PA systems

[lkb]

I'm looking to buy a PA system to use at my slalom tournaments. Do anybody have any suggestions on what to buy? I've never bought one or even used one for that matter so all advice would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to buy a system and then figure out it wasn't what I needed.

[Director Darwin]

How big is the area you want to project to?  E-bay has some pretty good deals.  Google "PA Systems" and you'll find some good choices under $300.  I bought one 4 years ago for the same purpose.  Plug my I-pod in and go.  Have used it at other events as well.

[lkb]

roughly a 300'X200' area.

How many watts and channels do you use?

[Director Darwin]

Sounds similar to what I use mine for.  Not sure the wattage but use two channels.  You can find a small, portable PA for under $300 on e-bay or seaching some sites.

[RichardDoane]

lkb - whisper to "TeamWally" - he's the man in the know as the voice of the INT

[Horton]

Fender Passport 150 are great. I did two lakes with a couple of passports linked together.

[Boody]

Here is what I bought from Radio Shack for $30.  http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102920

I attached it to a stereo reciever and plugged in the ipod, worked great.  There are two microphone jacks and fader.

 

 

[TeamWally]

Ikb. guess it depends on how loud you want it and what sort of sound quality you want. Remember just loud is not necessarily good sound, you're aiming for pleasant music levels as well as inteligble announcing. We spent several thou renting gear for the INT US Championships this year at SkiWest. Mind you we had sound at the end of both lakes as well as the length of the lakes.the contractor brought out over 50K of gear plus a monster 24KW desiel generator. We had over 900 feet of job box power cable from the generator to the announcing tower. At our local events in Washington I use a 24 foot Haulmark trailer with 6 Peavy 15s in a double line array pointing out the back, driven by 3 QSC 1450 amps. This gets parked ACROSS the lake from the crowd area. We shoot the signal wireless from announcing to the PA system then use a digital delay unit to balance the time delay to the fill speakers on the crowd side. (kinda like zero off with a switch and bootleg px switch) If that sounds a little much you could try 2 to 4 15" Peavy speakers on tripods (199ea) and a QSC 850 amp (299) along with a Mackie or Beringer mixer  <100 to make a killer little iPod capeable system. add in a shure sm 58 mic or even better a Nady or shure handheld wirelss mic or 2 and you're ready to do weddings and dances. I use a numark iPod mixer to allow the use of 2 ipods or zunes PLUS up to 2 laptops running iTunes. The amount of noize you can make is limited only by your creativity. As a rule of thumb I stay away from the little all in ones on eBay due to crappy sound quality and I run from used gear, one foul piece can destroy your whole system. . Whisper me a budget $ and I'll be happy to lay out the pieces to fit your numbers. That s all.

[LeonL]

ikb,

 Based on the area that you described, you don't need a lot of wattage.  We have used a Pyramid PA-305 for 6-8 years now with good success.  As someone else asked, what do you want to do?  Just announce or play music, or both.  That may determine the speakers needed.  The PA-305 is switchable from 4 - 8 - 16 ohms impedence or 70 volt.  If you need your speakers to be a long distance from your mic/PA you may need to go with the 70 volt output to paging horns.  Paging horns don't provide very good music quality however, cost about $35 each.  It is 100 watts with 4 mic inputs + phono/cd input.  Cost about $150.  Just Google it and there are several suppliers. 

[lkb]

TeamWally,

Tried to whisper to you. Not sure if you got it. I'm about to go out of town and will mostly be away from a computer for the rest of the week in case you try to respond.

Thanks-LKB

[Horton]

you got it right...

[Old MS Accout]

LKB,

Tunes, South Paws, DR Jim course, Nautiques and a fine lake. I cant wait to come down and ski again.

[lkb]

Fo shizzle! Fire up yer snow machine and head on down. /vanillaforum/js/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-cool.gif