whats your favorite amp for around 2x 500watt rms?

[earworm]

i'm looking for an amp that can produce about two times 500 watt rms

i know Crown is a decent brand but what about their smaller and cheaper models, are they worth their "name" and price ? what other choises do i have if i want 500W amps, price.....around $400 second hand....
and can you really hear a difference between amps or are it mostly speakers that change the sound?

i'm the PA man of a very small band and we're gonna get rid of our junkass powered mixer, we got some (bad) speakers and will replace them too this year but right now i Have to use them for a while,
and i don't know how much Ohm they are, so can someone please tell me "how it works" again:

imagine i got an amp that gives 2x 500 watt rms at 4 ohm (each channel)
--> can i connect two 8 ohm speakers to it?

and if i got the same amp but with 8 ohm output on each channel
--> can i connect two 4 ohm speakers to it?

and even Worse: i want to connect FOUR speakers to this amp, i'll link the speakers to each other.... do i now need four speakers with the same impedance? (all 8 ohm, or all 4 ohm) or can i mix this?


thanks alot !

 

[apl]

Consider Carvin. They also have mixers and speakers.

If you have a 2 × 500W @ 4 Ohm amp, you can hook up two or four 8 Ohm speakers to it.

If you have two 4 Ohm speakers in parallel, that will only be 2 Ohm which may be too low for some amps.

 

[earworm]

ok, thanks, i was reading other posts too but i can't remember these things, i'm real bad with numbers,
so i'll keep in mind that most PA speakers are 8 ohm, and its "safe" to link them, but with 4 ohm speakers its dangerous to link them since i don't want to go as low as 2ohm on an amp....

so is it correct to say that the (input)impedance of the speakers has to be Higher than the (output)impedance of the amp? a bit like speakers should be able to handle more rms than the amp can give...

or is it a bad philosophy....

 

[apl]

If you look at amp specs you'll see:

Continuous RMS per CH: 8 ohms 350w, 4 ohms 600w, 2 ohms 900w

This tells you can go down to 2 ohms.

 

[easychair]

Good used amps, reliable, not too heavy.

Crown Powerbase series/Microtech series
QSC PLX series
QSC RMX series.
Most can be found used, most likely in your budget.

If you don't need to move them too much, almost any amp from a decent maker made in the last twenty years will be fine.

 

[apl]

Good used amps, reliable, not too heavy.

Crown Powerbase series/Microtech series
QSC PLX series
QSC RMX series.
Most can be found used, most likely in your budget.

If you don't need to move them too much, almost any amp from a decent maker made in the last twenty years will be fine.

I'd even buy a Peavey amp, but I wouldn't tell anybody!

 

[earworm]

ok thanks already, i don't have my own amp but when i rent equipment for Live i mostly see qsc stuff,
but ehm, imagine that i find a cheap (older) amp with only banana clamps (or how u call it) on the back, is it possible to attach a neutric connector to this?
or should i avoid amps with an unbalanced output?



AND, when i search ebay(germany) i often find this brand:

'Crown Amcron XL 600 (Endstufe=poweramp) '

is Amcrom really a "daughter factory" of crown or is it bullshit and is it a total different brand?

 

[apl]

...should i avoid amps with an unbalanced output?

Balanced is only for low level signals like mics and instruments. Balancing prevents hum in long cable runs. Amplifiers don't have balanced outputs, but there is a lot of different styles of connectors. I'm kinda old school, so I think 1/4" is fine, and I'm sure the other styles are, too.

 

[easychair]

Huh, never heard of Crown Amcron, it might be a European division or something?

Apl, I'd buy Peavey as well, and those Carvin DCM series actually are built way solid and sound good. A local club that has a lot of national acts uses 4 DCM4000 for monitors, they cover the faces so snobs don't raise a fuss.

Anyway, earworm, that Crown will probably work great, all you need is a Neutrik-banana adapter. Speaker outputs aren't balanced. You can make them, they are probably cheaper to buy.

Hey, was that you that bought a dbx 166 on ebay a month or so ago? The user name was earworm, I wanted it but I knew you needed it more than me.

 

[earworm]

my username on ebay is earworm666 , cause earworm was already taken,
i did own a 166 like two years ago or something but didn't really like it so i got rid of it, so it wasn't me

thanks for the info, now i got a nice list of amps i can hunt for,
next step are speakers....