Grateful Dead Fan Creates a Faithful Mini Replica of the Band’s Famous “Wall of Sound” During Lockdown

A few years ago we told you about the Wall of Sound. Not the one cre­at­ed in the stu­dio by Phil Spec­tor, but the one cre­at­ed by Grate­ful Dead tech engi­neer Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley out of over 600 speak­ers. Before the Dead worked to rev­o­lu­tion­ize how rock con­certs could sound, the speak­ers at live shows were tre­bly, under­pow­ered things, hav­ing not been designed for the sud­den change in musi­cal tex­ture and sound dur­ing the 1960s. In the ear­ly days, speak­ers were most­ly used to make sure the drums didn’t drown out the oth­er band mem­bers. Stanley’s three-sto­ry, 28,800-watt mas­sive wall, with columns of speak­ers ded­i­cat­ed to each musi­cian, promised crisp fideli­ty more so than pure loud­ness. In devel­op­ing the set-up, Stan­ley and his fel­low engi­neers helped intro­duce ideas still being used in live sound today.

For all that, how­ev­er, the Wall only got used for sev­en months of tour­ing in 1974. It took hours and hours to assem­ble and dis­as­sem­ble. For those who heard it, the sys­tem lived up to its hype. And it was immor­tal­ized in the Win­ter­land, San Fran­cis­co shows filmed for The Grate­ful Dead Movie (watch it online).

Now, near­ly 50 years lat­er a ded­i­cat­ed fan has rebuilt the wall as a 1/6th scale mod­el in his base­ment. While some of us took up bak­ing dur­ing 2020’s COVID lock­down, Antho­ny Cos­cia began to work four hours a day, every day, for two months, on this mod­el. He post­ed his progress on Insta­gram and Dead­heads, most of which hadn’t seen the real thing in per­son, lost their minds. (See this video to get a good taste of things.) Cos­cia also had nev­er seen the fabled Wall in real life—he would have been a tod­dler at the time. But he made up for it lat­er in the late ‘80s, see­ing the band 35 times, and the Jer­ry Gar­cia Band 25 times.

An archi­tect by day, Cos­cia insist­ed on the small­est details being repli­cat­ed, urged on by social media. The fin­ished mod­el is 6 foot, 8 inch­es tall and 10 feet wide, and fea­tures 390 work­ing speak­ers. It pumps out a not-exact­ly-Win­ter­land-wor­thy 800 watts.

“It’s a mas­sive glo­ri­fied clock radio but it sounds bet­ter than I thought,” he told the Wall Street Jour­nal.

And although he spent $2,000 in total, he’s already been offered $100,000 for it from an anony­mous donor.

The obses­sion with the band con­tin­ues a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er. A just announced series of shows by Bob Weir’s Dead & Com­pa­ny in Jan­u­ary 2022—in Can­cun, of course, where it’s warm—have sold out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Grate­ful Dead Slip Past Secu­ri­ty & Play a Gig at Colum­bia University’s Anti-Viet­nam Protest (1968)

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.