Electro-Voice P3000

A Precision Series power amp that pulls 4,100 watts from the wall to make 1,200 of them - and tells you so in the service manual.

Overview

The number that stops a collector cold is the input, not the output rating. Electro-Voice's own service documentation lists the P3000 drawing 4,100 watts from a 120 V, 60 Hz AC line under rated conditions at 1,200 W into 4 ohms. The rear panel is a working professional's panel, not a home hi-fi courtesy. This is a linear Class-AB power amplifier built to be racked, loaded, and driven hard in sound reinforcement duty, and it wastes most of what it eats as heat. The manual doesn't apologize for it. It just tells you what the fans are for.

The P3000 is the heavyweight of its family. The company's own documentation places it alongside the P1200 and P2000 as the professional linear power amplifiers intended for active two-way systems with subwoofers. It separates those from the processor-controlled P1250, whose processor section is simply switched off when it's used in that role. By number, the P3000 sits at the top of that linear trio, and a rated-condition draw of 4,100 watts fits the position.

Three LEDs on the front panel cover the basics. An output indicator lights when signal is present at the amplifier output. It goes dark when the speaker line has shorted or a protection circuit has tripped. A LIMIT LED lights when the limiter engages and the amplifier is running at clip. Brief flashes are normal. A permanently lit LED means turn it down before you cook the loudspeakers. A PROTECT LED announces that one of the protection circuits - over-temperature, overload, shorted outputs, radio-frequency interference, or DC faults - has fired. The manual's advice on that one is blunt: find the cause, like the shorted speaker line you probably created, and fix it. In the case of overheating, wait for the amplifier to switch itself back on.

Power-up is handled politely, which suits something with this much stored energy. The loudspeaker outputs come on through delayed relays so no startup thump reaches the drivers, and a current limiter holds back the inrush so the mains fuse survives switch-on. The fans run for about two seconds at power-up and then stop if the amplifier is cold. The manual documents this self-test explicitly, with a table of fan stages keyed to heatsink temperature. Stage 0 is silence. Stage 1 through 3 step the voltage up as the heat sinks warm. Past roughly 12.5 V at the monitoring point, the protection circuit shuts the amplifier down. The factory ships the fan-control test switch open, and the factory preset on the limiter is SLOW.

The limiter has two speeds, and the service procedure spells out the difference with a burst signal at 1 kHz. In SLOW, the limiter takes two to three signal periods to react to heavy distortion and pull it back to a residual THD of roughly 1% to 2%. In FAST, it gets there in one to two periods. The factory ships it SLOW. The attenuation test shows what limiting actually does: drive both channels to 89 V unloaded, push the input up 10 dB, and the output rises only about 0.5 dB to 91 V, slightly clipped, with THD in that 1% to 2% window. Push the input all the way to +21 dBu and the manual says the output must not clip further.

The input section is professional-grade and configurable. The amplifier inputs are electronically balanced and wired to IEC 268, with XLR connectors, plus a second set of male XLRs wired in parallel for looping the signal on to other amplifiers. Pin 1 is shield, pin 2 is hot, pin 3 is cold. Input sensitivity leaves the factory at 0 dBu (775 mV). For installations where that isn't right, the manual points owners to their dealer to change it to 6 dBu or 26 dB gain. Isolation transformers can be retrofitted to kill hum in large sound-reinforcement systems, and the service documentation treats that as a routine field modification rather than a factory-only job.

For the bench technician, the P3000 is unusually well documented. Idle current is set at 15 mV across specified test points on both amplifier sides, adjusted with trimmers on the PCB. The adjustment must be done at room temperature, so the unit has to cool for several hours after operation before you touch it. Floating symmetry is checked right afterward with the amplifier unloaded, adjusted to approximately ±67 V against ground via the floating trimmers. The manual notes that the symmetry matters more than the absolute value. VCA offset is trimmed by rhythmically opening and closing service switches while watching for minimum offset at the output, by oscilloscope or, the manual allows, by ear for minimum noise. Gain selection is done with jumpers: 0 dBu, +6 dBu, or +26 dB gain, always referring to fully opened level controls. Indicator calibration is done at 1 kHz with the level control fully clockwise. Feed signal until the IN LED lights, then match the OUT LED brightness with its trimmer.

Then there's the question of what you plug it into. Electro-Voice's own documentation names the P3000 as one of the professional linear amplifiers intended to drive active two-way systems with subwoofers, and specifically as a partner for the AC*ONE* Controller, the crossover unit designed for high-performance installations using active two-way systems plus subs. The manual's argument for that topology is a real engineering position, not marketing. In an active two-way-plus-sub configuration, the vocals aren't split across multiple speaker systems, which makes the system far easier to tune than an active three- or four-way rig where measuring and analyzing the sound field becomes a chore. Low frequencies can't be localized, so a single mono sub is sufficient on smaller stages. Wider stages need discrete subs per side or the level differences between bass and treble become audible. A center sub can be added as a bonus. The AC*ONE*'s PowerMax12 crossover function, patents pending at the time, is claimed to use amplifier output power and loudspeaker capacity more efficiently than conventional crossovers. The controller is pitched for instrument reinforcement too, keyboards, electric bass, and drums, where the manual says it eliminates the "lack-of-punch-and-definition" that conventional active instrument systems are known for.

Trade press coverage is thin in the surviving record. Mix (July 1995, p.129) listed the P3000 under Precision Series power amplifiers. That's a buyers-guide entry rather than a full review, which is what most of this amplifier's contemporary coverage looks like. The more interesting appearance is a decade later: Mix (March 2007, p.80) lists Electro-Voice amplification in the equipment rundown for Trans-Siberian Orchestra, with db Sound of Chicago handling the tour and Midas Heritage 3000 and Venice consoles at front of house and monitors. It's a single line in a touring credits table, but it shows the P3000's family still specified on a national touring production a decade after the Precision Series entry.

This is not a hi-fi amplifier that happens to be loud. It's a linear Class-AB professional power amp with a documented 4,100-watt appetite at rated conditions, a fan-cooled chassis with a four-stage thermal management scheme, a two-speed limiter, and a full set of protection circuits that will shut the thing down rather than let it destroy itself or your speakers. It runs hot, it draws hard, and it wants a circuit that can feed it. The service documentation is thorough enough that a competent technician can maintain one indefinitely. Idle current, floating symmetry, VCA offset, fan voltage, gain jumpers, and indicator calibration are all laid out with test points and target values. Plenty of amplifiers from this era are unserviceable because nobody wrote anything down.

Values and current market pricing for the P3000 are not documented in the available sources, and production years are not established here. The amplifier's period presence, a 1995 Precision Series listing and a 2007 touring credit, brackets at least a twelve-year window of professional use. The manual's repeated references to the P1250 as the processor-controlled alternative suggest the P3000 held the linear, no-DSP slot in the lineup. Anyone considering one should verify the fan stages actually cycle, confirm the protection LEDs behave, and check that the delayed relay sequencing still works on power-up.