Musician's Friend Stupid Deal of the Day - Harbinger MLS900 for $299.99

DJ Ricky B said:

I posted this video before in the past, but it's a great comparison video of it against a Evolve 30 that this guy had, and he gives his honest opinion on it:

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Hope you had a great holiday Ricky. Good video . You can compare the two speakers quite well.
Honest opinion. Save your money. No wonder it becomes more & more challenging to sustain the fee that it takes to offer a profitable business.
Anybody can D J.Repeat business?? Maybe if the client is looking for budget only and haven't done the research? You my have issues with crowd size & DJ placement in most rooms but my Harbinger's look just big boys. Spend your money on something that will last being used weekly and be more versatile.
I can go back to what was offered back in the 80's and have better sound. Just pull out my BBE sound maximizer.
Go sell or trade and the worth my be $100.00 of recovery if you are lucky?

i can certainly understand the temptation to want to save more money. As a business owner, costs are important to me. Same as a consumer.

However, when it comes to my tools, the amounts of money I’d save is minimal when extrapolating over the life of the equipment. I want equipment that’s easy to work with, a company that stands behind their products. Someone that can be there to help me if I need it. It needs to make my life easier in every way. I just have never seen that when I used to buy cheap equipment.
Now that I only use brands I can count on, equipment is not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. It just works, day in and day out.
and yes, I can look someone in the eye and tell them that I’ll have only top notch equipment for their event. I know many don’t care. But I think they like it when they know I CARE.

They get tempted to try to save money too and hire someone cheaper. I believe that they’ll have a better experience by hiring me, which may cost them more than some. But I believe quality is worth it.

I take my own advice.

Finally, when you take in consideration the longevity of better made products, and the resale value of great products, the overall cost to use great equipment often ends up being minimal compared to using cheap equipment.

Harbinger knows better than anyone what their products are worth. If they are selling them for $299, there’s a reason.

DJ Ricky B said:

Here's the thing though, Guitar Center will stand behind their product! Especially if you pay for an extended warranty. With the paid warranty, if you have any issues, you can simply return it and get a brand new one no questions asked, OR put the money you paid on the one you have towards something else if you don't want another of the same model.

With that said...This smaller array speakers are not going to be my main set up. Cocktail hour, and Ceremony use. This particular speaker probably never will be pushed past 95 DB. Also, Harbinger has come a long way over the years. Their latest speaker models have advanced A LOT.

I have only had my MLS1000 speakers out on a handful of events, and I have received a compliment on how they sounded at almost every event I have used them so far. I did a party where they hired a Tango Dancer. He loved the way my single MLS1000 sounded. He said he had a Bose compact at home, and used it for gigs where there was no DJ or sound system, and he thought what I was using had a far better sound to it. He couldn't believe how nice it sounds.

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I hear ya. I do get the logic. It doesn’t take a whole lot to get a return on a $299 speaker. And I can see how they could fill a small void.
i have some bluetooth altos that were cheap that I rent out on occasion. They’ve paid for themselves. Just dont use them at gigs.

Jeff Romard said:

For the most part I have always bought good quality gear Cerwin Vega, JBL, Yorkville, Yamaha, QSC and now H&K and it's lead to problem free gigs for many years. I got extremely lucky with some cheap pieces I bought in a pinch too, a couple of really cheap Behringer mixers come to mind that I have repurposed for other things and are still running

You may get lucky with cheap gear and occasionally good gear has problems, heck one of my Polars won't connect to Bluetooth, but that's more the exception than the rule

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I agree. Good gear is not always perfect and cheap gear is not always bad. But for the most part, you do get what you pay for, in my experience. Especially with tools you use a lot.

But I do find generic brands to be suitable in some situations. I find Amazon choice batteries to be close enough to name brand batteries to be worth the savings.

For me I would not even look at buying that speaker no matter what I planned to use it for. My partner tried to get me a pair of the original Mackie Thumps. I call them Mackie Junks. I bought a pair of Yamaha DSR 115 speakers and that was over 10 years ago. They are still working well and sound GREAT! The ones he bought he blew one of the woofers. He improved on them by putting different speakers in them. Bottom line is if he had first bought the real deal he wouldn't have had that happen.

Now I can see a beginner buying that speaker and not a true professional who has been doing this for many years.

MIXMASTERMACHOM said:

For me I would not even look at buying that speaker no matter what I planned to use it for. My partner tried to get me a pair of the original Mackie Thumps. I call them Mackie Junks. I bought a pair of Yamaha DSR 115 speakers and that was over 10 years ago. They are still working well and sound GREAT! The ones he bought he blew one of the woofers. He improved on them by putting different speakers in them. Bottom line is if he had first bought the real deal he wouldn't have had that happen.

Now I can see a beginner buying that speaker and not a true professional who has been doing this for many years.

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For what it's worth, my set of Mackie Thumps have been consistently reliable for the past 7 years and I play out almost every weekend. When a tool is used within it it's limits it will usually last and work as intended. Sounds like your partner pushed is Thumps past their limits. I've never had to replace any parts on mine. I was wise enough to know when to use a Sub with the Thumps. Even though I upgraded to the RCF column arrays I still will rent out the Thumps and even use them for smaller gigs. In fact I just purchased another Mackie Thump Go because it was on sale and it has proven to be very useful for wedding ceremonies in remote locations with no power.

I haven't heard how the Harbinger column arrays sound but I wouldn't write them off just because of the name brand. I had a Harbinger V2312 and I rented it out every weekend of 2021 with no issues. That speaker paid for itself many times over with not a single complaint from customers. I credit that to the fact that I took the time to teach each user how to properly use the speaker.

Jeff Romard said:

I have a Transport 12 that I've used at probably 30-35 ceremonies and a few just background music events in the last 5 years. It works good, sounds decent and is easy to move but hell to get on a pole. I've actually rented it out to the Radio Station a half dozen or so times. I believe I paid around $800 for it up here but it's paid for itself many times over

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The other difference I’ve seen with equipment (not just sound equipment) where a brand name is focused on quality is they will have much stricter quality controls in the manufacturing process and use better raw materials, even when the raw parts look very similar.

ive seen videos where someone takes apart something and then “prices out” the parts. if I wanted to “price out” the product we make, I could find prices that are about 80% cheaper than what we pay for large volumes. The quality difference would be huge, but if price is the main driver, you can always find cheaper. But we ask a lot of our suppliers, and they charge us for it, as they should. We have strict tolerances as we’ve seen the difference it makes.
You can speed up production by reducing quality control checks. You can forge regulation requirements, eliminate testing…..all kinds of ways to make things cheaper if that’s the goal.
Sometimes, the quality difference doesn’t become obvious. But it usually shows up.

In my day job, I get customers all the time saying how can your product be worth it when I can buy a Chinese version for so much less? It’s just polyester webbing and pvc or TPU coating, not much involved in that. Well, there is. Cheap webbing creates havoc in our process. The coating can come off easily when not done properly. Many grades of pvc have different results, different feel, different gloss levels. We see the foreign stuff using just about anything they can find and keep tellingly our customers “it’s just like BioThane”. Our manufacturers get tempted by the price, but just about every major manufacturer has come back after seeing their quality drop.
I just met a small manufacturer in Kentucky that has been using our material for 30 years. They said they’ve tried every foriegn option that came out. They really wanted these to work as they felt it would really save them money. They always came back to our material and said they finally gave up trying anything else about 10 years ago, even though they get peppered with offers all the time.

logisticalstyles said:

For what it's worth, my set of Mackie Thumps have been consistently reliable for the past 7 years and I play out almost every weekend. When a tool is used within it it's limits it will usually last and work as intended. Sounds like your partner pushed is Thumps past their limits. I've never had to replace any parts on mine. I was wise enough to know when to use a Sub with the Thumps. Even though I upgraded to the RCF column arrays I still will rent out the Thumps and even use them for smaller gigs. In fact I just purchased another Mackie Thump Go because it was on sale and it has proven to be very useful for wedding ceremonies in remote locations with no power.

I haven't heard how the Harbinger column arrays sound but I wouldn't write them off just because of the name brand. I had a Harbinger V2312 and I rented it out every weekend of 2021 with no issues. That speaker paid for itself many times over with not a single complaint from customers. I credit that to the fact that I took the time to teach each user how to properly use the speaker.

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You are right. He did push the speaker beyond it's limits. The sad part is he didn't need to because the space wasn't that big. I still wasn't interested in buying a pair. I know a DJ that 2 pair of them and they work for him. For the room he was in I could use my 2 Yamaha tops and Yorkville 801P sub. It would beat what he used.

MIXMASTERMACHOM said:

You are right. He did push the speaker beyond it's limits. The sad part is he didn't need to because the space wasn't that big. I still wasn't interested in buying a pair. I know a DJ that 2 pair of them and they work for him. For the room he was in I could use my 2 Yamaha tops and Yorkville 801P sub. It would beat what he used.

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Mixxy have seen your videos where you are clipping your feed. That will damage speakers . Unity gain my be old school but it is your friend.

sonic-vision said:

Mixxy have seen your videos where you are clipping your feed. That will damage speakers . Unity gain my be old school but it is your friend.

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I don't know what videos you're talking about this you saw clipping. I normally run the volume on speakers at 12 o'clock. Anything past that says I don't have enough sound for an event. I control the volume from my controller after that. I have never damaged those Yamaha speakers needing to replace any speakers in them.

MIXMASTERMACHOM said:

I don't know what videos you're talking about this you saw clipping. I normally run the volume on speakers at 12 o'clock. Anything past that says I don't have enough sound for an event. I control the volume from my controller after that. I have never damaged those Yamaha speakers needing to replace any speakers in them.

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Check out your Facebook video postings. Also you had issues with your new year zoom event last year.

Jeff Romard said:

Probably why it's clipping

Mix read this and tell me how you stage your system again

What is Gain & How It Differs from Volume

What is Gain And How Does It Differ From Volume? Come Dive In With Us As We Explore The Difference Between These Two Popular Audio Terms.

emastered.com

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Let me say this. Having a red light blinking on and off isn't clipping to me and will not damage speakers. It's when the red light stays on constently where the issue of damaging a speaker can happen. The light coming in little spirts is fine. That's how I run the setup. Never damaged the tops ever.

MIXMASTERMACHOM said:

Let me say this. Having a red light blinking on and off isn't clipping to me and will not damage speakers. It's when the red light stays on constently where the issue of damaging a speaker can happen. The light coming in little spirts is fine. That's how I run the setup. Never damaged the tops ever.

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yes you are clipping. May be short time but you are clipping Mixxy.
You just damage subs!