Peavey vs Behrenger

[stevetrimby]

Hello guys and girls,

heres one for you to keep you busy arguing amongst yourselves.

I recently upgraded my stack and bought a second hand peavey max 450 head for a steal of a price.

It came with a peavey 15" black widow speaker b115, which after some research appears to be 700w.

After having a practice with it with the band i was dissappointed by the volume and how the speaker appears to max out volume wise when the amps volume control is only at 5 (out of 10).

I decided to try a different cab and so bought a behrenger 600w cab with a tweeter, hoping this would give more power as it was new (i had decided the peavey cab must be faulty as it looks about 10 yrs old).

Again after a practice it appears to be equally poor in volume and max's out at the same point (its perhaps a teeny tiny bit loader than the peavey).

So my qustion is two fold:

a) is there something im doing wrong which is making my stack seem so quiet?
in your opinions which of the two cabs should i keep and which should i send packing?

answers on a post card please

[alexclaber]

Get rid of the Behringer, their speakers have an appalling reliability record.

Regarding your rig reaching full power when the volume control is only halfway up, this is the norm with most amps. If you had a particularly quiet bass then you'd be able to turn up 'louder' but the power and volume level from the amp would still max out at the same point.

15" speakers are very directional - point it at your head and it will seem a lot louder. Also position your cab either very close or very far from any walls, otherwise the sound bouncing off the walls could cancel out the output in the lows and low mids.

Alex

[rodl2005]

+1000000000000000 keep the PV & even maybe get it checked out as to it functioning properly. 15" I DON'T find to be very directional & find that their sound can OFTEN be/seem louder if U stand NEXT to it-meaning behind the actual spkr cone-just alongside it! But a 15"s sound wave will be a few metres long & so U actually get the WHOLe sound U R putting out a fair way from the spkr. Try standing next to it....then try standimg in front, but a few metres away. See how that goes.
I've ALSO found solid state amps to not push 15" spkrs(by themselves) very efficiently(probly a scientific reason to either dispute this or back it up ) & you'd be surprised how much volume you'd have with a 4x10 on top of the PV 15"(as long as impedance is OK)
Try all these tings if poss.- even try the 2 15" cabs U have now together if Impedance is OK again.
But get ridda the Behringer outta the 2!

[alexclaber]

[quote name='rodl2005' post='68498' date='Oct 2 2007, 08:06 AM']15" I DON'T find to be very directional & find that their sound can OFTEN be/seem louder if U stand NEXT to it-meaning behind the actual spkr cone-just alongside it![/quote]

A couple of facts:

A source is fully directional (beaming) when the wave length <= diameter of the source.

A source is considered fully spherical (omnidirectional) when wave length > 4x diameter of the source.

Therefore the bigger the speaker, the lower the beaming limit.

[quote name='rodl2005' post='68498' date='Oct 2 2007, 08:06 AM']But a 15"s sound wave will be a few metres long & so U actually get the WHOLe sound U R putting out a fair way from the spkr.[/quote]

You get the whole sound immediately at the speaker diaphram. If you had to be a wavelength away from a sound to hear it then headphones could not work. This is a common misconception due to boundary effects (null zones) and directionality.

Alex

[gilmour]

I also have a Peavey 1x15 loaded with a black widow. I bought it second hand in 1997 and it gets constant use. Thumbs up from me on the PV (do you like the way i made that rhyme?)

[stevetrimby]

Thanks for the help guys.

The behrenger is on its way back to the shop to gather some more dust.

Unfortunately the peavey head stopped working last night at practice so thats gotta go back for repairs now.

Oh well, thats what you get for cutting costs and going second hand i guess.

[grandad]

I'm selling my Peavey Max 450 because it's too loud. I'm keeping it's smaller brother the Max 160 which I have used for several years into an Ampeg 115. Both Peavey amps are very well made & repairable.

You may be experiencing the Law of Diminishing Returns wrt volume. For one volume level to appear x2 another level, it needs to be 10dB louder. That means approximately doubling the power, doubling it again, then doubling it again to sound twice as loud. So, 8 watts power to the speaker appears to be just twice as loud as 1 watt.

The logrithmic volume potentiometer used for the volume control should follow the ear's sensitivity but I too find that most change occurs from 0 - 5 with my amp's.

If you plot the curve of a volume potentiometer, (X = degrees rotation, Y = Ohms Resistance), it does approximate a logrithmic curve but the track appears linear in 2 parts, 1/2 gradual increase, 1/2 steeper increase.

Also of course the hearing will become less sensitive the longer we're exposed to loud sounds.

Reading back over what I've typed I sound like a bloody retired teacher who can't get out of lecturing mode so I'll stop now before it gets too nerdy!

[essexbasscat]

Also check the Peavey manual for operation of the amp.

Case in point is the Peavey MKIV 400 head. Peavey recommend you turn the output gain up full and then turn up the pre amp stage to suit, counter intuitive to many amp controls.

[Truckstop]

Have a look at your EQ.

I've never heard of a Peavey 450 running out of volume! I can only surmise that you've got a tone that doesn't lend itself very well to being heard over a live band.

Mid frequencies are key here. Mids are your friends! It takes a lot of power to make low frequencies loud enough to be heard and less power is needed to make mid frequencies heard. So, the head is running out of juice because it's trying to push all these low frequencies, hence, you're running out of juice earlier than if you had a more mid frequency-heavy tone.

Try running the amp with a flat EQ and you should notice more volume. Also try bumping the gain up in partnership with your mids; you should hear a lovely bass growl poking out of the mix.

As someone said earlier, don't lose the head. Keep it, learn how to use it effectively and in the future pair it with a better cab. Peavey TKO and
BW cabs are awesome. Also look for Trace Elliott cabs. They tend to cost around the same, maybe £100 for a 4x10/1x15. You'll see a lot of Ashdown cabs going cheap; personally I wouldn't recommend them because I'm not keen on their tone (ABM's and the 'Deep' range in particular) but plenty of volume you'll get! Hartke VX cabs are good and cheap but big and heavy.

Good luck!

Alex

[tonyquipment]

+1 truckstop

sort your EQ out to free up some power...

chop some of the low freqs. they sap a lot of power to make speaker go

with the EQ, make sad face

you hear the mids better and it will appear to sound 'louder' perceived volume i think it is coined

[mokkat]

holy thread revival, Bassman

[Truckstop]

Ha ha, just noticed! Can't believe I spent ages typing out all that horseshit for some dude that probably hasn't been on basschat for 5 years!

Truckstop

[Mr. Foxen]

Don't mistake watts for volume. They don't really relate.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1368666084' post='2080062']
Don't mistake watts for volume. They don't really relate.
[/quote]+1. And, to answer the original question, the best BW made has only 4.8mm xmax. That limits it to perhaps 100w before farting out in the lows. There are BWs with as little as 1.2mm xmax, making them good for only 25w. Thermal watt ratings alone mean little, as do driver diameters.

[icastle]

Good grief!

Is this [b]Give an Aged Thread A Home Week[/b]?

[Truckstop]

Argh! Must...impart....knowledge...regardless!