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Reviews of Collins Band Equipment as Published in Music Mart

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Doppelgang Of Four

Justin Dean looks at four budget products from a name you may not know. 

The Eastern manufacturing process has provided the budget-conscious amongst us with some hits and some misses over the last few years when it comes to quality. Fortunately most of the folk importing this gear have cottoned on and are enforcing higher standards of control over their products. This makes the world of music making so much more affordable and accessible; who would have thought you could buy a decent condenser microphone for under £100!

So the budget ranges have come a long way; one of these is Collins, a company that produces PA equipment to suit most occasions. I was given a few pieces of kit to try out; first up were a couple of small PA enclosures.... The CAS300 and CPS300 initially look identical, until you turn them round and realise the former is an active unit!

Both optimise a moulded plastic enclosure for combination of strength and lightness. The shell is indeed incredibly robust while either model can easily be picked up with one hand. The single carrying handle recessed into one side of the cabinet helps this. Rubber feet are provided for stable floor mounting or if you prefer, a standard pole mount socket is present. The unit is also fitted with a multitude of fly-mounting points in case your system is going to be a more permanent fixture. 

The active CAS300 is a 2-way system utilising a 1" compression driver and 12" woofer to provide us with up to 300 Watts of power. The woofer is protected by a more than adequate metal grille and when switched on reveals a blue LED power indicator. As expected, controls and connections are on the rear, with inputs in the form of an XLR and ¼" sockets. Another XLR allows the user to link or 'daisy-chain' further units making the system easily expandable. Three small rotary controls adorn the rear, the first two offers a small amount of eq cut and boost at the 'low' and 'high' ends of the frequency range while the third is a volume control. A push button allows selection between microphone and line level signals; two adjacent LEDs indicate which has been selected. 

A third LED indicates the overload circuit has been activated. When this occurs the signal is cut to protect the CAS300; an invaluable feature! The passive CPS300 has the same speaker network but no amplifier. Inputs are in the form of speakon and ¼" socket with an impedance of 8ohms and maximum power handling of 300W RMS. In use both speakers sounded pretty similar (unsurprisingly!), loud and a little brash. For such little beasts they really bite! At volume levels well within their capabilities they sound just great, but when pushed to the limit start to sound a little cold and harsh at the top end. 

Amp Factory

Next up is the MP1200mkII power amplifier. Like most power amps this is quite a weighty affair, housed in a very solid rack-mountable steel case. This is 2U deep with rack mount ears and all controls across the front while the rear sports two cooling fans and vents along with all the connections. 

Unlike most amps of this type the power lead is actually fixed into the chassis; there's no provision for an IEC type connector. Hmmm. Inputs are in the form of balanced XLR and ¼" for each channel and output is via speakon connector or the set of speaker wire terminals. The front side consists of a rocker type on-off switch and three LEDs indicating power, bridge and protect. Two rotaries control volume level for each channel and corresponding rows of LEDs display the signal level for each. A single LED is also present to show that the signal is at its limit. For a 1200w amplifier I was surprised how quiet it was despite the twin cooling fans. We ran the amplifier for a number of hours continuously to find out how long it takes to get hot and it just doesn't! The cooling fans are doing their job efficiently, in fact over the course of time we've had the amp (a few months now) the MP1200 has proved to be one of the most consistent and trouble-free amps we've had, and I'm sure part of this is down to the fact it never overheats. In terms of sound reproduction I can't fault it either. There's plenty of power available, 600Watts per side and the quality of the sound is spot on right through the frequency range. 

Alright On The Mic

Last but not least we have the DCM57 and DCM58 microphones. These are cardioid response dynamic microphones that are very, very similar to a well-known brand's pair of dynamic microphones that end in the numbers 57 and 58. They don't only look the same but they feel the same! 

The DCM's are heavy, boasting solid die cast bodies and screw fit, mesh shields. Both units feel very robust and professional. Plugging in and using on a variety of sources (i.e. vocals, guitars, snare) reveal they sound very similar too! Both enjoy that midrange presence lift in their frequency response that flatters vocals and guitar in the live environment. In fact I don't reckon many engineers would tell the difference between the DCM models and their well-known counterparts. If you removed the branding from each microphone and ran them next to each other you would never know one from the other. 

Conclusion

I'm very impressed – on the whole - with the Collins range, and that's not something I'm exactly pre-disposed to saying about budget imported lines of kit. The enclosures – active and passive - I think they are good quality, very portable and great value speakers. Yes, they have all of the same failings as many injection moulded speakers have (high end shrillness at higher volumes) but they include features that are normally reserved for much more expensive enclosures and that alone means they deserve checking out. I'm convinced, just on the 'eyes closed' test, that the DCM's are an essential purchase - you're getting high quality dynamic microphones that are very close to the sound of the industry standard for much less money and you can't argue with that! The MP1200 is the real star though – a hardwearing, great sounding workhorse amp that doesn't cost the earth. All things I consider to really important when considering such a purchase. 

Collins have come up trumps with bringing us some budget alternatives. They've definitely kept one eye on the purse strings and the other on quality as all the range exhibit features normally kept for high-end gear. All the items tested are long lasting, sound great and don't cost loads of money. In fact the only corner cutting has been the loss of a brand name we all instantly know. Is that a bad thing? Only time will tell I guess, for now though I'll be  stocking up on some of those microphones.

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Reproduced by kind permission
John Moore - Editor 
Music Mart Magazine 

Trinity Publications 
1st Floor, Edward House 
92/3 Edward Street 
Birmingham
B1 2RA 
(0121) 233 8712

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