Hello 🙂
I was reading in this forum for some years now and im again and again impressed by the knowledge and the great builds the people are talking about here.
Im not very good in the calculation of amps but i already soldered a hepos pre amp kit which worked out great und i had a lot of fun building it!
Im was looking for an diy amp with a lot of dark, deep punch and bass till some days ago a friend invited me. He bought an old Usher 1.5 Reference Amp and i was blown away from its endless power and its beautiful,clear, dark bass (beside the great vocals...).
I dont want to buy a Usher 1.5 R because diy is such fun! But the task is to find an existing pcb or kit that i can order which sounds as great (cant go back after hearing hte usher 😉 ).
What are your experiences, do you know a great sounding popular amp kit or build which gives plenty of power but more important deep, rich, clear bass?
Maybe that you are using buy your own?
Looking forward to hear from you!
Best Regards
Leon
I was reading in this forum for some years now and im again and again impressed by the knowledge and the great builds the people are talking about here.
Im not very good in the calculation of amps but i already soldered a hepos pre amp kit which worked out great und i had a lot of fun building it!
Im was looking for an diy amp with a lot of dark, deep punch and bass till some days ago a friend invited me. He bought an old Usher 1.5 Reference Amp and i was blown away from its endless power and its beautiful,clear, dark bass (beside the great vocals...).
I dont want to buy a Usher 1.5 R because diy is such fun! But the task is to find an existing pcb or kit that i can order which sounds as great (cant go back after hearing hte usher 😉 ).
What are your experiences, do you know a great sounding popular amp kit or build which gives plenty of power but more important deep, rich, clear bass?
Maybe that you are using buy your own?
Looking forward to hear from you!
Best Regards
Leon
I like a certain amount of bass also. Plus I like the trebles the real instruments come with. I've played in school bands and orchestras, and I like the intruments on the record to sound real when real instruments are played. Electric instruments, season to taste.
What kind of speakers to you have? This will say what kind of amp you need. I'm getting excellent full frequency 54-14000 hz sound from my SP2-XT speakers. These efficient horn+driver speakers are 101 db 1w 1m, pretty sensitive, and i can fill my living room with accurate sound with a 60W/ch amp I resurrected from scrap. It has an obsolete 80v transformer, so as long as +60 db peaks are infrequent, I can get 35 v cannon shots out of it (1812 overture). That is the full dynamic range or a record. OTOH the Peavey CS800s does nicely too on these speakers with more watts than I need. I test speakers & amps with full frequency piano recording like Beethoven Appassionanata Sonata, plus ZZ top Afterburner for time alignment test of the speakers on the bass drum hits.
If you buy acoustic suspension speakers with more like 85 db 1W 1m, you'll need more power. In that case the CS800s would do, or you could build a diyaudio honey badger, the kit for sale in the online store up on the menu bar. You'll need two channels for full frequency speakers.
Full Range speakers, with convuluted wood paths to even out all frequencies with one driver, are pretty efficient. I haven't really heard one, but have my suspicions about time alignment on one of those. There is a nice thread about building one on speaker forum of this site, and Best Buy sold them last time I was in there. Not demonstrating them, though.
If you like the overwhelming bass of a beach disco bar or techno dance hall, you'll want a subwoofer. that makes it three channels. Three channels of honey badger would need more like a 900 va power supply.
The best deep C1 octave bass comes from organ speakers like the Rodgers subwoofer, but commercial subwoofers designed for rock are fine at 40 hz or above.
If you buy a honey badger be sure to buy the accessory protection kit. If you make a soldering mistake DC coupled amps like that can melt your speaker coil with DC current. The CS800s and CS600s come with protection circuits built in. Enzo thinks highly of QSC amps, he saved a few from his great junkyard run of dead amps. On the sound reinforcement market PA amps are mostly full frequency range low distortion amps. Guitar and Bass amps are for those instruments, they don't have high frequencies. Keyboard powered speaker like the KB100/200/300 are full range, without the deep bass of a speaker with a 15" woofer. There are powered speakers like the PV15, or Mackie or american Audio imitations with amps that get a few questions on PA thread after they have blown up.
If I was building, I'd build into a flip top file box with external heat sink and probably a 3" fan in a small port. If you don't have heat sinks for 60-250 W/ch, look at buying a blown up PA or guitar amp on the internet, blown amps are a lot cheaper than Aavid heat sinks at about $250 each in the US. Or buy a couple of blown up VFD drives like AB 160. Or buy a blown up LED television; I got 13 1.5x3x.75" heat sinks out of a Sanyo 50" TV on the curb on garbage day.
What I did for the bigger amps, was buy dodgy ones. The CS800s was about $200 with a couple of problems, and still has overage PS capacitors that trip the breaker if you don't use it every day. Soon to go on the bench again. The PV-1.3k was $55 with good transformer, case, and heat sinks, but needed 104 cheap $.01 parts and 20 expensive $4 ones, to make sound. I'm still monkeying with the protection circuit on that one, but if I'd put honeybadger boards in there, I could use the diyaudio protection kit.
Have fun shopping, maybe building, and perhaps salvaging enclsures & heat sinks.
What kind of speakers to you have? This will say what kind of amp you need. I'm getting excellent full frequency 54-14000 hz sound from my SP2-XT speakers. These efficient horn+driver speakers are 101 db 1w 1m, pretty sensitive, and i can fill my living room with accurate sound with a 60W/ch amp I resurrected from scrap. It has an obsolete 80v transformer, so as long as +60 db peaks are infrequent, I can get 35 v cannon shots out of it (1812 overture). That is the full dynamic range or a record. OTOH the Peavey CS800s does nicely too on these speakers with more watts than I need. I test speakers & amps with full frequency piano recording like Beethoven Appassionanata Sonata, plus ZZ top Afterburner for time alignment test of the speakers on the bass drum hits.
If you buy acoustic suspension speakers with more like 85 db 1W 1m, you'll need more power. In that case the CS800s would do, or you could build a diyaudio honey badger, the kit for sale in the online store up on the menu bar. You'll need two channels for full frequency speakers.
Full Range speakers, with convuluted wood paths to even out all frequencies with one driver, are pretty efficient. I haven't really heard one, but have my suspicions about time alignment on one of those. There is a nice thread about building one on speaker forum of this site, and Best Buy sold them last time I was in there. Not demonstrating them, though.
If you like the overwhelming bass of a beach disco bar or techno dance hall, you'll want a subwoofer. that makes it three channels. Three channels of honey badger would need more like a 900 va power supply.
The best deep C1 octave bass comes from organ speakers like the Rodgers subwoofer, but commercial subwoofers designed for rock are fine at 40 hz or above.
If you buy a honey badger be sure to buy the accessory protection kit. If you make a soldering mistake DC coupled amps like that can melt your speaker coil with DC current. The CS800s and CS600s come with protection circuits built in. Enzo thinks highly of QSC amps, he saved a few from his great junkyard run of dead amps. On the sound reinforcement market PA amps are mostly full frequency range low distortion amps. Guitar and Bass amps are for those instruments, they don't have high frequencies. Keyboard powered speaker like the KB100/200/300 are full range, without the deep bass of a speaker with a 15" woofer. There are powered speakers like the PV15, or Mackie or american Audio imitations with amps that get a few questions on PA thread after they have blown up.
If I was building, I'd build into a flip top file box with external heat sink and probably a 3" fan in a small port. If you don't have heat sinks for 60-250 W/ch, look at buying a blown up PA or guitar amp on the internet, blown amps are a lot cheaper than Aavid heat sinks at about $250 each in the US. Or buy a couple of blown up VFD drives like AB 160. Or buy a blown up LED television; I got 13 1.5x3x.75" heat sinks out of a Sanyo 50" TV on the curb on garbage day.
What I did for the bigger amps, was buy dodgy ones. The CS800s was about $200 with a couple of problems, and still has overage PS capacitors that trip the breaker if you don't use it every day. Soon to go on the bench again. The PV-1.3k was $55 with good transformer, case, and heat sinks, but needed 104 cheap $.01 parts and 20 expensive $4 ones, to make sound. I'm still monkeying with the protection circuit on that one, but if I'd put honeybadger boards in there, I could use the diyaudio protection kit.
Have fun shopping, maybe building, and perhaps salvaging enclsures & heat sinks.
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If you want a great sounding high power amplifier and aren't afraid of some surface mount parts, check out VZaichenko's NS-OPS series. We've evolved these into a great complete amplifier design. Boards are always available. http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/soli...some-old-ideas-1970s-ips-ops.html#post4389599
Virtual Zero Audio - power amplifier products
Virtual Zero Audio - power amplifier products
NS Modular
Hi Leon,
Yes, this is our flagship series with excellent output current capability without compromising the quality - it can handle up to 600W @ 2 ohm transients, assuming you've got a good PSU and overall build quality (being a 150...180W @ 8 ohm amplifier in general). A choice of the front-ends, very low distortion / high transparency, unconditional stability with any speakers, including the low-impedance and/or high-capacitance ones. Dead quiet with no input signal.
Latest build by Evan (member evanc) - experienced builder with excellent system / speakers, etc.:
Evan's recent build
Depending on your desired level of involvement in the build process, we can supply the boards, kits, tested modules or fully built amplifiers 😀
Also, take a look at the control board, providing soft-start / protection, designed for the best integration with NS series amplifiers.
Let me know if you'd like to know more.
Cheers,
Valery
Hi Leon,
Yes, this is our flagship series with excellent output current capability without compromising the quality - it can handle up to 600W @ 2 ohm transients, assuming you've got a good PSU and overall build quality (being a 150...180W @ 8 ohm amplifier in general). A choice of the front-ends, very low distortion / high transparency, unconditional stability with any speakers, including the low-impedance and/or high-capacitance ones. Dead quiet with no input signal.
Latest build by Evan (member evanc) - experienced builder with excellent system / speakers, etc.:
Evan's recent build
Depending on your desired level of involvement in the build process, we can supply the boards, kits, tested modules or fully built amplifiers 😀
Also, take a look at the control board, providing soft-start / protection, designed for the best integration with NS series amplifiers.
Let me know if you'd like to know more.
Cheers,
Valery
Thank you for your response. I read all the comments carefully! A subwoofer is not needed and im using diy ADW SB 36 stereo speakers in the living room for which i want to build the amp. Honey Badger as well as NS-OPS amp seem to be great considerations. I cant make a decision by now i have to read trough the threads of this forum belonging to these amps first to get a good idea of each of them. Im sure both will fit my needs but i cant build both 😉
Best Regards
Leon
Best Regards
Leon
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