why are old school amps worth so much?

[garage1217]

*LOL* You mean all the fets individually bolted to the chassie with 2x more thermal paste than needed? hahaha. I used them in competition for years. I actually never killed a US amps and I drove them hard enough to fry eggs on daily. I will never forget CES in like 98 when US amps used a VLX400 as a welder, made a nice bead hahaha! Now that is harcore build quality right there.

[Jonny Hotnuts]

US Amps would also do a pencil demo where they would sharpen a pencil at both ends, clip the outputs to the pencil and run a sine wave into the input. The wood on the pencil would explode off and leave a glowing carbon rod.

(other high current amps will do this also along with weld pop cans)

I wonder what would happen if this was done with a new audiobahn.

[Perry Babin]

I wonder what would happen if this was done with a new audiobahn.

You'd have nice red flames on the inside of the amp to go with the pretty chrome flames on the outside of the amp.

[garage1217]

Exactly hahaha. The power supplies are just not built like they used to be.

[VT67]

Hmmm, I still have two unused REFERENCE CLASS A 10.0 from Soundstream.

Regards

[lumanauw]

I feel very happy back then when I got my first Rockford1000 (4ch), or my MC500 Soundstream, or my Orion2250sx. There's just something magical about having these big amps.

[garage1217]

Yeah those were cool, a class a that ran class a/b *LOL*

[hakentt]

whats the oldest amp ever? What company started making amps for Car Audio?

[1moreamp]

Originally posted by hakentt
whats the oldest amp ever? What company started making amps for Car Audio?

A/D/S was first, followed by a little company by the name of Fosgate without the Rockford back then.

A/D/S started back in mid to late 70's with the A/D/S 2001 bi-amped two way speaker system. 20 watts to a tweeter, and 30 or 40 watts to a 51/4 mid-bass driver. Price was over $600.00 (Circa 1976 of there abouts) It was a power plate type amp If my memory is working right tonight.

I ran Kenwood home amp powered by 12 volt inverter into three way book shelf speaker at that time.

Push Pull transformer coupled amps mounted on the back of Kraco 6X9's were king back then and 8 track tapes were all the rage. Cassette tapes were just a babe in the woods for cars anyway lol lol lol

I was fresh out of high school...

[1moreamp]

Originally posted by VT67
Hmmm, I still have two unused REFERENCE CLASS A 10.0 from Soundstream.

Regards

I have never, ever seen a real true class A production amp for a car. Something to do with the 10 to 11% maximum efficiency possible on these types of amps, I.E. 30 watts out has to have 300 watts in while being able to fry bacon on the sinks at the same time also....No matter how you try you can't break the laws of physic's and that includes SoundStream and PPI...

They were all class AB with either elaborate bias drive circuits that kept them in class A for the first ten watts or so ( reference early Alphasonic amps) then switched back to AB. Or they were just plain AB amps biased so high that you could cook eggs on them at low volumes, with big film caps inside the amp to get tube like sound characteristics by using tube like components to do so ( SoundStream Class A and PPI has these large film caps)

Most car amp makers knew from the out set that somethings were unachievable in a car amp, but that never kept them from Bull Shecking the market place though lol lol lol Plus there have never ever been any real federal statutes that made the car amp industry tell the truth about real power, and true design disclosure to the public.
The Home and Commercial and Industrial Sound people had IHF < Institute of High Fidelity" and the Fed regulating what a Watt was and how it should be delivered and tested, and assured in compliance with the Fair Trade Commission < FTC> rulings way back when foreign imports threatened the audio industry... Ahh if they could only see the foreign import issue now LOL LOL LOL Amazing how things change.. But back then a true American Industry was trying to protect its market now who knows...