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at first the price hits you like damn thats expensive. but then you see that they are assembled in the US and not only that, its done by hand not a robot. that makes the msrp realistic.. if i was to be building an SQ car these amps would be at the top of the list

I don't know how i stumbled on this tonight but got damn what a hidden gem!! I don't think the people in the crowd knew how fuckin' lucky they were. Axl actually sounds great I miss this band. I heard they might FINALLY reunite. But if you are a fan and have not seen this, grab a drink and kick back. It's a good watch. They only performed some of the songs once or twice before this show and it's crazy as i know every word to every song

RF HLC and HLC-4 will likely give you the same problems. The RF BLD should work well for you though. Here is the problem, the inexpensive LOCs use a transformer to take the high level signal and reduce it down to low level. Transformers work by creating a magnetic field and transmitting the signal that way. Like wireless communication. As you may be aware wireless transmission works best at high frequencies, at lower frequencies it basically stops working. That is what is wrong with all the inexpensive LOCs out there, they use transformers. It works fine at 1kHz, but below 50Hz the wheels start to fall off. At 40Hz they are so distorted the DD-1 will report distortion at any level. By 20Hz there is nothing that resembles a sine wave coming out of those things. The transformer coupled LOC is a great example of a product designed by a marketing person. No electrical engineer would ever recommend that.

13.6-13.8 yes. Less than that, no. No vehicle on a standard 12v electrical system will charge that low. the only reason for voltage to read lower than that all of the time is the alternator isn't charging at the voltage it should be. Yea i noticed other ppls 12v systems would be at 13.8 or even 14 yes but you can rule the alternator is bad.. check connections.. check every wire like grounds and even the back plug on the alternators.. all that can make it not operate properly During the summers in PHX. My Powermaster used would drop to 13.7 when it was 105+ out. Winter it would charge at 14.6. both numbers are while driving i haent run my singer during winter.. they charge at 14.1 and drop to 13.8 once hot.. im sure it will jump higher during winter

This is what happens when someone absolutely loves their trade, is very good at it, and is dedicated to making something awesome, all their heart is poured into it and the outcome is nothing short of spectacular. I am in love with the amp but sadly I cannot afford one at this time. I think you should market the home amp too, people go nuts for high end home audio way more so than with car audio.

I'll admit electrical engineering is way over my head, but I can still appreciate the work and attention to detail in this design. Keep up the good work!

After setting the bias controls and doing a bunch of testing, everything looked fantastic. We just got the demo car back this same night, time to remove the placeholder baseplates that we gave the shop and replace them with the real thing! She's like 2 1/2 now Now repeat the process and build another amp lol A little orange peel on the paint (it looks worse here than in life for some reason) I blame the cold booth and the rush we were in. Production pieces will look better! If I find more pics I'll add them. Thanks for following along. The result was better than we hoped for, everyone who has heard these amps has been impressed. They are VERY dynamic and fast, the dynamics of the music come through producing a very "real" or "live" sound. Tony D

Next revision of PCBs ordered and enough parts to build 4 complete units. It was over 3000 components that needed to be soldered. One part at a time... Losing my mind after 800 components.... Finally all the big parts are done after 2 or 3 days. Now to Juan for the smaller stuff, my eyes and soldering skills are not up to the task anymore.

So it looks like the heatsink design is more than enough (even though we are not satisfied with the temperature delta between the power devices and the heatsinks yet). So at this point we called in a good friend who is a mechanical engineer to design the sheet metal top, front cover, top meter cover, and associated parts. I gave him the drawings that I had and in no time at all he sent this rendering and asked "like this?" He is the man, thanks Tom Sollars. We loved it and asked him to continue and order up some of these parts when done. A few weeks later we had these

The machine shop usually takes about a month after I give them my CAD files so I better get to designing the heatsinks and baseplate because I'm not going to be able to test the amp with foam heatsinks! Two months and revisions later we have some aluminum! 17 pounds of it for 1 amplifier! Ok back to the power supply and current amplifier PCB design. As it turned out, I needed to use a 4 layer PCB. Like 4 circuit boards in 1, literally in layers sandwiched together. Typical PCBs in electronics have a copper thickness called 1/2 ounce. This means that for a square foot of PCB there is 1/2 ounce of copper in it to carry the current. In our design we are going to need a LOT more than that. 4x that actually so we went with 2 ounce copper, 4 layers of it. Each color you see here is copper on a different layer of the PCB. Many, many late nights later I am ready to send the files off to the PCB house and order all the components to build one. Now that this PCB is done, I get to do it all over again for the right hand PCB. No there is no magic button I can press to tell my software to do the opposite of the whole board for the other side. If you try that it will reverse all of the "footprints" for the components and when you build it every part will be in backwards and some of them can't go on the board any other way. Ask me how I know this.... $600 down the drain. Eventually I had to make the right hand board from scratch like the left hand one.

I send my PCB design files off to the PCB house along with some $ and in a week I have some PCBs! During this waiting time we ordered up all the components for the PCB so they arrive about the same time. I choose the best capacitors I could find for the audio paths, Nichicon FG (fine gold) and Nichicon Muse (green). My partner Juan is magical with a soldering iron and debugging so it's his turn now. Let's drill these new 'sinks for the PCB mounting holes and transistor mounting holes Proud papa Magic Juan Testing the supply, only 180V DC

Time to give props where they are due. I've learned a lot about amplifier design over the years from some of the best. Besides the books shown here I also worked with Jim Strickland and Mark Albers daily for years . The next step here is to design some heatsinks, make them, dump heat into them and see how they react. I don't have pics from that time but this is the result, the tunnels increase the surface area of the heatsinks big time! Surface area is what you need to move the heat to the atmosphere. The holes are 0.750" diameter. So the surface area lost by having the holes is (.750 / 2) ^2 * pi x 2 (top and bottom) = about 0.88 square inches x 39 holes = 34 square inches. BUT the amount of surface area gained is (.750 * pi * 7 inches deep = 16.5 square inches x 39 holes = 643 square inches! So each hole effectively gave us 20x the surface area. Not to mention a great chimney effect that starts to flow air without a fan. Lets make a set of mechanical and have them anodized black Now we need to loose all the prototype stuff and design the actual PCB that will contain the voltage stage, current stage and sit nicely on our new heatsinks

Any doubts as to whether or not it is a problem to use Stainless Steel or Grade 8 bolts as terminals? YES i am aware there is better out there! But do you really need to spend literally 10x the price for it? I WILL offer high dollar terminals to fit these cups soon, but just to let you know, i think what i am using and have been using for 20 years works just fine. Watch the latest Amp Test Tuesday! I tested using straight wire and then interrupted it with both types of terminal just to see.

Would definitely be cool to see the neos come back like that, like a level 6 on crack lol