Wharfedale mixer

[DerTeufel]

Hi gang..newbie member here. I guess you could say I am a talkbass refugee..anyways.

I am in the process of piecing together a PA for my band. We're not trying to put the whole band through it, just vocals and a little bit of kick drum. The local mom and pop music store has a few used powered mixer, and one in particular has caught my attention. It is a Wharfedale SPX613. I can't find a whole lot of information on the 'net regarding this mixer, other than a manual. Does anyone have any knowledge regarding wharfedale powered mixers, and if so, are they worth having? Thanks!

[sam.spoons]

I don't know the SPX613, but I installed a PM-600 with the bundled speakers in a small local church with good effect, i's used for speech during services and music for dance/fitness classes. It was cheap (as there was only small budget available) but does what it says on the tin very well.

[DerTeufel]

Thank you! Has it been pretty reliable?

[sam.spoons]

It doesn't get heavy use, huge volumes or thrown into and out of a van but it has not yet given any problems so I'd say it's reliable, yes.

[DerTeufel]

Well..yesterday I was able to test the mixer before buying it.

What a piece of crap! It had so much noise coming through with the master at 0, it clipped very easily, and wasn't nearly as loud as the Yamaha 200W power mixer that was sitting next to it. I ended up leaving the store with a Carvin FET 1000 power amplifer to use with my passive Yamaha 8 channel board and two Kustom 15" pa speakers.

[sam.spoons]

As I said, I have no experience of the SPX613. The one I put in the church was a great package for, at the time, around £350 (inc speakers, mic, leads etc). It ain't pro kit but reasonable for the money. Glad you listened to the SPX before you bought 

[DerTeufel]

I certainly do appreciate your responses!

I put the carvin amp and kustom speakers through their paces yesterday an hour after buying them at a gig. They performed wonderfully and much better than I had anticipated.

[Greg C.]

Pretty much no powered mixer out there is going to have the performance of real power amps with an standard mixer. Allen & Heath did the best job of integrating a decent power amp into a mixer with their powered PA series mixers. But I'd still opt for a setup of either outboard amps with a mixer or a set of decent self-powered speakers with mixer. Most all in one mixer/amp PA heads are suitable as either vocals-only PA systems or vocals with reinforcement of select instruments that don't include bass or drums. They just don't have the headroom for solid low frequency reproduction without sucking up all the headroom needed for vocals.

[DerTeufel]

I agree with you on all points. That's why I went with the Carvin power amp and passive speakers.