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Big Peavey PA Speakers on Hi-Fi Modular Amps.

DustyD

DustyD

New Member
Hi friends....

Im wanting to drive a set of Peavey SP3 Speakers....bass and horns with Kenwood Home Hi-Fi amps.

Amps are 100 watt per channel with wire crimp connectors.

Speakers are 100 watt with non balanced inputs.

Question one is...... will my Kenwoods drive these without issues or do I need a PA specific amplifier.

Question two is...... How do I wire these up?

Thanks! Dusty
 

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Your amp will work fine.

The speakers use phone jack inputs, just solder your two strand speaker wire to a male phone jack and plug it in to one of the inputs, you can use either one. You can get phone jacks at Radio Shack, musical instrument stores or various online outfits like Parts Express.
 
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You won't have any issue and they will sound very good but not as much highs and lows as you might expect. Need tweeters and sub......or adjust your amp.
 
I have a killer Klipsch KSW 12 powered sub.... getting a second to split channels. And am looking into additional tweeters right now! LOL Thanks for the tips!

Dusty
 
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And here I thought I was the only one with a pair of those old monsters. I just finished adding new crossovers and binding posts to mine. It is an upgrade over the stock one that the sp3's come with. I've also found that they're very picky about what drives them. No luck with a sansui au9500 or a yammy r9. A Kenny 6700 worked better than those first 2. Right now though they're sounding their best so far with Rotel separates. The bass needs to be jacked up a few notches and I'm thinking they'd really benefit from an eq.
Just for the hell of it I drove them a few days ago with a 2 wpc stereo tabletop tube unit. They sounded surprisingly good on those 2 little watts.
I think it's fun playing around with them because of what they are. They sounded like **** at first and little by little I'm getting them to sound ok.
 
I think it's fun playing around with them because of what they are. They sounded like **** at first and little by little I'm getting them to sound ok.
Click to expand...
The woofers have fairly stiff compliance and will handle gobs of power. If you have the available amplifier power and a good EQ, you can bend them into sounding very good without any additional transducers.

Good binding posts are IMO a necessary immediate upgrade for any type of high sound quality. 1/4 phone plugs are the worst speaker connector ever used, you want something with more contact area, more contact pressure, and equal contact area for both conductors.
 
ye they will work fine. at the end of the day an amp takes a low level signal and makes it into a bigger one for loudspeakers. pa and home amplifiers do the same thing but with slightly different considerations.


pa amps have to consider the fact they are going to get moved about so are general constructed better and fit into a standardized 19inch rack. they have better cooling as they are designed to work at high powers continually , this often involves a fan who's noise would be irritating to many at home. also input and output connectors are often different , as highlighted above , the peaveys have jacks rather than binding posts to make connections quick and easy... the list goes on.
 
bowtie427ss said:
The woofers have fairly stiff compliance and will handle gobs of power. If you have the available amplifier power and a good EQ, you can bend them into sounding very good without any additional transducers.

Good binding posts are IMO a necessary immediate upgrade for any type of high sound quality. 1/4 phone plugs are the worst speaker connector ever used, you want something with more contact area, more contact pressure, and equal contact area for both conductors.
Click to expand...

Yes they will handle gobs of power but I don't want to be in the same county while that's happening though:no:. I tried swapping out the woofers for some vintage 15" corals that have a little bit more flex in the surrounds. That didn't work out at all so they came right back out.

I agree with the phono jacks being a terrible speaker connector. You can use it to test them out with but they should be taken out and put some nice binding posts in. Luckily the peaveys have dual 1/4 jacks. I used those existing holes for my posts and didn't have to do any drilling.
 
Here's a pic of my binding posts. I used rubber grommets and washers because of the metal plate.
Between the binding posts and the new crossovers I'm almost ready to call them semi listenable
 

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