin is President and General Manager of Crossroads Audio, Dallas, Texas.
Robin kindly offered his recollections of the Unidyne IV Model 548 and its use by Showco.
“Showco started using the Model 548 microphone about 1970. I’m certain Showco was indeed Shure’s largest 548 customer – probably by far. I believe there were several reasons Showco chose the 548. It was rugged, durable, and reliable. It looked cooler than most other mics of that era. It was inexpensive. Although it wasn’t a precision studio microphone, it generally sounded good live given the limitations of 1970s large scale FOH [Front Of House] and monitor sound systems. It worked well for us as a kind of ‘universal’ mic.
“In addition to vocals, we used it for drums, amps, brass, woodwinds, and even stringed acoustic instruments. Some Showco tours carried a handful of quality pencil condensers for cymbals/drum overheads and maybe for acoustic guitars or other acoustic instruments. But the 548 almost always did the bulk of the work.
“Showco predominantly used the 548 in recording several live albums – most notably Wings Over America, released in 1976 and hitting number 1 on the U.S. charts. We owned a Studer 24 track machine that was sent out on the 1976 Wings tour. We also recorded Jackson Browne’s 1977 tour concerts and backstage sessions for his seminal Running on Empty live album using 548’s almost exclusively with our Studer 24 track machine. We successfully recorded a number of other tours and concert events, yielding many hundreds of hours of live performance tapes – mostly using 548’s.”
“Most Showco tours didn’t carry many spare 548’s, and they weren’t easy to find in local music/pro audio stores as we toured across the continents. In 1972-73, I mixed monitors on tour for about one hundred and fifty Alice Cooper shows. Due to the difficulty of replacing the mic, I routinely dove off the stage to retrieve 548’s that Alice blithely tossed into the seething crowds.”
“In 1972 during an Alice Cooper tour break, FOH engineer Jim Bornhorst and I headed back to Texas to join the Showco crew for Willie Nelson’s Dripping Springs Reunion near Austin. It was a three-day festival, effectively the prototype for Willie’s 50+ year Fourth of July Picnic series. The diverse artist lineup was amazing, ranging from traditional country and bluegrass artists such as Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs, and Loretta Lynn, to the “outlaw country” of Willie, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson.
“Most of the artists didn’t provide advance stage plots or input lists in those days, so I trundled to their buses or RVs to draw quick sketches of the mic and DI [Direct Input] placement. When I went to Loretta Lynn’s bus, she greeted me personally. She was very gracious and sweet, and said “Honey, don’t worry about our stage plot. Just put some mics out there on the stage. We’ll use whatever we need.” Sure enough, that’s exactly what they did. Because the mics were all the Model 548, it was much less chaotic than I anticipated.
“While mixing FOH on a Barry White tour with orchestra in the mid-1970s, I dangled a 548 with a little foam padding in the sound hole of the harp. It sounded sublime.
“I’d say the 548 was a very successful Shure product worthy of the Unidyne IV designation. Many of the world’s top musical artists and mixing engineers of that era supported Showco’s extensive use of the 548. It was an indispensable workhorse for us throughout its production lifespan and beyond.
“Contrary to popular belief, Showco personnel rarely used a 548 to hammer ten-penny nails. After the discontinuance of the Model 548 in 1980 and with the advent of more accurate loudspeaker systems, Showco began providing more diverse mic packages for touring and festival sound, although we continued using some 548’s for years.”
The Unidyne IV family, 1979
Related information: Crossroads Audio
Sir Paul McCartney and the Wings Over America Tour
Arcana – mysterious or specialized knowledge
Of the three Showco founders, Rusty Brutsche is the only one still living. He was the driving force of Showco throughout its three decades. Rusty shared his memories of the Model 548 with Robin.
“My recollection is that the Shure mic that was in use prior to the 548 was the 545. The 545 had a connector [Amphenol MC4] that used an insert and a retaining ring that screwed onto the end of the microphone. The connector was unreliable and delicate with virtually no strain relief.
“The grille front of the 545 was plastic. The 548 was all metal construction and it had an integral XLR connector which was essential for our use. Bill Hanley, in his biography The Last Seat in the House, says that he modified Shure 545 mics to add the XLR connector. I think that the 548 was one of the first Shure mics to feature an integral XLR connector. [Editor’s note: The first Shure mic to use the Cannon XL connector was the Model 300, introduced in 1952.]
Rusty Brutsche, Led Zeppelin tour, 1972
“Showco took heat from some quarters for standardizing on the 548 rather than using a variety of mics from other manufacturers, such as Sennheiser and AKG, but the 548 was hard to beat for what we were doing in the early years. Back then, I had an intense ‘standardization’ mentality which I took to extremes at times and we probably should have used other mics sooner. But the 548 served us well.”
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The final U.S. user net price of the Model 548 was $120.20; $452 today.
