I think a good resource would be the local high school. Talk to the person in the know about the PA system for football games, etc. Considering the amount of work you have done for the parents and kids who play sports for the school, I don't think they would take issue with telling you about their PA system and where they picked it up at.
Just a thought John.

j razz

Talk to the person in the know about the PA system for football games, etc

Good idea. I just sent an email to the principal. He owes me a few favors, as you surmised, so hopefully he'll find someone that knows something.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Live/Sound/Mixers?sku=631356

Yup, that's just the kind of thing I was looking for, although actually more than we need. Two mics and a music input will be plenty. I'll poke around the site some more. Thanks!

Whenever I have an audio equipment question that I don't know the answer to, I always call the sales reps at Full Compass. 1-800-356-5844. I know they routinely have package deals for public address systems.

Their website is www.fullcompass.com, but it's fairly rudimentary. Much better to call and talk to a live person. They've been very good with me about working within my budget, and they don't try to sell me over-expensive gear I don't need.

I think they do a lot of institutional sales, too.

The best PA systems I ever heard were 1964 at the Philadelphia airport and 1970 at the BMEWS site in Thule, Greenland. The latter built by RCA at huge cost. The maintenance person would announce a part number of a needed repair part and the supply guy had 2 minutes to fetch and deliver.
Try MCM Electronics, they have PA Systems up the ying yang.

JJK

www.fullcompass.com

Don't know them. I'll give them a try.

MCM Electronics

I've purchased many things from them in the past. Forgot about their PA Systems. I'll pull out my catalog. Thanks.

Look into Anchor Audio at www.anchoraudio.com

At my "real job" I design PA systems for this company. If you have the budget, I would hire someone in your area that knows what they are doing, because audio system design gets a bit more complicated when you move out of your living room and your covering several thousand square feet.

I would at least do a member search for a graduate of Syn-Aud-Con here or someone who is an NSCA member here.

I'm not trying to put down equipment resellers like guitar city and musicland, but getting the right amount of sound energy covering the right amount of space is critical in large areas. There is nothing more distressing than having someone pay thousands of dollars for a PA system and then you find out that no one can hear anything after its installed.

A couple of things...

1. Let me second FullCompass. GREAT company...very knowledgeable....they will listen and suggest.

2. I don't know how much you want to put into the system but for starters take a look at Community's R-Series. I have done several high school stadiums with these speakers and they are fantastic. They also have info on thier site about placement and coverage that will get you started and give you some ideas. The R5s are about $500 a piece and will probably cover a little league stadium pretty well. They are 200w continuous program so you don't have to have a monster of an amp to push them.

3. I second lgh529. If you never done an install.......hire a pro. It's worth the extra to have the confindence that the equipment is what you need and properly tuned. I have seen some excellent systems that didn't sound any better than Rat Shack because they were not properly set up. I will charge twice as much to come clean up a mess...than I would have to do the full install.

Good luck.

My 2 Cents:

Make sure you get MORE power than the speakers are rated at. i.e. 200 watt speakers, at LEAST a 200 Watt amp.

This allows you to get clean power at higher volumes, without risk of clipping, which is a speaker killer.

Also, compression does wonderful things in situations like this. Gets the broadcast above the ambient crowd noise.

As suggested, the pros will be able to help with this.

Sorry if this is stuff you already know, but it's a couple of things that i believe are VERY important. :)

Andy

Rat Sound can do it for you. I worked many early shows with Brian and Dave in the "old days" and am so very happy that they are one of the big guys now. They have grown and developed there own PA's now so prices have too but give Brian a shout and see what he can come up with. You can email him at: brianrat [at] ratsound [dot] com and tell him Dave sent ya.

Although, I'm probably wasting my breath (okay, typing fingers), I'd look into pawn shops or used musical instrument shops for a used Peavey XR600 or something similar. (There's lots of brands that look nice, but this is where reputation comes in handy. Peavey has a good PA reputation, for your average working bands.

I also agree that more power is better. The sound dissipates too easily outdoors and you need extra power to be heard cleanly. Most cheap PA systems distort as soon as you get to the 50% level of volume. The XR600, has more inputs than you need, true, but it has power, plenty of EQ, Reverb, and Aux inputs. The year it was made, used to be included with the serial number. I've been out of the musical instrument sales business for about 14 years, so I'm not sure on current used prices or even if they still make that model (were about $350. used back then). They are solid state and very reliable. Only the reverb used to be sometimes problematic, and that was back then.

As far as outdoor speakers go, I can't help you, but maybe the football coach can.
High frequency horns can sound pretty bad by themselves, but if you're going to leave them, attached in the stands, you don't want to leave anything worth stealing.

The XR600, I mentioned above, is the mixer and amp combined into one head.
You could look into a separate mixer and just a power amp. Some of these car amplifiers may have the power. I know, I can hear them from blocks away. Keep digging, there may be a cheap way to jerry-rig a decent PA system together, too.

Thanks to all. Some very good advice. This is Little League, which means Little Budget, even here in Carmel (actually not as affluent a place as visitors think). I've already got some contributions and have scrounged an old PA mixer. The outdoor speakers may be the only purchased item in the end.

Whatever you do, DON"T take any advice from anyone involved in public address at the NYC Transit system.

Whatever you do, DON"T take any advice from anyone involved in public address at the NYC Transit system.

Boy, that comment brings back memories. I grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s. I remember riding the "El" downtown and the conductor would announce each stop over the train's PA. It sounded like someone totally drunk, with their hand over their mouth, mumbling through a doorway, twenty feet down the hall. It did, however, serve the purpose of reminding you to look out the window and read the sign at the station to see if it was time to get off.