I've had some cool amps back in the day and was always fond of old PPI and old Alphasonik but I recently picked up a PG M44 and a PG100 and wanted to get some opinions of what others think of these amps.
Are these the bees nees or medial of the road at best? I've never run PG before but remember they made a big splash back in the day. It's been 20 plus years since I've had a system together and figured I'd start here.
I also have a PG MX3i crossover I plan on using with these amps and have heard they are very decent xovers. I know these amps have built in xovers but I've always liked the separate setup plus in my day amps were amps and xovers were xovers.
Just wanted to hear others thoughts.
Are these the bees nees or medial of the road at best? I've never run PG before but remember they made a big splash back in the day. It's been 20 plus years since I've had a system together and figured I'd start here.
I also have a PG MX3i crossover I plan on using with these amps and have heard they are very decent xovers. I know these amps have built in xovers but I've always liked the separate setup plus in my day amps were amps and xovers were xovers.
Just wanted to hear others thoughts.
If you haven't done so, pull the covers and check for leaky capacitors. If they're starting to leak, you need to get them out (even if you don't replace them right now, if you don't intend to use the amps).
M series was PG's High SQ version of the MPS battleships and competitions amps series they broke market with. They are not so powerful on lower ohms and they are not built for low ohm ops, but other then that they are the same amp designs with some extra noise filtering in the power supply to cancel out switching noise from all the rectifiers in the power supply. Smaller Mosfets also since these amps weren't meant for less then 2 ohm operations.
Perry has good advice replace all the wet caps especially on the 12 volts supply side. These are notorious for leaking and destroying the circuit boards. I suggest slight higher voltage rated caps like 25 or 35 volt DC instead of the 16 they have stock factory, and I RTV damn the bottoms of the caps on install so the plus and negative can never leak and meet electrically < this is what happens while the amp are just sitting in your trunk and the 12 VDC shorts out across the PC board and burns up the boards even if the amp is not in use or turned on and operating... The RTV helps to prevent this by blocking the leakage pathways of the electrolyte, plus the RTV holds up against the electrolyte pretty good, and the RTV also stress relieves the caps mounting by bonding the caps flexible rubber seal to the PC board to help stave off shock and vibration induced lead leakage < big bass rocks the caps on there leads ya know, the RTV helps limit the shaking and shocking on the leads , Just suggesting on the RTV >
Hope some of this helps ya out... The RTV thing is something I did for decades, anything is better then nothing on the leaking issues these amps have.. Plus just remember to replace the 12 volt side caps on a regular basis sorta like changing your oil and rotating your tires etc... At least inspect with some clean dry paper underneath the caps slid around looking for stains indicating leakage you might not be able to see...< another old trick clean white paper slid underneath the caps will come out looking pretty ugly if your in early stage unseen leaking ....😉
What are the best PG amps
I tried to attach some pictures but I'm still learning site. My M100 has 50V caps for the 10000 micro farad caps and 25 V for the 2200 micro farad ones and the M44 has 40 V caps for the 10000 micro farad and 16 V for the 2200 micro farad. I obviously don't know the purpose of ether in the amp but have gathered that one set is for the power supply. It would seem from reading your reply that all have possibly been changed out with exception of the 16V in the M44. What is your recommendation with those? Just move to a 25 or 35 V? Is there something else I should be looking for or staying away from? How often should these be changed? Is this a constant problem?
Also so in your opinion these should be champs at 2 ohms just don't try running them at less?
Thanks for all the info.
I tried to attach some pictures but I'm still learning site. My M100 has 50V caps for the 10000 micro farad caps and 25 V for the 2200 micro farad ones and the M44 has 40 V caps for the 10000 micro farad and 16 V for the 2200 micro farad. I obviously don't know the purpose of ether in the amp but have gathered that one set is for the power supply. It would seem from reading your reply that all have possibly been changed out with exception of the 16V in the M44. What is your recommendation with those? Just move to a 25 or 35 V? Is there something else I should be looking for or staying away from? How often should these be changed? Is this a constant problem?
Also so in your opinion these should be champs at 2 ohms just don't try running them at less?
Thanks for all the info.
The M series was meant for 4 ohm ops, they will NOT double power into two ohms. They will 1.5 original 4 ohm power into 2 ohms. This is where the power toroid and supply is power limiting the amps outputs due to its design. So can you run 2 ohms oh yeah all day long. PG amps are fairly durable and even their High SQ line while power limited is no exception to their design workmanship back in the USA Oregon days.
Replace all 12 volt power supply side caps especially the big ones near the DC input, do this religiously. I found lifespans usually don't last any longer then every 5 years or so is a safe estimate of usable lifespan in this one area. I would check them yearly with white paper shoved underneath and swept around looking for any stains indicating leakage. ONCE they leak your PC board will burn up and you will be very unhappy. This is the biggest problem any PG amp of this era ever had, and its a notorious problem you can google search on the net and get answers back about.
So take my word for it and test with white cardboard or stiff paper underneath them yearly. The electrolyte leaks out and bridges across the PC board between the two leads of the cap and just plugged into 12 volts the destruction of your gold plated PC board will happen. You do not have to even operate the amp and the board will self destruct from the leakage. The electrolyte is conductive of the 12 volts your car supplies constantly to the amps input to these exact caps, so they start and continue to burn up the Board constantly just be wired into the car after the caps leak.
I used 25 or 35 VDC rated caps NOT 16 VDC caps like PG did. Bigger and better caps are now smaller then back in 1992.
I also place a RTV Dam on the bottom of the cap before install and make sure it blocks the plus and minus leads from allowing any cross connection if the cap leaks < this is only a time delay that I came up with after dealing with this a few times > So take it with a grain of salt and ounce of prevention is worth a pound of sure....And check the caps yearly with paper or cardboard underneath the caps to sense for leakage... Any leakage at all pull the amp immediately from 12 volt power. This means the big red and black cables gets disconnected. And get the amp onto a bench as soon as possible to get the leaking caps off the board ASAP. The liquid is corrosive and it will eat up the copper traces underneath all that pretty gold plate PG used trying to protect their PC boards traces. Copper is the weak link and its underneath the gold plate and it will dissolve under electrolyte attack.
I hope I have explained this clearly enough. You seem to love your PG products, I love mine also. They make quite a splash back in the early 90s and I feel they built one of the safest designed amps ever built anywhere by anyone in the whole industry. They were meant to survive even if they failed so they could be rebuilt reasonably and not need a new PC board every time you open the amp up... So pay attention to this one weak link problem all PG amps of this era have and you will be using these amps till you my age < Old > lol......😉
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Thank you for the information, you seem to be pretty well versed with the PG stuff. So that said let me ask you one more question please. I have the built in high passes in the amps; how do you think these compare SQ wise to separate crossover such as the PG MX3i? Should I be hanging on to this crossover or is what is in the amps of the same quality? You see I haven't put these amps and crossover to use yet and I'm just trying to get a feel for the direction I should go with this system.
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