Posted on 
Feb 14, 2006 08:19 am When I was performing I owned the majority of the bands PA and it was pretty much all Peavey gear, the mixer, amps and speakers and it worked very well. For small to medium sized venues they are not that expensive, and you do not need the mega-thousands of watts system that sales people will try to sell you.
I had two stereo amps that worked "bridged" (meaning two channels become one bigger channel). So the 450 watts a side stero amp became a single channel 900 watt amp. One ran the bass bins and one, turned about half way up to the bass bins full, ran the hi-packs.
In addition to the amps and speakers, you ARE going to want a 10 band (preferably more) equalizer to help "ring out" the room of it's bad frequencies to help stop the annoying feedback and get the most from your system. I am always amazed how few people actually take that simple step...
Ringing out the room consists of turning down your main fader, plugin in a mic and aiming it at a hi pack...slowly raise the fader until feedback starts, then go to the EQ and find which frequency range is feeding back, turn down that frequency until the feedback stops...go thru that process a few times and that should give you much more overhead on your system.
Also, it's quite likely you will need another speaker back by the drummer so he can hear the vocals...cuz many times (at least on stage) he won't hear anything, but then, on stage you'll need to have a monitor system for all members, but thats a whole new topic...
