Advice about lightweight music PA

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I'm looking for advice on putting together a music PA for occasional gigs, and perhaps a short tour in Europe every other year or so. Both at home and abroad we need to be able to provide our own PA for the gigs where the presenter doesn't have one already. We have found over the decades that an eight-mic powered mixer serves us well, all tradeoffs balanced. It should be light and compact enough to pack in the car, along with a couple of guitars, a banjo and maybe an accordion. I have been using an old Tapco Entertainer 100M, but that doesn't belong to me or this particular band, so I'm looking into a substitute mixer.
For price, quality and simplicity the Mackie 408M appears to be a good choice (indeed the successor to the Tapco)--but it isn't inside a travel case to throw into the hold of an airliner. That suggests assembling components and building my own travel case, which I have done before with Boeing Surplus floorboard material, very light and strong. So what do the pros here think about components? The analog mixers for my price seem to be made by Nady, Behringer or Alesis. I see either a 15- or 31-band two-channel graphic EQ, probably by Nady, and for the power amp I really don't know. I've seen Nady and Alesis amps in the general price range, and a couple other names I don't recognize. I think up to 200W RMS per side would more than cover my needs, since I only want clarity to the edge of the crowd for acoustic instruments and vocals. The lowest frequency to cover is the acoustic string bass. I have yet to push the Tapco to its highest volume setting, and never expect to.
I plan to drive a pair of loudspeakers and sometimes a pair of stage monitors. I intend to build the mains around a couple of Eminence Omega Pro 15As I just ordered at a killer clearance price, and the monitors around a 12" driver rated to 300W or 400W RMS, to serve double duty as a lighter weight substitute main. All these are 8 ohm impedance. Mics are mostly SM57s and SM58s.
So what can you recommend for my modest budget, that is tough enough to defy baggage handlers but otherwise won't see more than a dozen gigs a year? If the Mackie, will all the knobs arrive in Europe with me? If not, who's making the better choice mixer, the better amp?

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Topic - Advice about lightweight music PA - Allan 14:09:37 07/13/01 (1)

tapco 100M - andres 17:18:23 10/10/01 (0)

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