Fender Passport PD250 Plus

[Treeline]

Any experience out there?

[Richard Monroe]

All the experience you can stand. I use one-frequently. First, it comes with 2 mics, which I think are re-branded AKG's. I sold them on ebay for $40.00 each to cut my losses. The PA is what it is-250 watts. For me, a solo acoustic guy who does small gigs, it's perfect. and maybe a buddy. Biggest downside? Aside from it's only 250 watts, the EQ is really rudimentary, so you need to get your tone from somewhere else. It shows a monitor out, but using it eliminates one channel. So what I do is run the -10 tape outs to a line level shifter, converting to +4 line out, then to a small power amp, a Carver PM125, and run that out to a wedge monitor, which gives me a real monitor without kissing off a channel. It's also useful when I play bigger gigs or work with a full band. Instead of being a wussy 250 watt PA, it becomes a very good 250 watt acoustic guitar/keyboard amp with plenty of balls. So if you do solo gigs, or you need an acoustic amp with some versatility, it's very useful. I stand by the concept that 250 watts will not cut it for a band, except for small room practices. It's reliable, it sounds good, the onboard reverb is fair (not great). The EQ sucks, and otherwise I love it.-Richie

[acidrock]

My friend has a passport PA,I'm not sure which one.It looks like a cheap piece of crap,but surprisingly it's not bad at all.Super easy to transport too.We used it for an acoustic duet and he DJ's with it too.

[Treeline]

I just ordered one to use for infill monitors at a couple of large chorus (60+ members) gospel concerts coming up in May. The chorus is backed by a full band and they have had a rough time hearing each other. The band ends up drowning out the chorus and the audience hears pretty much a mess. My job will be to set up a hefty monitoring system for both the band and the chorus, and to provide something for the audience. So this will max out the monitors on my existing system (built around a pair of Mackie SRM450s).

I'll be using the Passport as infill monitors for the chorus - basically a PA within a PA. All the eq will be coming off my Onyx board, but I am hoping the Passport is as good with feedback as its reputed to be. The gig is enough to pay for the system and I'll have a few hundred after all is said and done. And then I'll experiment with the system for infill monitoring on my regular band gig.

If I can keep the band stage volume down it should be OK.

If I can ever get back to my own gigging, I have a solo acoustic act as well, so this should be able to do yeoman duty.
Thanks!

[pinkieandtherev]

The 250 should do well for that type of application. One of our standing monthly gigs (well, not really a gig...we do prison ministry) is a small auditorium (probably about 150 seats tops). They use a Fender P-150 as their monitor setup, and it works well.

[Treeline]

Anybody have any idea whether this can handle a four ohm load? I have a couple of Peavey passive monitors with parallel pass through connections, and it just occurred to me that I could run this with the peaveys, or daisy chain a Peavey and a Fender cab. If I did that the load would be four ohm. The specs disclose eight ohm speakers but do not give an amp load range. Would this be pushing the thing too hard?

[pinkieandtherev]

I've seen it driven to lower loads. Not sure if it's LEGAL or not, but it seems to be working. The prison I mentioned runs out of the Fender into a pair of Peavey 15"s and then back off of those to the Fender speakers as monitors. It seems to work all right for them. (I don't use their setup, as since I lead worship AND run sound, I need the mix right there...I bring my own amp and mixer, and then run out to their speakers, cutting the Fenders out of the chain.)

[stevieb]

My church (I'm a UU, so no cracks about Jesus- he's neither here nor there, to me) has a Yamaha portable unit, very similar to that Fender. Sanctuary is about 40 x 40, and all we normally use it for is to amp the minister's voice (she's a small woman, and quite soft spoken) and as a monitor for our guitar group rehersals. Works quite well for those applications, actually. The guitar group performed for a function recently, and we used it then- and it fell pretty flat- too many inputs and too much background noise, the sound was quite muddy. \

Biggest drawback of the Yammie system (this one, they make a larger one, too...) is the stupid SIX OHM rating of both the speakers and the amp. Yammie support says to not use either 4 or 8 ohm loads...

[Treeline]

I've resolved the issue by stumbling on a nice old Crown Microtech 600 amp for the wedge monitors. Simple and pretty much fail safe; I'll use the Passports the way they were designed to be used and not get goofy with them. Now the monitors have just gone from the weak link in my PA to perhaps one of the stronger links... Thanks all for the input!