I have a punch 55.2 and it pushes a 10'' kicker cvr dual 2 wired in series to present a 4 ohm load. It pushes it like as if its getting full power. I have all my EQ's adjusted correctly and on my radio.
So whats the deal behind these lil guys?? Whats the power supply design? Unregulated, Regulated??? Im just curious how does so much power come out of this amp? How do they work (not just rockford amps) but a amplifier in general. How does all that power come out of such small footprint? Its amazing technology!
So whats the deal behind these lil guys?? Whats the power supply design? Unregulated, Regulated??? Im just curious how does so much power come out of this amp? How do they work (not just rockford amps) but a amplifier in general. How does all that power come out of such small footprint? Its amazing technology!
Banned
Joined 2002
you wait till it blows up, i call all these amps ( rockford fosquate ) ticking time bombs, they are nice amps, but when they blow up DAM you better just buy a new one.
I had a nice 300.1 and a 425.4 i think it was, and it was pretty decent, i know they are under rated, but they do that for a reason so people think they are really powerfull.
Best of luck, don't push it to far tho.
J'
I don't like to abuse my stuff so i don't always play really loud all the time. It's just a system for listening to all kinds of music. It sounds good with a the RF punch 100z2 that im using for Mids & tweets (MB Quart). Sounds really awesome when jamming to some Metallica.
Banned
Joined 2002
don't over load or load it with speakers and keep it cool
it should last long time ( should Jase
don't over load or load it with speakers and keep it cool
Jase
Yeah, Theres only one single 4 ohm speaker connected to it. Abjusted the bias so its cool.
The next time you blow up a Rockford amp, I will be happy to take the expired time bomb off of your hands. Just look me up.
Banned
Joined 2002
wish you would have emailed me last week just threw 5 of them away lol i used to collect them had a whole box of them.!
The obfuscated cost-cutting manufacturing approaches employed by Rockford result in reduced reliability and very tedious and time consuming repair work. Performance is not better. Those fancy heatsinks with almost no fins exchange heat with the air much worse than the traditional ones, etc...
Not a good product, just hype and good marketing. I always charge more money when I have to rebuild one of these.
Not a good product, just hype and good marketing. I always charge more money when I have to rebuild one of these.
Banned
Joined 2002
lol lol well put Eva, But I would like to add also that with all that money they are making you would think that they would put some sort of DC speaker protection, so when the output stage fries on main street your expensive speakers would be protected from the amps rails dumping thru the voice coils...
Yup, lots of power their, but so unbridled just the same. And any 18 db bass boost would sound the same, as long as the amp could be driven safely by that much boost....
And yes we all had to charge more money to repair any of these cause it took longer and it required higher levels of effort that any ordinary amp out their, thanks to their use of leading edge economical build technology.
Plus we all knew that ANY RF owner paid thru the nose to own one these monsters so of course they had to spend more on the repair...Something to do with RF telling all their dealers to sell at our list price or lose your dealership as i recall...Ah yes "price fixing"..... just business you know....
Heck with all the money they made and spent moving from country to country, maybe they could have added a speaker relay circuit to save your speakers
Moving a entire manufacturing business from one country to another and then to another continent cost BANK..and all you happy RF owners out there paid for it and their record profits they made...
I never owned one and still don't want one, and I have seen them all inside and out one way or another other years.......and I can fix my own amps, so you figure it out.....I think they make great door stops....
I'd like to respectfully disagree on a few points...
People love to dog Rockford amps. They've been producing the best designed amps (overall) for more than 20 years. They have fewer problems than any other manufacturer when it comes to common problems. When's the last time you saw a Rockford amp with a bad solder connection, shorted transformer, broken legs on components...? It happens but not nearly as often as it does for other brands. There are many amps that are 20+ years old and have never been opened for repair (I still see them fairly regularly).
They have had a few problems (mainly due to leaking capacitors) but that happens to other amps also (leaking capacitors have been a problem in virtually all types of electronics - even Tektronix had a problem with them and no one would consider that to be inferior equipment).
Rockford has added DC offset protection (but it took them too long to do it).
With the exception of the 2007- amps, Rockford amps are easy to work on. They provide support for older amps. That's something that many manufacturers won't do. With few exceptions, when you need support from other (non-Japanese) companies, you're out of luck.
They have moved production out of the country but they were one of the last to do so.To stay in business, they didn't have much choice. You can't compete with a company if they're paying Chinese wages for labor and you're paying much higher wages for your workers. While I know that many people would like to see Rockford go out of business, I'm glad they did what they had to do to remain in business.
People love to dog Rockford amps. They've been producing the best designed amps (overall) for more than 20 years. They have fewer problems than any other manufacturer when it comes to common problems. When's the last time you saw a Rockford amp with a bad solder connection, shorted transformer, broken legs on components...? It happens but not nearly as often as it does for other brands. There are many amps that are 20+ years old and have never been opened for repair (I still see them fairly regularly).
They have had a few problems (mainly due to leaking capacitors) but that happens to other amps also (leaking capacitors have been a problem in virtually all types of electronics - even Tektronix had a problem with them and no one would consider that to be inferior equipment).
Rockford has added DC offset protection (but it took them too long to do it).
With the exception of the 2007- amps, Rockford amps are easy to work on. They provide support for older amps. That's something that many manufacturers won't do. With few exceptions, when you need support from other (non-Japanese) companies, you're out of luck.
They have moved production out of the country but they were one of the last to do so.To stay in business, they didn't have much choice. You can't compete with a company if they're paying Chinese wages for labor and you're paying much higher wages for your workers. While I know that many people would like to see Rockford go out of business, I'm glad they did what they had to do to remain in business.
No offense taken Perry, I am sure you also have made much money working on RF amps over the years, just like the rest of us. And yes they do have a web-site with support posted for their older stuff, but not much new or past a certain age is there.
I worked at a dealership and I had a wonderful time buying parts and such from them. Excellent support, if you were a dealership. Their recent release of old schematics and technology is something new to me when compared to the RF of the 90's era.
Yes they do get dogged by their retail owners worse then other amps but most other amps have fail safes that shut down the amp and protect the amp and valuable speakers.
RF amps are pretty raw power oriented IMO. As for the protection your taking about, it must be on the latest versions as I have not seen it yet, but look forward to examining it first chance, and yes it was way too late to be added by about 20 years or so. IMO this is not very forward thinking...
I will also agree that they have fixed some of the other ailments you mentioned, and that SMD manufacturing does have a lower failure rate then simple wave soldering, and hand assembly. But others like ZED also had and fixed transformer issues, and the such. So I think they were all on a learning curve at the end uses expense.
As I recall RF moved to Mexico back in the 90's with the HD line so they moved faster then most, and always seemed to be spending profits on new assemble methods and locations before many of the rest of the industry did, <just my opinion though>.
As always Perry you are on the mark and have fairly and equally shared the other side of the sword. And as I said before no offense taken ever with your wise generous efforts....C
I worked at a dealership and I had a wonderful time buying parts and such from them. Excellent support, if you were a dealership. Their recent release of old schematics and technology is something new to me when compared to the RF of the 90's era.
Yes they do get dogged by their retail owners worse then other amps but most other amps have fail safes that shut down the amp and protect the amp and valuable speakers.
RF amps are pretty raw power oriented IMO. As for the protection your taking about, it must be on the latest versions as I have not seen it yet, but look forward to examining it first chance, and yes it was way too late to be added by about 20 years or so. IMO this is not very forward thinking...
I will also agree that they have fixed some of the other ailments you mentioned, and that SMD manufacturing does have a lower failure rate then simple wave soldering, and hand assembly. But others like ZED also had and fixed transformer issues, and the such. So I think they were all on a learning curve at the end uses expense.
As I recall RF moved to Mexico back in the 90's with the HD line so they moved faster then most, and always seemed to be spending profits on new assemble methods and locations before many of the rest of the industry did, <just my opinion though>.
As always Perry you are on the mark and have fairly and equally shared the other side of the sword. And as I said before no offense taken ever with your wise generous efforts....C
My opinion does not apply to the older stuff, from where I think their good reputation comes, probably because it was far better than current products. But the old stuff is very hard to find in Europe, I only know it from pictures.
What I have seen are MEHSA amplifiers with lots of burnt MOSFET and SMD, and sometimes burnt PCBs too. Those don't even include a fuse like every other modern amplifier, and sometimes they fail when used with no fuse at all since people relies on the fact that all amplifiers have an internal fuse... Too expensive to include the fuses?
And the people that bought these amplifiers in Europe paid twice the USA price because here the product is offered as very high-end. The price increase doesn't come from the installers but from the own importers, who have probably made a lot of money by fooling the installers in the past 10 years...
Then the customers blame the installers for something that is not their fault...
What I have seen are MEHSA amplifiers with lots of burnt MOSFET and SMD, and sometimes burnt PCBs too. Those don't even include a fuse like every other modern amplifier, and sometimes they fail when used with no fuse at all since people relies on the fact that all amplifiers have an internal fuse... Too expensive to include the fuses?
And the people that bought these amplifiers in Europe paid twice the USA price because here the product is offered as very high-end. The price increase doesn't come from the installers but from the own importers, who have probably made a lot of money by fooling the installers in the past 10 years...
Then the customers blame the installers for something that is not their fault...
Last edited:
You can't blame the amp if it's improperly installed/fused. Even with on-board fuses, people will install larger fuses than what's recommended by the manufacturer. Many times, the manufacturers recommended/installed fuses are so large that they provide no real protection except perhaps for reverse polarity connection.
For most of the systems I see, the main power wire goes to a distribution block where it's fused (has to be fused to protect the wire leaving the d-block) then goes to the amp. The fuse in the d-block can be whatever is needed to protect the amp.
Most of the blown Rockford amps I see only need the outputs replaced and maybe a couple of driver transistors/resistors. There's rarely extensive damage (except for amps like the 800.2/800a2/1000a2 - which make a mess when they fail). This is especially true for the amps made after ~2003. The older ones are more likely to blow the power supply FETs (mostly due to improper fusing - not the amp's fault) but even then, all that needs to be replaced (besides the FETs) is a few gate resistors and maybe a couple of PNP driver transistors.
For those who think they're less reliable because so many need repair, it's likely because they're sold to some of the most abusive users and because so many have been produced (possibly more than any other manufacturer).
I don't know what the taxes are in your country but in some countries, the governments tax imports so heavily that it makes it virtually impossible to sell US made products there. If people want them, they will have to pay more or fight the high tax rates.
Improper fusing/installation is the fault of whoever applied power to the system... period. If the installation wasn't right, power should not have been applied.
Again, no amp is perfect and if I was running things at Rockford, there would be changes. That doesn't mean they're not good amps.
For most of the systems I see, the main power wire goes to a distribution block where it's fused (has to be fused to protect the wire leaving the d-block) then goes to the amp. The fuse in the d-block can be whatever is needed to protect the amp.
Most of the blown Rockford amps I see only need the outputs replaced and maybe a couple of driver transistors/resistors. There's rarely extensive damage (except for amps like the 800.2/800a2/1000a2 - which make a mess when they fail). This is especially true for the amps made after ~2003. The older ones are more likely to blow the power supply FETs (mostly due to improper fusing - not the amp's fault) but even then, all that needs to be replaced (besides the FETs) is a few gate resistors and maybe a couple of PNP driver transistors.
For those who think they're less reliable because so many need repair, it's likely because they're sold to some of the most abusive users and because so many have been produced (possibly more than any other manufacturer).
I don't know what the taxes are in your country but in some countries, the governments tax imports so heavily that it makes it virtually impossible to sell US made products there. If people want them, they will have to pay more or fight the high tax rates.
Improper fusing/installation is the fault of whoever applied power to the system... period. If the installation wasn't right, power should not have been applied.
Again, no amp is perfect and if I was running things at Rockford, there would be changes. That doesn't mean they're not good amps.
The 2x150W class D bike/car amp that I designed shuts down in case of DC at speaker outputs or too high +B current (before SMPS fails). It even includes active speaker current limiting, so for example 2 ohm bridge operation only results in premature clipping of signal peaks around 15A. This only involves a few dozen SMD parts and current sense resistors, and the amp is still way smaller and more efficient than any commercial 2x150W one. So things are not that hard to do properly (considering that it was my first complete amplifier).
btw: I did it for fun but it brought me some job oportunities designing pro audio amplifiers almost instantaneously...
btw: I did it for fun but it brought me some job oportunities designing pro audio amplifiers almost instantaneously...
Last edited:
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.