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The Wizard Of OZ

Well-Known DJ
Dec 13, 2007
3,130
50
68
Tampa Bay Area
I saw some Sennheiser 835 wired mics and I sent the guy an email real quick since they're very popular, good mics and better than anything I have. So I talked to the guy on the phone and made arrangements to go to his house at 7pm, he mentioned he had some other audio equipment too.

I got there and he had 2 amplifiers, a pair of speakers with stands, a rack, a bunch of cables and some other things. I brought in my powered mixer to try the mics out and they were fine and in near pristine condition.

So I bought the (4) 835s for $20 a piece and a Peavey 1500 amp for $140.
I doubt I will find deals like this ever again. I really wanted a more powerful amp and was fixin to buy it from Ben when I could scroung the money together, but I just couldn't pass up a deal like that on that Peavey. I'm stoked!
 
The Wizard Of OZ said:
I saw some Sennheiser 835 wired mics and I sent the guy an email real quick since they're very popular, good mics and better than anything I have. So I talked to the guy on the phone and made arrangements to go to his house at 7pm, he mentioned he had some other audio equipment too.

I got there and he had 2 amplifiers, a pair of speakers with stands, a rack, a bunch of cables and some other things. I brought in my powered mixer to try the mics out and they were fine and in near pristine condition.

So I bought the (4) 835s for $20 a piece and a Peavey 1500 amp for $140.
I doubt I will find deals like this ever again. I really wanted a more powerful amp and was fixin to buy it from Ben when I could scroung the money together, but I just couldn't pass up a deal like that on that Peavey. I'm stoked!
Click to expand...
You are now in Thunder's Camp! Peavey guys gotta stick together, eh? I have one. Its a PV-1500, do I qualify too?
 
Good to know ahoustondj, how do you like it and what speakers do you run with it? Is it powerful enough or do you wish you had a more powerful amp? Do you ever run it at 2ohms? Please tell me whatever you can about it.

I know Peavey makes good amps, I didn't hesitate at all to buy it. Originally he wanted $200 for it and I was about to leave and I counted all my money I had in my wallet and told him all I have left is $140 and he said OK, I'll take it, I nearly crapped in my pants. I would have gladly payed the $200, I know it's well worth it.
 
That's OK, Wiz. What you got ain't bad. :)

In fact, it's a damn good price for what you got. Peavey is workhorse gear and you'll be happy with it for years to come. Combined with your existing powerhead, I think you'll have a nice FOH rig.

In time, if you wish to upgrade... do the bi-amping thing with subs, you can add on to it.
 
I just looked up the specs and it will put out 1,000 watts in mono bridged mode. I imagine there's a switch to set it to mono bridged mode, so what would happen if I set it and then hooked (2) 8 ohms speakers in parallel pulling a total of 4 ohms?

I really need an amp that puts out like 500 or 600 wpc @ 8 ohms to get some real punchy bass from my subs. The PV1500 is only pushing 300 wpc @ 8ohms. That's fine for any of my mains, but my subs are rated at 800 watts @ 8 ohms program.
 
I just read the manual and I'm a bit confused. It says "...the PV1500 is rated at 750 watts RMS per channel into 2 ohms. The bridge rating is 1500 watts RMS into 4 ohms."

This is different than the specs I read on line about this amp.

Also, I assume that the term RMS is what is more commonly referred to as 'Program" these days as in 200/400/800-continuous/program/peak.
 
At the back of the manual it lists 300 wpc RMS @ 8 ohms and 500 wpc RMS @ 4 ohms.
Hopefully someone who knows this amp well and has used it often will know what the true specs and capabilities of it are. If I can set it to bridge mode and run just my pair of EV Sb122 subs I'll be thrilled and it will be well worth the price I paid. If not I'll keep it as a backup amp or for when I'm not using subs and then down the road I'll just get a much more powerful amp that can run both my mains and my amps at the same time.
 
Your sub is 400 watts/ 8ohms, the PV1500 does 300@8ohms both sides running. So you wont have any headroom if you ran them on 2 channels.

Soo... you have 2 8 ohms Subs. Put them together in bridged mono and you need an amp that can go 4 ohms. If it can go down to 4 ohms bridged, then you can use it for your subs. If anyone has used these at 4 ohms bridged any input would be great. Cant find specs that say it does 4 ohms bridged.
 
The Wizard Of OZ said:
Good to know ahoustondj, how do you like it and what speakers do you run with it? Is it powerful enough or do you wish you had a more powerful amp? Do you ever run it at 2ohms? Please tell me whatever you can about it.

I know Peavey makes good amps, I didn't hesitate at all to buy it. Originally he wanted $200 for it and I was about to leave and I counted all my money I had in my wallet and told him all I have left is $140 and he said OK, I'll take it, I nearly crapped in my pants. I would have gladly payed the $200, I know it's well worth it.
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I got it to use as a backup for good measure. I have never had an amp fail on me though. I am back in a Club (At least for the time being) so I personally may not be pulling out my gear for awhile. In the meantime I am still rebuilding because my buddy gets all the gigs I generate.
I am marketing to get a few Restaurant Gigs....playing background music (Jazz, Classical, new Age etc.) That is easy money. You don't need large gear and having to fulfill odd requests.
I do want to test the amp out on my JBL Bass bins though. The JBLs (Folded Horns)are vintage but they still send out a thump. I use double bins for each side and the drivers are low frequency Model 2220 @ 16ohms wired in parallel to equal 8 ohms.
My mixer has a sub woofer output and I'll try using that with mains instead of my preferred 3 way crossover network system
 
ezee, my subs are rated 400/800/1600 watts@8ohms each sub, that's continuous/program/peak.

My understanding is that the desired amp should be at, near or more than the PROGRAM power rating of the speaker.

So an amp pushing 800wpc@8ohms would run both my subs-one on each channel-running at 8ohms based on the specs I've read so far.
 
The Wizard Of OZ said:
I saw some Sennheiser 835 wired mics and I sent the guy an email real quick since they're very popular, good mics and better than anything I have. So I talked to the guy on the phone and made arrangements to go to his house at 7pm, he mentioned he had some other audio equipment too.

I got there and he had 2 amplifiers, a pair of speakers with stands, a rack, a bunch of cables and some other things. I brought in my powered mixer to try the mics out and they were fine and in near pristine condition.

So I bought the (4) 835s for $20 a piece and a Peavey 1500 amp for $140.
I doubt I will find deals like this ever again. I really wanted a more powerful amp and was fixin to buy it from Ben when I could scroung the money together, but I just couldn't pass up a deal like that on that Peavey. I'm stoked!
Click to expand...
Sounds like a REALLY HOT deal.
 
Musician's Friend sells those Sennheisers for $100 each all day long . . .

I also got a pair of speakers which I didn't want to mention until I really put them through their paces. There is no name on them, he said someone made them for him. They seem unused. I plugged one in this morning into the new amp and set the amp to bridged mode. I hooked it and one of my EV Sx100+ in parallel. Cranked it up and blasted things for a while. They sound a tad better than my Sx100 speakers, but they have a 15" LF driver and the EV Sx100 has a 12". I paid $50 a piece for them. They seem to be quite bass heavy, but I'm not used to using 15s.

The amp ran just fine with both speakers in bridged mode, but I could only crank them up so high. It was real loud, but I don't want to push things to the point of distortion or damage anything. I think the horn in the EV is a bit better than in the new speakers.

One thing I noticed with the new Peavey amp, NO HISS. It also has a very quiet fan IMO.

My Yamaha EMX512 has a good amount of amplifier hiss which is a little annoying.
 
The Wizard Of OZ said:
I just looked up the specs and it will put out 1,000 watts in mono bridged mode. I imagine there's a switch to set it to mono bridged mode, so what would happen if I set it and then hooked (2) 8 ohms speakers in parallel pulling a total of 4 ohms?
Click to expand...
I don't see why not. This is how our sub amp and boxes are set up. It works quite well for us.

Pair of 8 ohm sub cabs driven by a bridged amp, 4 ohm load. When running both bass bins, it sounds like one of those souped-up car stereos coming up the road. It's really overkill for most of the shows we do so often, we'll load only one bass bin. This brings the impedance load up to 8 so the amp isn't dissipating as much power. That's OK because we don't need it. The amp stays in bridged mode regardless. Still, with just the one sub box, the bass is heard all through the venue.

I don't recommend running bass bins in stereo ~ it really isn't necessary. There's no stereo separation to bass frequencies anyhow. You'll get the most economy from your lows amp when you run it bridged.
 
Thanks Fred. I never run stereo if I can help it. I take my signal from the laptop 1/8" jack which is stereo and run two 1/4" jacks into two separate channels both panned to one side so I don't lose either side of the stereo signal. So I'm basically summing them. It's a little harder adjusting both channels and instead I can plug both into one stereo channel on the mixer summing them with only one knob to adjust the channel volume. I know, you learned this stuff 20 or 30 years ago . . .

I tried out one of my new Sennheiser e835 mics in front of a senior audience today, hot but not too hot and crystal clear. I did one of my senior shows for my corporate customer. It was at a very nice senior facility in Tampa. They had a very nice, large ballroom/auditorium. Much bigger room than what we usually have our events in. We had about 60-75 in the audience.

I brought my Yamaha powered mixer, (2) Zx1 speakers and only (1) Sb122 sub. They must have asked me ten times to turn it down and I barely had it turned up. That's a serious downside to performing for old people.

The Zx1s can be lifted with two fingers. One of the best pieces of audio equipment I ever bought. I used my trusty cheapo Nady DKW Duo $50 wireless mics and of course they worked flawlessly.

The new Peavey amp doesn't go on the road until I'm completely comfortable using it and my new Alesis mixer AND not until I have some sort of rack or case AND not until I truly understand it's capabilities with my now burgeoning speaker collection.
 
Good deal, Wiz. Sounds like you're on the right road. :)

To be honest, we only got our rig finished a few years ago. What we did was set it up in the utility room and basically push the heck out of it. There's an advantage to living out in the country. :D

Pushing the gear hard at home will let you know what it will do out in the field. I rattled some of Shirl's pictures off the walls and knocked some dishes over but the experience was worth it. We had the Curves Bachelor Auction coming up and we had to rattle that dance floor plus mic the MC with no feedback whatsoever. It had to be right the first time.

So try it at home first. Put it through the paces and find out what it can do. :)
 
It's pretty cool that I can do that like you said and I live in a subdivision. I set my stuff up sometimes in my great room if nobody is around, but to be able to have several hours of uninterrupted practice time I set it up out in the garage and blast away with the doors closed. If you go outside on the driveway or the sidewalk you can hear it a little if it's REALLY blasting, but not enough that it would bother anyone or the neighbors. I can't do it in the summer though because when it's 95 outside(every day) it's unbearable in a closed up garage or outside for that matter.

Had I not spent the time practicing using my gear many times and rehearsing my music, I would not have learned what I have learned and I wouldn't have made the progress that I have made over the past year. It's just like practicing mixing, playing the guitar or shooting skeet.

Most likely I'm just going to just go ahead and get the more powerful amp from Ben within the next couple of months. The Peavey will be great for my tops, but to run mains and subs at the same time and at a high volume level I want the 900wpc @4ohms Samson PG3800 OR I might even get an even more powerful amp. although I can get (2) of the Samsons for the cost of one QSC RMX2450.

The one thing that impresses me more than anything about the Peavey is no amplifier hiss at all. It's a class AB amp not a class H. I bet the amp inside my Yamaha is a class H. How else could it be so light that you can lift it with 2 fingers?
 
Ok, here's an update and a kind of funny story.

I hooked up the PV1500 after looking at the manual and the pictures showing various different configurations of how the amp could be set up. Thought I knew how to do it.

The output section has speakon and binding post. The input section has some 1/4" and other connections.

So I hooked up a speaker to a speakon jack and plugged my mixer into one of the 1/4" jacks on the amp. Well, it didn't sound that good and I was really surprised at the bass. Man those speakers were really bass heavy, but the horns sounded weak and just were not putting out much at all. So I EQed the sound to turn the bass down and EQed the mids and highs up. Still didn't sound that good and I thought "man, I should have checked these new speakers out better before I bought them". I tried multiple speakers and none of them sounded good.

I started to wonder if there was something wrong with the amp too.

Finally I looked at the back of the amp again and decided to plug the jack from the mixer into another input jack on the amp that said Low Z. I started the music up and man o man, it sounded great and the volume level could crank! Doh! I guess when you hook things up properly it makes a huge difference. I'm still learning and my main experience has been with the EMX512 whic is VERY simple to operate compared to an amp with a separate mixer.

Nothing wrong with any of the speakers I tried. Nothing wrong with the amp.

A cool feature of the amp is that it has a crossover built into it. Figures, I just bought a crossover. Well, I plan to have multiple rigs and multiple amps, so I'm sure the crossover will get used.

I'm going to be reading the manual for the amp again and studying the diagrams very carefully.
 
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