Carvin DCM1000 Power Amplifier Reviews 5

Wanted an amp for live performances. I play in a four piece folk band. We have two carvin 822 speakers (12 inch woofer with horn driver), so needed enough amplification to play in halls with as many as 150 people in the audience. Also been impreseed with Carvin equipment, so gave it a shot.

The unit is extremely well built. I obviously put it into a rack case, as its intended to be rackmounted, and all rackmounted amps should be put in a case if you plan to travel with them etc. The amp puts out 225 watts per side @ 8 ohms which is pretty respectable. You can probably use this amp to play to a crowd of up to 150 people (small to medium size wedding) before running out of juice. Also, you can set the amp to "parallel in" so you can run one mono feed to the amp, and it will direct the feed to both the left and right power amp. At first I thought the fan noise was a little loud, but with a stage level sound of about 85 db, the fan noise quickly gets lost.

I've got basically no gripes at all with this amp, although sometimes I wonder if I should have spent the extra dough to go to the DCM2000 which is basically 425 watts per channel @ 8 ohms. Although it is a heavier amp, requiring 3 rack spaces rather than two that the DCM1000 requires. Also, one our band leader hit his foot against the amp and turned it off by mistake. Maybe the on/off switches should be recessed. (or maybe the band leader should watch where he's stepping - ha ha ha!)

Construction and quality of the amp is perfect. Its very quiet and extremely reliable. I would highly recommend the Carvin DCM series amps if your very serious about quality and construction.

Excellent value. Clean, reliable power. You buy this amp and you don't have to think about reliable power for another 20 hours.

Terry rated this unit 5 on 2002-06-10.

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