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90's American made amps... Better why?


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I'm 38 years old and I first started driving in 1995. I had two punch 40s powering 4 punch DVC 10s in a 1985 extended cab Toyota. Those amps were pretty good but not as good as my Apocalypse AAK-4000 now imo. I don't care what anyone says... (Figure of speech)  the old Orion hcca amps are nowhere as good as these new Korean boards. I seem to recall plenty friends of mine that had cash burning up every brand of so-called great American amps. Us amps, precision power, Phoenix gold, Autotek mean machine, mtx, mmats, xtant, fosgate, even old zapco and nakamichi ( Japan I believe) amps. I'm not trying to start anything. I'm just curious as to why people swear that those old amps were something special? Thd, signal to noise ratio, efficiency? Someone enlighten me. it also seems to be all the people that couldn't afford them that's swear they were awesome. The subs back then were garbage also. Lol. I'm sorry but fa realz... Car audio myth and folklore?

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I just dug out a couple 90's amps myself,I have a mid 90s crossfire vr 1000d and that thing took a beating for years while in high school ran for hours at a time ,didn't even get warm,some of the newer amps just dont work that way,its like they are made for quick 5 min demos while checking to see how hot it is,I'll agree somewhat,put up any of the crossfire monoblocks from the 90s with with a newer Korean board and the cf will wipe up most of them,but the power vs cost now of some of these new amps you cant beat it.

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Quality control was generally better, really cant think of anything else. 

I dont even have the same findings as willieG up there, i find modern amps dont really get hot, not like the old school punches,mtx's & ppi's.

Newer amps are WAYYY more efficient resulting in lower internal heat & thermal runaway.

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working in the industry and having some sort of association in the industry several years back, you have to actually understand and look at things from a production and physical stand point. let's just take a look at a small output 5 channel amp, say 50x4 @ 4 ohms and 200x1 @ 4 ohms. rough size of an amp like that back in the late 90s was relatively large b/c the parts that made it up were relatively large too. theses were assembly line produced with very little automation. so QC was constant as there were human eyes on almost every stage of production. now take a similar amp in today's time. it has a very small foot print in comparison to the 90s amps. very little of the assembly is done by human hands so QC will not be as prevalent. too add the components are significantly smaller and harder to see flaws. were products back in the late 90s great, hell yeah they were. Are products today built great, hell yeah they are. when people say "they just don't make 'em like they use to" for anything, that's based more on emotional association than on actual facts. if a product is so well built, then the company will continue to make it similarly with very little change. 

if nothing changes, nothing changes

You don't know what you don't know, till you don't know

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Are you sure people say the old amps were better? That's different than people collecting them because they are nostalgic. Also, all the subs didn't suck then if you look at the sound quality side of things, which I get the idea you probably don't give a rats ass about.

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i don't quite understand, its a battle of pick and choose in today's market just as it was back then. sure efficiency went up, but there were some that still do great by today's quality amplifiers

skar sk2500.1
0 gauge power and ground kunukonceptz
alpine HU
vxi65 components on BA gt-275
new build log -> http://www.stevemeadedesigns.com/board/topic/150642-project-d-kon-deathcards-build-log/#entry2148821
2 x-15 sundowns

singer alt, odyssey bat, and maxwell ultra caps

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I think its a combination of nostalgia and the old american made is better way of thinking. I prefer older amps mainly for style reasons, but with their age comes leaking and dried out components so I just collect em (pics are just from the internet)

3657651583_e5be2fd6af_o.jpg

5a74f7fe3aca45b7840474af50f0824d.jpg

phoenix-gold-m44-old-school-sq-amplifier

New amps just don't compare style wise in my opinion unless you start getting in to big money like linear power

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Wow!!! I just had flash backs of DJ magic Mike and master Ace! That PPI up top and zapco just sparked some serious nostalgia... 

One thing I will say, whenever I had a buddy that was pretty smart and actually knew about voltage and current Etc, they always had more batteries than most people and I even had a buddy that rigged up a voltage display before those things were readily available. needless to say his equipment always lasted the longest and didn't run anywhere near as hot as anyone else's. Dude had a Phoenix gold and Boston acoustics setup that was insane. My s*** pounds way harder though lol. 

Thanks for input everybody

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14 hours ago, Bret said:

Are you sure people say the old amps were better? That's different than people collecting them because they are nostalgic. Also, all the subs didn't suck then if you look at the sound quality side of things, which I get the idea you probably don't give a rats ass about.

I actually do care about sound quality and I believe you can actually be loud and still have very good quality of sound. I really like 12" drivers for SQ. But things like class D 4 channels in my opinion sound just as good as a good class A b ( we're not dogs and can't hear the discrepancy between classes) but... A good reference class A b is absolutely unmatched by any class D amp. Jmo

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