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Post subject: Help decide between Passport 300 or 500
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 11:01 pm
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Hi, I am trying to decide between the 300 or 500 for my small gig.
We have 2 vocalists and one harmonium and one Tabla player in our group. In reading the specs it says the 300 and 500 are the same weight and dimensions. Is this true?? I am concerned about the weight (I have to carry it up 2 flights of stairs). If they are both really the same dimensions and 44 lbs total then I guess the 500 would be better.
Is this true or is there a typo on the Fender Specs?

Thanks


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Post subject: Re: Help decide between Passport 300 or 500
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 8:39 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:24 am
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It's not a mistake. I own one of each of them, and I used a red magic marker to color in the white Fender logo on one of them so that I can tell them apart without opening them, and so I can easily grab the right speaker for each without having to peek through the speaker grill to identify which ones have the larger woofer. The cases are identical, and there is no noticeable difference in weight. I know, because I carry both of them together fairly often. They balance each other well, like a pair of matched suitcases.

I'm not sure why the two 10" woofers on the 500 don't weigh more than the two 8" woofers on the 300, or why the extra pair of channels on the mixer don't weigh more, but there you have it. If one weighs more than the other, I don't feel it.

As for the weight, Fender did a great job of building a fat, rounded handle into the case. I hate equipment with stupidly designed handles that hurt to carry. This one is the most comfortable handle I've seen on ANYTHING. It makes the weight far easier to cope with, and having a tough, robust case with no sharp corners is another bonus. Mine gets bumped around, carrying it through self-closing doors, etc. As portable units go, this one is really easy to live with. It fits on a hand-truck nicely, too, if you have to carry it long distance. Up stairs, it's better to carry it like a suitcase. With the rounded edges and fat handle, it is easier to carry than a suitcase of equal weight would be.

In terms of functionality, the 500 gives you two more mono input channels, a more sophisticated reverb unit (which I don't use), and the ability to record your performance directly onto USB FLASH drives IF YOU REPARTITION THEM TO FAT32 INSTEAD OF XFAT. Simply put, these drives are getting bigger, so Microsoft invented a newer partition type that can handle larger volumes well, but this invention is newer than the Passport, so Passport doesn't understand xFAT. It understands FAT32 (and probably FAT16).

Any Mac or PC can repartition a FLASH drive, so this is not a problem, and the manual explains how to reformat the drive on the Passport itself. It's the kind of weird button-push combination that is intentionally set up so that you will NOT do this by accident.

I have used the recording capability a number of times and have been pleased with the result, though getting the volume level right in the recording is something that takes some practice. It's all done at the individual channel level. There is no master volume control for the recording.

The 500 is a little louder. The 300 sounds a little more crisp, unless you tweak the EQ on the 500 a little toward treble. The 500 costs more.

If the price difference doesn't bother you, the main reason you might favor the 500 is that you might own this system long enough to wish you had those two extra mono input channels. You never know who might decide to sit in on one of your performances, or who might eventually join the band, or if your tabla player might decide he needs more drums and more mics to cover them.

If the price difference DOES matter to you, then you can always have people share a mic. Most of the time that you have more than four inputs somebody will use 1/4" instead of XLR, so the 300 has enough capacity for a lot of performances. They are both great units, and you'll be happy with either of them.


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Post subject: Re: Help decide between Passport 300 or 500
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 8:23 pm
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Thank you so much for your detailed answer! It is very helpful indeed.
I think I will order the 500 tomorrow as you're right more inputs is always helpful and we tend to be informal enough to invite folks to join us.

Thanks again!


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Post subject: Re: Help decide between Passport 300 or 500
Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 6:17 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:24 am
Posts: 434
Also, for the future... If you outgrow the mixer built into the Passport, you can expland it with any line-level mixer patched into one of the stereo channels, since they take line-level inputs. On rare events where I need more than the 8 inputs for my Passport 500, I use a Mackey 8-channel mixer.

I like the mixer built into the Passport more, so I use that when I can, but the Mackey gives me added channels when needed, and in settings where musicians need monitors, the Mackey has a separate monitor mix, and the Passport doesn't.

The Stereo Out on the Passport works fine for powered monitors, so long as the house mix is good enough, but one of the bands I sometimes work with has a mandolinist who stands right next to a drummer. The mandolinist can't hear himself if he doesn't have a monitor mix that is "mostly me". Since I don't want the house mix to be mostly him, I use the Mackey for him and the piano, and the piano has an in-line monitor that is all piano, so she can get the balance she wants between her monitor and the mandolinist's.

And I do dances with a caller, and the musicians never want the caller in the monitor mix. We all adapt to the gear we acquire. Nobody makes perfect stuff for everybody.

If the Passport had a separate monitor mix, it would be perfect for me. Instead, it's merely the closest thing to perfect that I've found. I love the way the mixer is basically preset to near the range of volume I want for everything with a lot of fine control over volume levels within that range. It's much more of a challenge to get fine control over volume levels in the mix of most other mixers, including the Mackey. The wide-range-tiny-knob plus linear-slider model is more tedious and complex than the narrow-range-medium-sized-knob plus pad-button model of the Passport.


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