Hello there I am currently having a nightmare helping one of my students find a set of amps for his PA set up.

to start with my student has gone out on a limb and bought a load of Skytec 250 watt speakers 10 was the last count he gave me. and he is looking for some amps for them, But his little sound board only has his master output, and no Sub,channels.

Now he is wanting to mimic our theater set up with a amp rack+crossover. Now We are running 4 Studio Master AX3500 Amps Connected together via there stereo link set up.

Now my first instinct was to advise my student to get multiples of the Studio Master AX150, However after reading there tech specs and noticing that both channels at 4ohms kick out 450 Watts, and at 8ohms 270 watts. I figured his speakers are not going to like it (I use the word figured as I'm meant to be the Lighting Tutor but im having to cover the sound course for the next few weeks).

So I was wondering what suggestions you have. thanks for your time.

Would be so much easier if students asked us for help BEFORE they went out and started buying random kit, but hey thats first years for you.

thanks again for your time.

If the speakers are 250w into 8ohms. It would work fine to connect 2 to each channel of an amp. Although this would under power them slightly and you'd need to be more careful not to clip the Amp to avoid damaging the speakers.

You could also tell the student to take the speakers all back, find out his total budget and then look on here for a topic where someone has a similar budget.

I would personally take the 2nd option if I were you.

Josh

Generally, an amp should ideally be twice the rated power of a box, (per channel) we will use RMS here.

This helps with clipping, gives more headroom and saves using the amp at full power, which is bad.
There have been topics on this before, have a search in the box, top right.

Assuming he bought those speakers new, and they are the model I think they are, then he could get himself something very good for the same price.

Why on earth has he bought 10 of those???

Definately take them back and spend the money on something much much better...

Unless he's putting together five separate (budget) DJ systems, I'd also suggest taking them back. They won't array in any useful way so trying to use more than a pair of them together won't be pretty. And with a sensitivity of 91dB/1W/1m they'll be rather weedy too. Almost any other speaker would be a better choice.

Well, if he did pay £60 per cab and he does have 10. He could get a good quality pair of RCF cabs for that £600 he just wasted on those DJ Cabs.

Josh

The ad also makes no use of the word RMS, so the 250W could be peak, making them even less useful.

My advice would be to step away and not offer it. I don't usually subscribe to the 'send them back' notion, but in this case it would be good advice IF the seller is in agreement, which I bet they won't be, and the return freight charge for 10 big items is going to be expensive! He has no right to send them back of course, they sold them in good faith, and they don't have to take them back at all. In fact, if I was them, I'd be laughing thinking that some idiot had bought ten of them. No way would I take them back. They will probably have re-ordered stock anyway!

The distance selling regs give, I believe, 7 days to change your mind - and that's probably gone now.
He will have to live with them, buy a few cheap amps and have a system that looks impressive and has HF that can take your head off at twenty paces!

All of those speakers together each being delivered their full amount of power is barely going to get you above 120 dB at 1m (edit: which Paulears points out will be mostly HF), which most decent speakers will easily beat.

I'd send them all back personally. It depends on what his needs are, but if portability is a must, RCF's plastic boxes are rather good for what they are.

The 250W that is quoted is indeed (as Paulears rightly guessed) is their max power. They are rated at 125W rms, making them even more pointless.

I'm another one from the send them back school of thought. For the money that's going to be needed to be added to the price of the speakers in order to get enough amps to power them you could get a much better (but not as impressive looking) system. There has been lots of threads on here before talking about PAs at around that sort of money.

Ian

Thanks for your help, after speaking with my student I have advised him to attempt to send them back (but I doubt they will accept them)!

I have said if all else fails he can sell them on with a cheap amp and board, to his friends as a Impressive looking Hi-Fi System. To try and recover some of his cash.

Perhaps next time he will do his research first.

P.S we got a new sound tutor starting next week, time to go back to being a Lampy full time again and to stop playing with the noise boys.

I don't think I have ever read a funnier statement than this!
Thanks Paul, you have cheered me up no end!!

If the plan now is to go ahead and complete 5 full systems, why not have a look at the Thomann range of amps?
The T amp is highly rated on here, and for 150 nicker to boot!