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The PM-150 Audio Power Meter
What does a power meter do? An audio power meter shows how many watts are moving from the amplifier to your speaker. The electric meter does something similar, measuring the energy consumed by lights and appliances in your home. Perhaps you have an exercise machine that tells you how much energy you have expended in search of a better body. The gas pump tells you how much fuel (chemical energy) you are pumping into your vehicle. Power meters are all around us, except it seems between your vintage amplifier and speaker. The advent of the PM-150 (patent pending) changes that. Now you can know exactly how many watts your amplifier is putting out, at every volume setting, not just full power, up to 300 WATTS. The PM-150 also has a protection feature that keeps you from blowing your speakers. The PM-150 does not switch, or disconnect even briefly, the speaker signal between the speaker and amplifier. Rather, it decreases the input level to the amplifier to protect the speaker. Service technicians also use the PM-150 as a bench instrument to test guitar and bass amplifiers. What is a Watt? Why should I care? The watt is a unit of measurement that tells how much work is being done. For example, there are 746 watts in a horsepower. That means if your car has 200 horsepower, it puts out almost 150,000 watts! (We are working on an adapter so you can plug your SUV into your PA system, but all it does is growl so far...) For amplifiers and speakers, you know intuitively that more watts = more sound. That's true. Just how many watts equals how much sound is not well known because measuring amplifier power required expensive instruments until now. The PM-150 makes power measurement affordable. Knowing how much power your rig is putting out in all situations is as important as having a gas gauge on a car: You need to know how much further you can go, without running out of gas and without having a wreck. Would you drive a car without a gas gauge or speedometer? Your amp is connected to your speaker. You need to know how much power is in the pipe. Why use a power meter? The Audio Meter works like a charm. Very enlightening to see the output at my stage volume. This is really going to help me in upgrading the speakers on my amp to match my volume and style. -- Kris from Seattle
The PM-150 gives you a calibrated, bright readout of exactly how much power your rig is putting out. If it said 69 watts last night, and it says 69 watts tonight, then you can tell your sound tech to go play with his knobs, because your rig is dead on.
With the PM-150, you can adjust the volume on your amplifier to compensate for power line variations, knowing that your speaker is seeing just the right power at every gig.
How is the PM-150 used? The diagram below shows how the PM-150 is connected to your amp and speaker cabinet(s). (Click the picture for a larger image.) It works with guitar, bass, and keyboards, and is intended to measure power moving to voice coil type speakers (not piezos). If you have a piezo connected in parallel with your regular speakers, that's not a problem.
The user's manual outlines all the details, but it's really simple! (The instructions are on the top of the box.) Use high quality cables for best results, as you would with any installation. The front panel of the PM-150 has just one button that you use to set the power range and speaker protection power limit. The PM-150 has four power ranges, 13 watts, 53 watts, 150 watts and 300 watts RMS. Holding the button cycles through all ranges and power limits. The bright bar graph display of the PM-150 shows the power going through at any point in time. It's easy to see from across the stage, even when the rest of your band is blaring. If you go wild and exceed the speaker protection power limit, the PM-150 decreases the signal going into the amplifier and blinks its power display to show you what happened. One touch of the front panel button restores the amplifier input signal path, presumably after you turn down a little! Who designed the PM-150? My name is Hank Wallace, and I founded Atlantic Quality Design, Inc. in 1989 to design industrial hardware and software. You can find examples of my work elsewhere on this web site. Most of the products I have designed are in use in demanding environments where reliability is very important. I have designed equipment used in national sized systems, and small handheld gadgets that you may have seen advertised on TV. I love and live electronics and music. Being a guitar player for 30 years, I have also applied my engineering skills to enhance my playing experience. I have built various effects devices and effects controllers, and am working now on a wireless effects controller that I hope to introduce soon. One of these controllers won a contest put on by an engineering journal several years ago. As someone who demands reliability from the products I use and design in my work, I have been somewhat disappointed at the generally cheap nature of many products targeted at we musicians. In my opinion, if I cannot back over it in my van in the dark, feel the thump and pick it up and use it again, it is not worth having.
The bottom line is that I'm dead serious about quality and reliability, features and a price that a working musician can afford. If you are serious about your music, the PM-150 is for you. And when you call with a question or problem, or just want to chat, you can talk to me without fighting your way through three assistants and ten layers of voice mail! What are the specs of the PM-150?
Where can I get technical support? If you need help installing or using the PM-150, please see our contact page. You may call or email. Our goal is to help you get maximum value out of the PM-150, so please call or write if you have a question or problem. Technical support is FREE. Where can I buy a PM-150? The PM-150 is for sale for $119.95 plus Virginia sales tax (where applicable) & shipping, and includes power adapter, user manual, free support, and mounting hardware. We will accept your money order or check -- please contact us. You get all the features and benefits above for the price of a stomp box! The PM-150 is also for sale in our ebay store. There is a 30-day money back guarantee. If you are not satisfied for any reason in the first 30-days after purchase, you may return the product for a full refund. |
Rig
Reliability. You know that your amp and speakers sound better when
you push them to the limit. If this were not true, then we would all
buy 300 watt speakers for our 50 watt combo amps, and never kill a
speaker again. But that 50 watt speaker sounds best with almost 50
watts going into it, when it's working as hard as you are. We push to
the edge and hope we don't fall off. The PM-150 helps you run your
gear at the optimum setting.
