Yamaha MS400

This powered cabinet is designed for front of house but could also work as stage monitors.

2 way cabinet with a 15 inch neodymium magnet woofer and separate Titanium diaphram compression driver. Two power amps handle the bass (300 watts) and treble (100 watts) with and internal non adjustable crossover. The cabinet is molded plastic or fiberglass resin composite. The frequency range is 50-16K with a maximum output level of 124.5 dB(1 m on Axis). It weighs just over 50 lbs and measures 449 X 683 X 379 mm. (I wish Yamaha had used inches instead of metric measurements.) Back panel features power on/off, rotary EQ low and high, mic, line and master volume pots with Cannon 3 pin series and parallel input jacks along with a low impedance mic input and 1/4"TRS phone jack.

This is an excellent cabinet for a variety of gigs. 400 watts RMS per cabinet mean a pair can handle a crowd of 200-300 easily. Add a subwoofer and you could do shows for 500 people or more. Only the extreme low end seems a bit stressed at higher volumes. I bought them about 7 years ago and it works great for solo, duo and trio gigs both indoors and out. Using two amps keeps the distortion unaudible except for the loudest shows.

The cabinet has a pole mount on the bottom with a bolt useful for keeping the cabinet from turning while mounted. Yamaha has directions for mounting the MS400 on a speaker stand or suspended from the ceiling on a baton bracket, eye bolts and even makes a couple optional ceiling brackets for permanent installations.

I bought these instead of a pair of JBL EON 15 powered cabs since they had more power and I got them on sale before MARS closed in Dec, 1999. I recommend them to other performers but they are hard to find. They went off the market about 2001 and only recently became available again. I would love something lighter weight, but am thankful we have 800 bi amped watts every time the gig gets crazy. I would buy them again.