I do not see why people have a thing about Peavey. When it is used in it's intended market, it is why above the competition. When it is used outside of it's market, it is found lacking, because of the name thing.
Had Hartley not purchased Crest, Crest would have been done. Crest had poor management, huge debt, a bunch of marketing BS at shows about products that were in development that never came, etc. Peavey does not operate Crest. Crest is better, because Peavey, the largest, privately owned, financially stable manufacturer in the sound/MI business cleaned house and redirected the company.
Crest and Peavey cannot be in the same markets always. So Hartley has designed it so that where there can be no Peavey, he has Crest. Where he cannot have Crest, there is Peavey. Pretty smart.
It used to be that Crest speakers were designed by people at Peavey, or atleast Crest guys at Peavey. The Peavey GPS amps (which supposedly did well at the shoot out) were partially designed by a former Crest designer.
Remember, there are only a handful of new-comers to the engineering side of the industry. The rest are guys that make the rounds from Panasonic to Mackie, from Crest to QSC, from JBL to Peavey, etc, etc.My point is this. Unless you have an unlimited budget, you have to take what works, regaurdless of the name. If it does the job and lasts, then it is a good investment.
I would put (and have) Peavey QW cabs against anything in their price-range and smoke them.