We are doing a commercial audio system and cant decide which brand of amps to use.

Crown or Peavey?

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

LOL!
Peavey is one of those brands that have a loyal following.

In my 25 years of professional work in audio systems and many years before that (high school bands, etc...). I have NEVER liked the audio quality of Peavey - I think it sucks!
But... they are very robust, low failure rates, and keep going for decades (unfortunately). They are also cheap, similar to Behringer cheap. I think that is the biggest reason they are so popular.

I read here recently that Crown started out as a welding power supply company. Whether it's true or not, those things are powerful and just keep on working. I still have a 30Wx2 amp we bought for crossover testing back in 1972.... and it works.

My impression of Peavey is that it works and puts out a lot of power, but it's suspiciously a favorite of guitarists. And guitarists want "a sound." They don't want "high fidelity."

After watching Undercover Boss and seeing how Hartley Peavey and his heir-apparent screwed his employees, I won't use his crap.

Yes, I know these shows are entertainment and they like to show these conflicts, but leaving people hanging is BS.

[Link: linkedin.com]

Most guitarists don't use power amps in their rig and at this point, there's not much need for high powered guitar amps. In the '80s, when some of the studio guitarists were seen in bands of their own (Steve Lukather, of Toto) and others who used tons of effects (Steve Stevens, Allan Holdsworth, etc) toured with a couple of full racks of amps, instrument preamps and effects, some decided that copying their favorite player's sound was better than finding one of their own. Now, it's far more common to see people using amps by smaller manufacturers who have a following due to their tweaks to the amps that were used in the early days of Rock N Roll, the '60s and into the '70s- this means they're derivatives of Fender, Marshall, Vox and a few other smaller brands like Valco, which made amps under many brand names. However, even the major manufacturers had referenced Western Electric, AT&T, etc on their tube charts because the designs didn't spring from the heads of the designers, they were designed by choosing a power supply, input section, tone stack, phase inverter (or not, when the amp was Single-Ended) and power amp section from design books.

You're right about the sound vs fidelity- listen to someone like Neil Young, whose main amp is a 1950s Tweed Fender Deluxe. He has a servo-controlled box on top that uses foot switches and has a crude memory for volume and tone settings, but with his 1950s Les Paul, it sounds like it's about to explode, on a lot of songs and it's only rated at around 22W (Push-Pull 6V6 output with two volume and one tone control).

In the case of many guitar players, the amp could be anything- they use so many effects that the sound of the amp is almost totally obliterated, yet they swear that it's 'their' sound and it's the best out there.

Peavey bought Crest Audio a while back. They made top notch amps. So now basically all Peavey amps are Crest inside.

[Link: peaveycommercialaudio.com]

Not.

They started building the most robust reel to reel tape recorders available in the 1940s, that Christian missionaries in remote areas could use in their work when repair facilities might be unavailable.

[Link: museumofmagneticsoundrecording.org]

If you can fit Crown in the budget, it is a great product, one of the very best.

In our repair days we used to be a Crown warranty station. I still own a pretty full service library, and after repairing their amps, one of the final tests was a short circuit test. Run the amp to full power and short the outputs. This would ensure that the protective circuitry was functioning. Try that with a cheap amp, and you will be sending smoke signals to all your friends.

I'm with Tom on this one. I run both Crown and QSC amps in my pa rack, and both are excellent, robust products.

Peavy has been in trouble financially. Cut it's staff way back.

Ummmm.

Earlier in the discussion, there was comment made about guitar amps, which are different in purpose than commercial audio amps.

At the venue I work with, guitarists will bring in a guitar amp to plug in to. They will either have me put an sm57 on the front of it facing the speaker, or if the amp has a di built into it, go directly to my board, or if it has a line out, I will got to a di and go to my board. From my board, ultimately I will go to my amplifier (s)

In the commercial audio domain, running a restaurant, you are unlikely to find guitar amps....

So, original poster, you can look at any number of brands out there. Crown, QSC, JBL Pro, Peavey, LabGruppen, Crest, and on and on.

I did live recording for several years. The point was to record the sound that came out of the myriad conglomeration of pedals and fuzzboxes, through the overdriven tubes and out the maybe slightly rubbing woofer being used as a full-range.

THAT they wanted captured just the way it was, so we put a mic on it. That was high fidelity because we reproduced the mounds of crap with every tiny fly speck on it exactly where the fly had deposited it. For instance, play a Creedence Clearwater album and listen to the instruments. You'll detect some things that make you think there might be guitars in there somewhere.