Passive Wedges - what good ones are out there?

M

Matt Vivlamore

Senior
Jan 11, 2011
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Southern MD, USA
www.meerkatsound.com
I've been out of the market for a bunch of years and back then the SRX712m was the go to wedge for the "B-Level" acts. When I jumped back in, I picked up some powered wedges... While do I like powered wedges, I hate running twice the cables and trying to figure out power drops & extension cords and it then take twice as long to set-up/tear-down.

Before we get into the what is/isn't "rider friendly" debate; the riders I need to fill will state "we need ## monitor mixes with ## wedges". We're talking the SL100 B-Stage, when the main stage has the SL260/SL320.

So, is there anything out there equivalent to the SRX712M on the market?
 
Have you looked at streamlining your stage setup for powered wedges? I've worked small stages with both types, and I haven't found passive wedges to be any quicker than powered wedges, especially once patching amp racks and running stage power are taken into account.

FWIW, my preferred setup for stage power with powered wedges is a stringer across the front of the stage, with a short quad dropped at each wedge location (typically, 3 downstage). Upstage gets quads flanking the drum kit, with the drum wedge plugged into one of them, possibly via a short extension (if I've got a digital stagebox, that'll often go next to the drum kit on an additional upstage quadbox. If that's present, that's usually where the drum wedge gets power from). This is all based on the theory that everywhere I need a wedge, I also need power (pedalboards, keyboards, etc.)
 
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Matt Vivlamore said:
"So, is there anything out there equivalent to the SRX712M on the market?"
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No.
Small. Powerful. Lightweight. Mirror imagable. Bi-amp or passive. 3" HF. Pole mountable. "B" level rider friendly, affordable,. The 712 cornered the market in its day, and has not been supplanted. There is a reason you cannot find them used, even though there are sure to be thousands upon thousands of them in the wild. Solotech had some used ones available recently...
 
In the UK we see quite a lot of Thomann's own brand, and I always kept a 15" powered one on the van just in case, even though we were on IEMs - damn good. T-Box is the brand. How much do you want to spend?
 
In that scale I rather like the Turbosound TFM122 passives, but they're probably overpriced - not sure if they're easy to source in the US. A few shows came through last year with the active dB Technologies DVX - but I cannot remember the full model - they sounded pretty good.

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I bought a replacement vrx 932 that turned out, I think, to be a chinese one. i used it, with my others for two years before I realised. It sounded identical. I only realised when instead of using it as the extra ground stacked fill pair, I brought in the wrong case and tried to hang it to discover the bottom holes were in slightly the wrong place. Top flip ups were fine and that way it mated normally, but the other boxes could not hang from it.

inside, everything was exactly the same. I could not see the differences I’d read about. The JBL LF driver looked identical, so I compared it with another. Even the weight was identical. Too identical. I looked at the crossover and the large ceramic resistors were different. Same sort but not the same source.

I cannot be certain of course, but the wooden parts look a bit different. The wood looks different. The electronics is too close.

I wonder if manufacturer A builds their products with bought in components, and these components might be made in China. Surplus stock would then find its way to Manufacturer B, but they lack certain bits like boxes and brackets. They have the drivers, the mouldings, the crossovers, the grills, but no wooden items, those being made in a different country? No idea of the truth of course, but I wonder if JBL Chinese look alike, are actually more JBL than we think?

I have had to put a coloured label on my dodgy one. Just to remind me which it is, because I cannot hear the difference.
 
From the little bit of reading I've done on the subject it's not unusual for Chinese manufacturing facilities to sell off their B stock of otherwise genuine US or European branded products to brokers or other middle men who then shop them out as the actual product. With any Chinese products that aren't under some sort of quality control be it from a western brand or their own brand if no one is responsible for the product down the road then it's not likely that consistency is going to be maintained over the production run because QC costs money. No idea if SRX712 or VRX932s are even made in China versus say Mexico but as long as the maker can turn out something that looks the part and sound 'close' they have no reason to put in the extra time and expense of sounding right. I gather that most neodymium is mined in China these days so I expect that's extra incentive to manufacture portable speakers there.
 
Riley Casey said:
From the little bit of reading I've done on the subject it's not unusual for Chinese manufacturing facilities to sell off their B stock of otherwise genuine US or European branded products to brokers or other middle men who then shop them out as the actual product. With any Chinese products that aren't under some sort of quality control be it from a western brand or their own brand if no one is responsible for the product down the road then it's not likely that consistency is going to be maintained over the production run because QC costs money. No idea if SRX712 or VRX932s are even made in China versus say Mexico but as long as the maker can turn out something that looks the part and sound 'close' they have no reason to put in the extra time and expense of sounding right. I gather that most neodymium is mined in China these days so I expect that's extra incentive to manufacture portable speakers there.
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We had a casino account that installed a counterfeit VerTec 4887/SRX728 rig. The I-Tech 4x3500 were genuine, but they were the only parts that were. Horrid sounding piece of shit.
 
Matt, if you already have the wedges and you like them, then just build the proper wiring setup. You probably already have the inventory to do this. There are commercial versions as well if you want something a little cleaner.
My quick and dirty way of doing this was to take 25ft IEC cables and tape them to a 25ft XLR. I had a bunch of those (and a few 15ft and 6ft versions) with power passthru split tail end. It worked fine, provided you get IEC's that are sufficient flexible to coil nicely. That sort of setup is fine to get around SL100 sized stages and keeps the stage wiring looking clean.

In summary, just spend a couple hours to make a dedicated cable solution for this and you're done.
I also did similar things for bands, making a stage loom for the drums and for the run across the front of the stage. Really anywhere where there is the same process each time, these types of things can be a big time saver.
 
The move to active debate usually fails when there are piles of 100% fine amps, and the active monitors cost more and the amps then go to waste. If you have a passive good system, swapping just one cable is 50% simpler than swapping 2!
 
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