PA Speakers that can support drums?

timspin · Newbie Alert Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 4

Im pretty new at the audio end of this but I have a 10 peice tama imperial star and have everything mic'd up, problem is running the kick drum and the lower toms through a PA.

Right now were using some bad *Horse's Patoot* peavey's (Peavey SP5X 2-Way PA Cabinets ) but they just dont produce that concert sound when it comes to the lows of the drum set and makes the clip pretty badly at times. I'm assuming we need subwoofers with a passive or active crossover instead of simply these 15s. I have two cerwin 15" cabinets but want to replace the drivers with subwoofers.

My question is this, where can I get some 15" subwoofers without a cab as my cabs are tuned very well, also would this solve the problem Im having and produce that concert type sound for the drums?

any tips suggestions also would be greatly appreciated

Radialprofan · Grizzly Bear Joined: 29 Mar 2004 Posts: 728

Ahh my drumming friend! You seek the chest cavity thud of concert subs. Well POWER is what is required, then speakers. Let's talk about speakers a moment;
15's will do fine in enclosures designed for low frequencies. I've used Peavey and Mackie 15s. With the correct amount of POWER they move a lot of air. My first try at Peavey subs was with an old 415 cabinet. Actually we had 4 of those! Each cabinet had 4 Peavey Black widow 15 inch speakers. They required an active cross over and were rated at 1000 watts per box! Problem was we only gave them 400 watts. I asked a sound professional why we weren’t getting the earth shattering Kaboom we expected and of course he said "you're under powered!" To prove his point, he brought QSC 2000 watt amps. One amp powered 4 boxes! Guess what? They'd cave you're freaking chest in! Lesson here is; know what your cabinets REQUIRE to operate at maximum efficiency! Know what peak input is and what RMS input. Get a power amp that matches those requirements! BE CAREFUL NOT TO RUN FULL POWER CONSTANTLY. Your amp and speakers won't last at max all the time. If you don't have enough volume to fill the room at say 8 (on a scale of 1 to 10) chances are you ain't got enough PA!
Later we bought some Peavey 18's. Nice pair of DTH 218's to be exact. These boxes required 2000 watts each! That's what we gave them with a pair of Peavey 2.3K amps. Again, Nice! But the POWER was there to get the job done! It's all about POWER bro. After that we moved to Mackie PA systems. We bought 4 Mackie SR1501s. These boxes are self powered or "Active" as Mackie calls them. I must say the clarity of these Mackie cabinets put the old Peaveys to shame. PLUS we no longer needed two 200lb plus amp racks to lug around! NICE! Less power but much more efficiency!
Now here the arguable situation. I'll tell you from my experience that almost NOTHING can beat the way an 18" speaker sounds while reproducing a well tuned kick drum! That's my opinion anyway! To put that to the test...2 years ago we sold the Mackie SR1500s and bought just 2 SR1801s! OH-MY-GAWD! What a freaking difference! We rarely need that much power in the smaller clubs we play, but every once in a while we get in a room where we have to push them pretty hard to fill it up! And they do well indeed.
So the moral of the story is..... Match your amps power to the speakers input requirements! According to Peavey's website, your SP5 speaker should have an amp capable of producing 1,600 PEAK power, 800 watts program! That's PER SPEAKER. If you're not giving it that, you're not getting out of it what it's capable of! So you'd need one Peavey CS 800 amp PER SPEAKER (bridged mono) to power them properly. Keep in mind that in a small room of 100 folks, that MAY be enough PA. But I'd look at adding Subs for sure.
Subs; Did I mention I really dig 18's? LOL Man if you can afford them, get the Mackie’s bro. The SR1501s are cool, but the SR1801s are MUCH cooler! Powered or active speaker have done very well for me and my band. Only ONE drawback to them. If the power amp in the cabinet goes out, you lose the speaker too. That’s happened to us ONCE since we've gone to the powered boxes. Not a bad rep at all.

timspin · Newbie Alert Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 4

awesome advice, all were using to power those peaveys is a carvin 800 all in one type pa

so any suggestions on getting subs by them self without an enclosure

(on edit) I just looked up the specks and it says 200 continuous and 500 program, where did you get your numbers from?

Radialprofan · Grizzly Bear Joined: 29 Mar 2004 Posts: 728

From the Pevaey website.
http://www.peavey.com/products/shop_online/browse.cfm/action/details/item/00575230/wc/2A2D21/fam/2DP/tcode/1/s.cfm
That's what it says an SP5 needs. I didn't see a SP5x! LOL So go by what it says on the speaker!
On the sub speakers; If you have Cerwin cabs I'd replace with Cerwin Speakers. It's what the boxes were designed for. You COULD put Peaveys or JBLs or whatever in there really. ...... JBLs would rock! But they ain't cheap!
On crossovers...ALWAYS use active! Passive robs power from your amp to operate. Active has its own power supply. Much more efficient and to my ears ALWAYS sound better.

timspin · Newbie Alert Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 4