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Question about Inverter size


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I am doing some research on pure sine wave inverters, to be able to perform remotely at wedding ceremonies. I am a soloist, and plan to use an A&H Zed10FX mixer into 1 QSC K10 speaker (I presume the acoustic guitar & mic don't draw much/any power). What size inverter would I need for this? I have access to deep cycle batteries, so there's no issue there. The three inverters I am currently considering are 1500W, 2500W & 3000W continuous - but I feel like these could be too much? What about if I was to add a second K10?

 

Any information would be greatly appreciated, because I need to make this purchase soon.

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I think you would be surprised how little you need. I would bet 750W would easily run that. I have used a Honda 2000W generator to run a whole band. Not for a 5k people but guitar amp, bass amp, basic 1000W PA with two FOH and two monitors. I read my Yamaha DXR only draws about 100W per speaker. I would go to a place I can easily exchange the item and try a 600W which is much cheaper than a 1500W and I'm pretty sure it will do what you need. You need a good quality pure sine wave if your using equipment with computers such as DSP and keyboards or modeling. Maybe some of the engineers have more experience but I gained mine using inverters on my boat and some outdoor gigs. I also owned battery powered stagemate that was 100w and it would run about 3 hours on the internal battery which is about 1/10 the size of a car batter. Deep cycle batteries are the way to go. In my boat I used 2 six volt golf cart batteries run in series so they came up to 12 volts. They lasted a long time. Also on batteries there are group 24, 27, 31 are the most common. The bigger then number the bigger the battery and more reserve amps you will have.

 

The equipment you listed should only use about the equivalent of about 3 100W lightbulbs.

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Some of the smaller Honda generators would be a nice choice. They're flexible, quiet and very portable. (There is a reason that I included a brand. Most are noisy.) The K10 might draw 500 watts each when being pushed outdoors. You could probably ignore the wattage draw of the mixer. I would watch to make sure you're getting only class-D amplifiers. I think that's what is in the K-10s. (They don't waste power like other amp types. I come from an era when a 100 watt amp would draw 250 watts. Class D amp of 1000 watts might actually draw 1050 watts maximum so you might actually have to dissipate 50 watts of heat. More likely, you probably will never draw more than 300 watts and then it would be pretty loud.)

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An inverter that's 750VA is probably a good choice for 2 x K series. You can not size an inverter based on average power. With a dynamic load you must have the capacity for the dynamics, which are not totally averaged out by the power supply.

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While the 1k Honda generator is nice its not cheap. Your talking 800 or 900 dollars at least. A good 750W invertor probably can be had for less than half of that. Make sure you pay attention to the input voltage. If your only using one battery you need 12V, larger invertors usually use 24V or more. I've seen mobile work trucks use 1500W invertors for Power tools and I know they draw a hell of lot more current than a small powered speaker.

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I think a larger inverter wouldn't hurt other than the dollars. Make sure you purchase a quality product and pure sine wave inverters are much more expensive. That's one reason I went for an inverter on the boat because generators are supposed to be sized for the load. I could always charge up the batteries with my 4.5kw generator which was just big enough to run the AC and some other things. AC draws a lot of power when it starts up.

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I've been using inverters and deep-cycle batteries for quite a while now, and never had a lick of trouble. I've got a 300w Xantrex MSW inverter which I use for powering a small acoustic-guitar rig (AER Compact 60/2 combo-amp and Soundcraft EFX-8 mixer, and a couple of LED wash-lights).

 

I also have a 1500w Xantrex MSW inverter, which handles a pair of Yorkville NX55P's (no subs) for FOH and the AER Compact 60/2 as a floor-monitor, plus either the EFX-8 or MFXi-8 for a mixer, and a few 4-bar and individual wash-lights.

 

I use the same battery for either rig. The battery is a 12v/115 amp-hour deep-cycle battery, which allows me to run beyond 8 hours with the larger rig.

 

We're generally using these rigs for private parties,,, back-yard events,,, camp-fire/bon-fire parties, with 80-100 people. Instruments are acoustic-electric guitars only, and we're generally running 3-4 vocal mics. Works great. I haven't tried adding a sub yet (LS-720P), because we generally don't need one.

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I rent a Honda EU2000I for various functions. At $52.00 for 24 hrs. it makes a lot more sense than buying an inverter and packing batteries etc... I'm sure renting an EU1000I would be cheaper still. You would be shocked how quiet they are on Economy mode.

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