Ive bee outta car audio for years, many years. A few weeks ago I got a car for myself ( the first non family oriented car in 15 years ) Anyways So Im kinda shopping around , not really knowing what the good stuff is these days and found this. I nabbed it so freakin quick I didnt give it a second thought.
Anyways, now that I have my first amp toward building a system Im unsure whether I should use this thing for the front stage or run a 2 ohm dvc sub with it. Im not really going for huge bass these days.
Welcome !
A very clean amp you found there. Please open the bottom and check the large caps for leakage. We have several posts in the how to section about bad caps and replacement.
As pretty as your amp is, it is over 10 years old so a service inspection is due to make sure some pesky old caps don't ruin your little beauty you have there.
Nice find by the way....C
1moreamp wrote:Welcome !
A very clean amp you found there. Please open the bottom and check the large caps for leakage. We have several posts in the how to section about bad caps and replacement.
As pretty as your amp is, it is over 10 years old so a service inspection is due to make sure some pesky old caps don't ruin your little beauty you have there.
Nice find by the way....C
Thanks man
I had already read for a few hours before I was allowed to post and saw the info on leaking caps. Kind aliek the old abit mobos Anyways.
1moreamp wrote:Welcome !
A very clean amp you found there. Please open the bottom and check the large caps for leakage. We have several posts in the how to section about bad caps and replacement.
As pretty as your amp is, it is over 10 years old so a service inspection is due to make sure some pesky old caps don't ruin your little beauty you have there.
Nice find by the way....C
Thanks man
I had already read for a few hours before I was allowed to post and saw the info on leaking caps. Kind aliek the old abit mobos Anyways.
Front stage or subwoofer?
I am using two MS-275's each one running a single Ti-12 SVC at 4 ohms mono. I have had this setup for years, but I will be servicing my 275's very soon now. And I will be swapping in a set of Tantrum 1200.1 to try for a while.
You amp can and will run a sub very nicely, it also can run a stage also, I currently am running a Xenon 200.4 by PG for my mids and tweets both front and rear stage and it is annoyingly loud to anyone near my vehicle at a light, if and when I push my luck like this at lights here in Cali.
Your new baby is good for both uses, but to be honest class D amps are best for bass line currently for heat and power efficiency reasons mainly and they are cheap. How loud do you want your bass ? I have a older Suburban and 2 ms-275's have pleased me for a long time...C
Im mostly going for a well balanced reasonable accurate system this time around. Most of the components in the car will have to go. It has a decent older alpine deck . The door and rear speakers are alpine 6.5 coaxials, they gotta go. For bass there was a set of older solobaric 8s in seperate boxes. The boxes are okay but the 8s just cant hit any low notes.
Im thinking 6.5 components in the front with the tweets on the windshield pillars to raise the soundstage. The alpines in the rear might be okay for fill on second thought.. replace the 8s with a single 10 or 12 tuned to 40hz. I dotn really need anything to extravagant. The lt1 makes plenty of noise.
I marked yup your pic in RED, These go bad and they leak underneath at the board and cause all the damage. I use white cardboard and tissue slipped under each cap to find leaks, but just replacing them will get you 10 more years out of the amp...C
Nichicon UHE1C562MHD6 are a modern replacement. They are the same series as the factory caps, but are larger value due to improvements in capacitor manufacturing.
I have a how-to tutorial which may be of benefit to you here…
Eric D wrote:Nichicon UHE1C562MHD6 are a modern replacement. They are the same series as the factory caps, but are larger value due to improvements in capacitor manufacturing.
I have a how-to tutorial which may be of benefit to you here…
Thanks man Im actually pretty handy with a soldering iron. I used to mod gf2 gts cards into quadros, that was really fine work.
Anyways. I just got through putting in the car and trying it out. Poor little 8s couldnt take it at like 1/3 gain. I dont think the amp would clip that soon anyways? The bass was way to tight and punchy, I need a 10 or 12
Actually that amp probably did clip. I had a MPS2240 which is only slightly more powerful than your amp. On my test bench I could hardly get anything out of it, its output voltage is simply too low. You really need to add a ton of speakers and drop the impedance way way down on these amps to get anything out of them. I could easily see someone kill a pair of 4 ohm speakers with an amp like this simply from improper level matching. Even an experience person would have a hard time grasping how little output these amps have with high impedance.
I always wanted to give the GF2 – Quadro mod a try. I have Radeon 9800 pro in a spare machine which I am considering trying the FireGL mod on.
Eric D wrote:Actually that amp probably did clip. I had a MPS2240 which is only slightly more powerful than your amp. On my test bench I could hardly get anything out of it, its output voltage is simply too low. You really need to add a ton of speakers and drop the impedance way way down on these amps to get anything out of them. I could easily see someone kill a pair of 4 ohm speakers with an amp like this simply from improper level matching. Even an experience person would have a hard time grasping how little output these amps have with high impedance.
I always wanted to give the GF2 – Quadro mod a try. I have Radeon 9800 pro in a spare machine which I am considering trying the FireGL mod on.
I had em at 2ohm bridged mono , thats still to high?
Eric D wrote:Nichicon UHE1C562MHD6 are a modern replacement. They are the same series as the factory caps, but are larger value due to improvements in capacitor manufacturing.
I have a how-to tutorial which may be of benefit to you here…
nutxo wrote:Im mostly going for a well balanced reasonable accurate system this time around. Most of the components in the car will have to go. It has a decent older alpine deck . The door and rear speakers are alpine 6.5 coaxials, they gotta go. For bass there was a set of older solobaric 8s in seperate boxes. The boxes are okay but the 8s just cant hit any low notes.
Im thinking 6.5 components in the front with the tweets on the windshield pillars to raise the soundstage. The alpines in the rear might be okay for fill on second thought.. replace the 8s with a single 10 or 12 tuned to 40hz. I dotn really need anything to extravagant. The lt1 makes plenty of noise.
No solobarics are any good for hitting low notes. We discussed this a long time ago, as soon as you crank the volume any depth is forsaken for output.
If you're going through hell keep going
Winston Churchill
"this is the world's most powerfulest high's amp."
nutxo wrote:Im mostly going for a well balanced reasonable accurate system this time around. Most of the components in the car will have to go. It has a decent older alpine deck . The door and rear speakers are alpine 6.5 coaxials, they gotta go. For bass there was a set of older solobaric 8s in seperate boxes. The boxes are okay but the 8s just cant hit any low notes.
Im thinking 6.5 components in the front with the tweets on the windshield pillars to raise the soundstage. The alpines in the rear might be okay for fill on second thought.. replace the 8s with a single 10 or 12 tuned to 40hz. I dotn really need anything to extravagant. The lt1 makes plenty of noise.
No solobarics are any good for hitting low notes. We discussed this a long time ago, as soon as you crank the volume any depth is forsaken for output.
Like new or old or all solobarics period? Back in the day my old round gray ones seemed to do fairly well. It doesnt even need to be solobarics though. Im lookin at stuff that was comin out when I quit car audio. I actually sold off a set of NIB orion dvc 12s that I had when I was gathering stuff for my next build. .. I dont wanna use that much space though
Round solobarics are very good speakers in my opinion. I have installed and fiddled with many around 1997-1998. They are good enough I would use them myself and recommend them to others. However, the only reason I never speak of them is there are next to none in existence. All of them fell apart due to abuse and age. I think they had a foam surround which was stitched to the cone, but the foam would still rot off. Later models might have used rubber, but I don’t remember.
I am also a big fan of the kicker competition subs from 1995-1996 or so. These highly efficient subs still played gut wrenching lows with little amplifier effort.
I didnt give it a second thought.
