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advice on upgrading PA


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The marina club I'm playing is small but 'growing'. It's covered, but effectively an outdoor venue (roof, but no walls). We play to a crowd of oh, 50-75 people.

 

The current combo mixer/power amp combo head just isn't cutting it anymore. The management is willing to upgrade but is clueless what they need and has thus asked me to recommend a replacement mixer/PA for a 'reasonable' cost (not exactly sure what they define as 'reasonable' but that's a different issue).

 

The current setup is an offbrand 6 channel head putting out 100w/channel into 8 ohms. The 2 (8 ohm) drivers are 12" with a horn tweeter rated at 300w ea. No monitor out. The head has a 5 band EQ, some effects (reverb/delay/echo) and CD in/out.

 

Current limiting shuts us down when we get 'cooking'. I know it's current limiting (and not heat) because the cab isn't evven warm and I can unplug the head, wait 8 minutes and we're good to go again. It's basically this issue that is driving the need to upgrade. During performance we're using all 6 channels (2 vocals, kbd, bass, drum machine, mic'd git amp).

 

I've also suggested that whatever they get, it should be capable of 'integrating' all their various audio needs (live music, TV, CD, DVD) into a 'centralized sound system'.

 

Here's what I'm thinking for basic specs:

 

- MINIMUM of 200-300w/chan, preferably 500

4 ohm out to support two 8 ohm drivers/channel (wired in parallel), four drivers total.

- Minimum of 8 chan, preferably 12 (hopefully at least 4 are stereo).

- 'onboard' effects to include reverb/delay

- Line/CD in/out (w/ seperate level adjustment)

- monitor out (with monitor level adjustment)

 

In addition, a small passive mixer to feed the line in for the ancillary audio needs (i.e. TV, CD, DVD, etc.)

 

am I missing anything?

 

I'm not necessarily looking for specific brands (you mostly have to settle for what you can find/get in Guatemala, Central America). Rather I'm just making sure I'm on the right track regarding the basic specs and/or not overlooking some other basic need(s). Especially what I need to comprehend to support more than two drivers.

 

But if you do know/can recommend a specific brand of 'mid level' mixer/PA it might be possible to obtain something from the states.

 

Beyond basic specs, I'm also wondering if it might be more appropriate to use a passive mixer + power amp setup. That might avoid the need for the 'outboard' mixer to accomodate the ancillary audio needs? As far as passive mixer/powered drivers I don't think they're willing to sacrifice their current passive drivers for a passive mixer + powered driver config.

 

Is that enough info to get helpful answers to my question? Am I overlooking something obvious?

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