why are old school amps worth so much?

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#923
Perry Babin said:
IMO, old school would be amps that had wires (either directly soldered to the board or on manufacturer-supplied molex type plugs) for power and ground.
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I had a bunch of the Crutchfield branded amplifiers (made by PPI) that had the power and ground wires soldered to the board back in the early '90s and I would agree that they are old school. How about the RF HD series that required you to roll your own power/ground/remote wires using a female spade lug?

IMO, an old school amp would be designed and made in the USA prior to approximately 1995 and whose power rating would be accurate (1% distortion or less). The power ratings of modern (chinese?) amps drives me crazy. WTF is music power????
 
#924
IMO, amps using SMD parts wouldn't be old school.

I don't think made in the USA would be a requirement but most OS amps would have been made in the US. Amps like the Kenwood KAC-1020 and the Alpine 3521 would be OS.

Of course, this is my opinion. It's all relative. I was reading on some forum where they were talking about old school Audiobahn amps.
 
#926
FairfaxStu said:
I had a bunch of the Crutchfield branded amplifiers (made by PPI) that had the power and ground wires soldered to the board back in the early '90s and I would agree that they are old school. How about the RF HD series that required you to roll your own power/ground/remote wires using a female spade lug?

IMO, an old school amp would be designed and made in the USA prior to approximately 1995 and whose power rating would be accurate (1% distortion or less). The power ratings of modern (chinese?) amps drives me crazy. WTF is music power????
Click to expand...

And that's Chinese music power ..... 😀
 
#927
They can rate amps in many ways. Music power is what you expect to get when playing music at a certain voltage. The RMS rating they give is at a single frequency (which music is not) with the same signal strenght (no gain on volume, which music is not). But who in the world is going to play sine wave tracks??? So they tend to give you the music power usually (or atleast some companies do).
 
#928
'Music power' and similar power ratings are useless. In my opinion, the only useful way to rate amps is by driving a sine wave into a purely resistive load. By using the maximum unclipped RMS voltage that the amp can produce into that load and the value of the load resistor, you can accurately calculate how much power that the amp can produce. It allows you to accurately compare the output of one amp to any other amp using the same test methods.

Of course, for car amps, you also have to take into account the B+ voltage used when testing.
 
#929
jeanious2011 said:
They can rate amps in many ways. Music power is what you expect to get when playing music at a certain voltage. The RMS rating they give is at a single frequency (which music is not) with the same signal strenght (no gain on volume, which music is not). But who in the world is going to play sine wave tracks??? So they tend to give you the music power usually (or atleast some companies do).
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I take it you have never witnessed a SPL event firsthand? 😉
 
#930
Hi Babys !

Buy Original Amp: Beltek A4250

Pic 1
Pic 2

Other amps.

1, "Dr.Who" ?
2, Blaupunkt
3, Magnat Rave 220
4, DLS Reference 100
5, Impakt HC250.2
6, Coustic AMP360
7, Interconti EQ
8, RockfordFosgate Punch30
9, Sony XES-M1
10, Sony XES-M1
11, Sony XES-M3
12, Alpine 3502
13, A/D/S PH15 es A/D/S AX3
14, Hafler -> RockfordFosgate MSE 120di
15, PPI 2150AM
16, Audio Art 100HC
17, StreetPower FMA10.2 Limited
18, Kenwood KAC-820
19, Kenwood KAC-920
20, Kenwood KAC-1020
21, Kenwood KAC-PS150
22, Kenwood KAC-PS150
23, Alpine MRV-1507
24, Alpine MRV-357
25, Alpine 3548
 
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#933
Nah, the AMP-150/300/500 would be old school Coustic. And just Coustic that was before they got bought iirc. Those were great old amps, not sure how great they are today but back then they were the poor man's LP for sure and most people didn't even know it. People used to take the medallion off the top so it kind of looked like a LP, lol.

I've run an Alpine 3518 since the 80s on and off, a 2x40rms. It has to be old school by the looks of the guts. And I got it used in the late 80s. Limited power but it always sounded top notch, no gain control even just a DIN you had to patch into. When will I try this 3555 in my car to compare man am I slow on the audio lately.
 
#938
Something that's come up a number of times in this thread is the older amps having much stronger PSUs. For someone that hasn't had the luxury of pulling down a large number of amps from different generations, but I love the challenges of building SMPS's. Could anyone please quantify this statement of stronger PSU's in technical terms, i.e. numbers?

e.g. were the older amps able to provided X% regulation over the entire operating power range, or were they capable of operating at 100% rated power for X min without thermal protection cutting in?

Sorry to try and turn this into a scientific discussion... 🙂
 
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