Good post BJD. Still, I can't see myself investing in PA as much as in gear, I get that angle too. After all, good guitar gear you can get for a thousand in total or so, but that money only buys a very basic small PA system.

Also, in PA systems, remember that once you go outdoors, you need ten times the power.

In a nice small room/club for a quiet/jazzy/whatever band all you need is a couple of 100-150W active speakers; if the singer has lots of output and thus no worry for feedback, not even monitors necessary. You can get a *good* system for under a thousand easy. In a really small room or quiet environment where people actually listen, they might even be enough for electric drums, if you don't expect a booming bass.

If you want to add kickdrum and more oomph for it, and a system that actually is louder than the acoustic kickdrum from the stage, you need to add a proper sub to the same system, which is easy; just get a 500-600 or so watt active sub to go with the original speakers and good to go. Cost you another thousand for good gear.

But these will get you nowhere outside, or they will really sound quite puny. Sufficient to amplify of course but no way to get any real rock volume. Maybe for a jazz band or background/street music.

If you want to get loud, it gets expensive fast, or sounds bad if you go cheap. For a loud rock PA in a large club or an outdoor system that isn't merely background volume, I'd say at least ~1K for tops and 2-3 k watts for bottoms; cost you anything from 2-3000 onwards, again for quality stuff and of course how much other gear and monitors. Could get passable systems as low as under a thousand but don't expect much sonic quality. Also remember whatever you have for tops, you need pretty much that wattage monitors as well. Very easy to spend 10k on a nice system that size.

This is closest to what we toured with...we had a few systems that had an 800W amp for tops and a 1800W amp for bottoms, and it was pretty good for club venues. We played two outside gigs with it and loaned it to one outside gig, and it really didn't quite cut it so well any more outside, but was passable. Can't speak of any thumping beat to get the crowd moving, though.