Powered Monitor Wedges

crunchman

I'm looking at getting some powered monitor wedges for my church.  They could also double as front of house for a portable set up for small events outside the church.

I want something decent quality that will be reliable so avoiding bottom end of the market (Behringer etc).  Budget would be up to £300 each.  It would be difficult to go wrong with the Mackie SRM 450 V2.  It looks decent and seems to have a good reputation for reliability, but I quite like the look of the EV ZLX 12P as well.

Probably looking at 12 inch speaker but a 10 inch speaker like the SRM 350 would save space on stage, but not sure it would quite have enough power.

Does anyone have any experience of any of these, or any other suggestions?

Danny1969

I don't like the Mackie SRM's as monitors, they latch into feedback much quicker then a better monitor would. For £300 new your not gonna get a lot, a decent powered wedge tends to be about £500 upwards. If used is ok then that opens up a lot options

Roland

I've used SRM450 v1s for years for both monitors and FOH. They are not the easiest to use as monitors because the volume knob is on the back, but the sound quality is far better than many 'vocal monitors'.  For FOH we run them at about 1/3 volume, with a sub to take care of the low bottom end

Mackies seem to have gone out of fashion in recent years. No doubt there's something better on the market.

koneguitarist

We use 3 W audio 8" powered monitors. Cheap as hell, been absolutely faultless for last 5 years. Plenty of power, sound decent and only cost £150 each or less if I remember right.

I am only putting vocals, acoustic and keys through there.

koneguitarist

Actually gone up a bit in last few years, ours had gig bag covers which we leave on as well. 

http://www.djkit.com/w-audio/w-audio-psr8a-active-speaker.html

crunchman

Volume knob on the back isn't too much of a problem as we can adjust volume from the desk if we get it in the right ball park.

It looks like there is a V3 of the Mackies on the way.  Thomann have an August delivery date on them.  There might be deals on the V2s in a couple of months.  Problem is I need them the week after next.  We have a big event on and we've had a couple of our old monitors die.

@Danny1969 - its relative.  £300 will get us a lot better than the stuff we have now.

Has anyone used the EVs?

Danny1969

crunchman said:

Volume knob on the back isn't too much of a problem as we can adjust volume from the desk if we get it in the right ball park.

It looks like there is a V3 of the Mackies on the way.  Thomann have an August delivery date on them.  There might be deals on the V2s in a couple of months.  Problem is I need them the week after next.  We have a big event on and we've had a couple of our old monitors die.

@Danny1969 - its relative.  £300 will get us a lot better than the stuff we have now.

Has anyone used the EVs?

Yeah I know. I wouldn't worry about the volume knob on the back cos you tend to run monitors from an aux send as you said or from an iPad if you have a digital desk. 

SRM's do sound clear and ours have been reliable but I can get a much louder wedge mix for a given singer and mic with the other monitors we use like HK Darts and HK Fast. Once you get past the mic placement and EQ it's the stability and quality of the amp in the monitor that tends to be the deciding factor. But the HK stuff is dearer. We got our SRM's for £450 the pair used but you can get em cheaper 

ICBM

Peavey make by far the best gear in this sort of quality/price range in my opinion. It's not always the most sophisticated-sounding but it does the job very well, is cheap for what you get and is extremely reliable.

koneguitarist

ICBM said:

Peavey make by far the best gear in this sort of quality/price range in my opinion. It's not always the most sophisticated-sounding but it does the job very well, is cheap for what you get and is extremely reliable.

Good point, always does the job.

ESBlonde

My memory is fading, wasn't the Mackie 450 powered box the one that had thermal shutdown if laid on its side because the cooling fins ran the other way. It might be that this was corrected in the later versions (brain fart time).

Moltisanti

i've run the Wharfedale powered wedges before for plenty of live shows, and they are loud, durable and get the job done. 

jpfamps

ESBlonde said:

My memory is fading, wasn't the Mackie 450 powered box the one that had thermal shutdown if laid on its side because the cooling fins ran the other way. It might be that this was corrected in the later versions (brain fart time).

The main problem with the SRMs is that the clip detection circuit doesn't reduce the gain at the input but later in the signal chain, so if you clip the input the reduction in gain doesn't stop the signal clipping.

Also the tweeters are not the best quality, although this can be remedied cheaply.

crunchman

Thanks for the input everyone.

crunchman

Went for the EVs in the end.  The very helpful guy at Andertons recommended them over the Mackies - which is the way I was leaning anyway.

Unfortunately I ended up having to buy them from Thomann. 

http://www.thomann.de/gb/ev_zlx_12p.htm

They are pricing them at €319 - about £255 at today's exchange rate.  Most places in the UK seem to have them advertised at £329.  There was some movement on that but I couldn't find a UK dealer who would go anywhere near £255.

HippoPete

Just in case anyone is interested. I've just ordered one of the Behringer B205 D powered monitors to try out. It's intended to get some more direct monitoring to our two horn players. Not sure how I'm going to configure it at the moment as it looks like it offers the option of the two of them plugging in and setting their own level and me making their "sub-mic" back to the main PA. Alternatively, I set their mix and use the monitor as a powered speaker with them having the ability to set level only.

Will report back in due course as I know there are entrenched views on Berry gear. We are only weekend warriors so touring band levels of robustness aren't needed.

Cheers All,

Pete

viz

I just use carlsbro active 400w 15 inch PA speakers, they're 200 quid second hand ebay, they're sort of wedge shaped so they go well on their side. I also use them for the tops for the PA.

ICBM

My experience with Behringer gear is that it's very well engineered if you accept that one of the design criteria is absolute lowest possible cost. Reliability tolerances are cut to the bone, but that means that if you get a good one it's likely to work well more or less indefinitely. If you get a bad one it will probably die quickly, usually under warranty. But they also continuously improve their products, since warranty returns cost them money it's in their interests to minimise this.

The major problem with them is that if they do break out of warranty, they are often built in ways which make repair very difficult, expensive, or just uneconomical at all given the new replacement price... so it's truly gear for the 21st Century - buy it, use it, if it breaks get it replaced under warranty, and if it isn't under warranty throw it away and buy a new one.

I also have an issue with them basically stealing other companies' designs - but amazingly, in some cases they're actually better built than the originals!