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Why is Peavey stuff so underpowered?

D

Dan Loader

May 6, 2003
212
1
London, England
www.bassworld.co.uk
#1
I'm a little confused. I've got a Peavey 2x10 that's rated at 175w RMS, which I'm thinking of using as a separate cab (it's powered by a combo atm), possibly with another Peavey 2x10.

I can get a 2x10 cab for a similar price over here in the UK that has 2 Emience 300watt RMS 10" drivers, so overall a 600watt RMS cab, same price, same size, slightly lighter. As far as I can tell, Peavey are the only manufacturer of 2x10 cabs rated less than 200watts RMS, why is this?

Their 4x10 is rated at 350watts RMS, which seems like a logical step, but their 8x10 is rated at only 400watts RMS. I can't get my head round this, do I buy another 2x10 and whack 300 watts into each, or sell up and get something with more power?

Lastly, does anyone know how efficient these cabs are?
 
#5
Lastly, does anyone know how efficient these cabs are
Click to expand...

That's the primary question you should be asking, though sensitive is the correct term. Watts are almost meaningless; drive a 85dB/watt/meter cab with 100 watts and a 109dB/watt/meter cab with 1 watt. Guess which is louder? The 1 watt signal is, and by a 4dB margin to boot.

The only way to know how loud a box will play is to multiply its wattage capability by its dB sensitivity, and you also have to consider frequency response, as SPL is not linear. Unfortunately, getting this information from manufacturers is somewhat more difficult than pulling teeth.
 
#7
Dan Loader said:
I understand speaker efficiency, but the other cabs I mentioned use decent Emience drivers, which certainly aren't going to have the efficiency of a car-woofer.

AFAIK for a 175watt Peavey 2x10 to beat another 600watt 2x10 in SPL, the Peavey has to be <3x more efficient, right? Surely that's a huge margin?
Click to expand...

3.42 X more sensitive = 5.35dB, not that huge at all, in terms of common variances in bass drivers. Take a look here: http://www.bessernet.com/jobAids/dBCalc/dBCalc.html

However, maximum SPL also is limited by power compression, which very few manufacturers specify. Comparing real world performance is not as straightforward as you might expect. If it sounds good, it is good though, no?
 
#8
i work for peavey, so take this with a grain of salt, but we rate everything conservatively. that means our amps have lower published specs (e.g. 150W head), but are often considered "the loudest XXXwatt amplifier i've ever played."

speakers are the same. when we rate 175W RMS, we mean you can play 175W RMS through our speakers for several hours. other guys may mean several minutes.

and a though on usage...

i have a 300W rated bergantino HT-112 in my bass rig. i power it with a crest pro 7200, which is 590W per side into 8 Ohms and 2000W bridged into 8 Ohms. i use both modes regularly and have had no problems with performance. i feel perfectly comfortable and safe in both cases using the cabinet that way.

unless your amp is obscenely powerful, you should be relatively safe with a 175W 210, especially if you're using it in a system with other speakers, which our 210s are designed to do. a 175W 210 should be able to handle a 350W RMS amplifier on its own, which is either powerful if the cabinet is 8 Ohms, or reasonably powered\ if the cabinet is 4 Ohms.

so my question is this: do you want a cabinet that is rated a certain way, or a cabinet that sounds performs a certain way? play through as many cabinets as you can and you'll be able to decide much more easily than if you look at specs on a page.

robb.
 
#10
Dan Loader said:
My question really wasn't based on a rig decision, more on curiosity. The main problem I have is understanding why your 8x10 would only have 50w more power handling than the 4x10s...
Click to expand...

Bottom line... it's not that important. As Robb was saying, plug it in and decide.

People tend to think of speaker cab power ratings as hard numbers. They're not. It's not like running a container over because it only holds two litres and you pour in 2.1.
 
#11
My question really wasn't based on a rig decision, more on curiosity. The main problem I have is understanding why your 8x10 would only have 50w more power handling than the 4x10s
Click to expand...

Perhaps because Peavey isn't overstating their ratings. Your entire thread points out the fact that the average musician is watt happy, in the mistaken belief that more watts=more volume. It's no coincidence that manufacturers do everything possible to make their wattage ratings appear as high as possible from a pure marketing standpoint.
 
#12
i myself have a peavey 810 rated at 400rms and i was wondering if a ampeg svt3 pro would work fine with this and if there was a louder amp that would fit my cab then what would it be. i was also told by someone that if i bought a svt4 pro that my cab would handle it. im not sure bout that though sense that head is rated at 1200 rms bridged. doesnt sound like a fit but i dunno.
 
#13
rynkc26 said:
i myself have a peavey 810 rated at 400rms and i was wondering if a ampeg svt3 pro would work fine with this and if there was a louder amp that would fit my cab then what would it be. i was also told by someone that if i bought a svt4 pro that my cab would handle it. im not sure bout that though sense that head is rated at 1200 rms bridged. doesnt sound like a fit but i dunno.
Click to expand...

How loud are you trying to play?
 
#15
i have also wondered about the whole power handling issue with 410's vs 810's and such. at first one might think that they used lower wattage speakers in the larger enclosures. that might be true but i doubt it. it would probably cost peavey more to design and manufacture a different speaker for every cab, than to just use the same one in many cabs. i bet that the wattage ratings for the cab are based on the fact that all the cabs share the same tweeter and (i'm pretty sure) a very similar crossover. if the 10's will take 700 watts but the tweeter will blow at 300 you cant rate the cab at 700. however the rating for the tweeter is probably at max sensitivity so attenuating it down(like most people do) will increase the wattage that you can run through the cab.

don't know for sure but that's my best guess
i've got a 412 tvx that i run with a 2000 watt power amp. 3 years and alot of gigs later i have yet to blow a speaker(but i did blow a tweeter once. it's the same kind that was in a 210tvx that i had a while back. it blew too. but that time from a 150 watt head go figure)
 
#17
rcz said:
i work for peavey, so take this with a grain of salt, but we rate everything conservatively. that means our amps have lower published specs (e.g. 150W head), but are often considered "the loudest XXXwatt amplifier i've ever played."
Click to expand...

That's nice to hear.
I'm one of those guys that has retained an anti-Peavey bias for many years based in part on the opposite being the case "back in the day". My first bass amp was a Peavey TNT 130 bought in about 1982, and I replaced it a few years later with a Randall 120-watt head that was drastically louder, even into a crappy homemade 8-ohm cab (with an EVM 15" driver) where it was rated more like 80 watts. Back then everybody I talked to had the same opinion: Peavey gear was underpowered for its given rating.

So I'm glad to hear the company has made policy changes in the past 20 years, and I'll try to erase that part of my memory :-)

Even back then, though, I thought Peavey speakers were pretty decent - the best-sounding part of the amp, in fact. Before I got my cab I ran the preamp out of my randall through the Peavey power amp and speaker and it sounded great. And they were reliable - there were a lot of peavey amps around and I don't know anyone who blew a speaker.

In fact you can't fault Peavey reliability in general. I don't think I've ever known anyone who's had a Peavey amp fail on the gig.

To the original poster:
You need to check out the cabs to decide. A 175-w rated Peavey cab may be more than adequate power handling if it's efficient enough for you. You need to try it with your head and see if it gets loud enough.

Eminence makes great drivers too (they make stuff for a zillion cab makers including some of the boutique shops like EA)... but the low end always depends on the cab design so you need to hear the cab in question before you can really decide. An Eminence (or any driver) in a poor cab won't live up to its potential on the bottom.
 

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