I'm still cutting my teeth on car audio, but I have a good understanding of alot of the technical aspects. Looking for your experience in brands to stay away from and good recommendations.
Shawn

 

Road King = KMart

Seriously though, I have never had any problems with any of my Rockford Fosgate amps I've had in the past.

 

Ive had good luck with Alpine amps and old Pioneer amps.

Mixed results with JL. They had a known defect in their 300/4. Which sucks because its an expensive amp and I HAVE ONE!!

Alpine is really good for the $ they were one of the first in the business and stand behind their product. Fosgate is pretty good, JBL, Kicker.

Again, for the money the V series from Alpine is a good, solid, reliable series of amps I ran the one in my old car so hot that the emblem on it started to melt but the amps thermal protection hadnt tripped.

Bad amps = California, Crunch, Sony, Phoenix Gold, Legacy, Pyle, HiFonics, Jensen, Us Acoustics, Pyramid, and anything found at Meijer, Walmart, KMart or the local Swap-meet.

 

I would definatley not consider Phoenix Gold or US Acoustics bad amps.
PG has the Tantrum amps-very sweet, Titaniums are nice too. The Octane R series are kind screwy, and the Xenon series had some problems at first, but its turned out to be a pretty good amp.

And US Acoustics is about the best budget amp out there. Pretty good quality, 3 year warranty, does rated power, and they are cheap. Definatley some great amps if you dont have much money.


Id about agree with the rest of the list. Add Profile to the list IMO.

What kind of power are you looking for, # of channels, and whats your budget?

 

I had a Punch 45 about 15 years ago that was good, but it gave up in it's tenth year. I think it was 22 watts per channel. I'm not looking to rattle the doors off, but I certainly want more power than that.
I may run two amps, one with 75W X 4 @ 2 ohms. Plus one single channel for the small sub. My truck is a standard cab so there's not much room behind the seat. Has anyone tried to fit the sub under the beach seat?
Thanks for the input, some of those brands I have not heard of.

 

haha. Those little old punches were pretty rugged. Was it about the size of a larger paperback book with rounded sides?

Anyway. (As you can tell - I like alpine) but tried many others. Ift seems when I stray away from alpine I have bad luck.



I had this in my old car. I ran 4 components and a little 8 inch sub. Its very flexable. Built in x-overs a real work horse.

http://iweb.alpine-usa.com/pls/admn/...=120&p_main=10

And you cen get them at best-buy.

 

Yea, I was a young Air Force guy then, so the music was loud all of the time. I gave that Punch 45 a workout.
I was looking at that amp (ALPINE) yesterday in Best Buy. How did you connect the sub with 4 channels already being used?

 

I ran both the front backs with on the same 2 channels. I just lost the front back fader (so what) then bridged the 3rd and 4th channel and used the built in low-pass x-over for the sub.

It was actually when my 300x4 JL blew up and got quoted 6 weeks for warranty work. I ended up stripping out my entire system and went simple (hence the alpine amp) - I should have gone with that in the first place.

 

what's the problem specifically? I just bought one but haven't installed it yet :-|

 

I called JL when one of the channels went out on my amp after having it for 3 months. If I gave it a light whack, it would come in for a second then go back out. Evidently JL is/was having some QC issues. They warranted it but -6 weeks to fix...

Before I went back to Alpine, I bought the JL because it looked cool and felt solid as a brick. I had good luck with JL speakers so I figured their quality would carry over.

I took the amp apart to see if something just got knocked loose at the terminal where the speaker connected... Most of the bulk is in the chassis. A little dissappointing.

You may or may not have the same problem... You man consider trading it up for a nice Alpine for piece of mind.

Good luck!

 

Uggh... yeah, I opened my JL up to take a quick look. No kidding, most of the mass is the solid aluminum extrusion and heatsinks. Not sure that's necessary. At least the circuit design and layout looks pretty darn clean and they're using FR4 fab material instead of some cheap phenelic. Looked like one end of the fab was warped for some reason. I'll need to take a closer look.

I did read one review (I forgot where) about the amp breaking into some kind of funny oscillation at some extreme lab test condition. Forgot the details, but it didn't sound like a problem during regular use

I thought the Alpines were going downhill when they started adding those blue voltage displays on top of the chassis. That a sign of a joke product whose focus is on bling over quality. I don't need that kind of nonsense. Hence I stayed away and got a JL instead.

Well, let's see if I can get mine up and running over the weekend...

 

Ha, Phoenix gold are nice amps the tantrums 1200.1 do like 300 watts over rated power and the other lines are decent. Hifonics amps are now decent with the addition of Maxxsonics used in their 05 amps. US Acoustics, for the most part are or were zed audio designed, and fairly well built. Really some of the newer profile amps are supposed to be fairly decent for what they are, ive seen them only used in spl set ups though.

Amps i would reccomend: autotek, cadence, zed audio, diamond audio, zapco, mmats, avionixx, elemental designs, RE, PG, hifonics, lanzar opti drives, old viper amps, dei refurbs, jbl, jl, mtx. Those are all i can think of right now.

 

phoenix gold tantrum and titanium amps are rock solid. The xenons had some issues but the previous models are GREAT.
Old skool fosgates are brute power
us acoustics are great budget amps.
new kicker amps are decent
zapco is another GREAT brand

I run JL amps and i have NEVER had a problem (300/2 and 1000/1) they put out their rated power and are rock solid. I trust JL and thats the only brand i will use from now on.

 

You will have recommendations all over the place when you pose a question like this on a public forum. Everyone has a different perspective and thus a different perception of what is good vs. "not" good. If someone has little experience they may think Brand A is wonderful, when in fact, they may be very below average in the whole scheme of things. On the other hand, someone with many years of true experience in car audio may know of brands that most people have never heard of. Let's face it, many consumers do not know there is a world beyond MTX, RF, Kicker, Pioneer, etc. And that's not to say that all "mainstream" brands are bad, because they aren't, but familiarity of a "name" does not necessarily translate to a good product. I've worked for General Electric for over 30 years. I know that to be true. What I have found is that people recommend brands that they are familiar with, which would be OK if they didn't at the same time bash those with which they are not familiar. I recently had some little 20 year old down the street laugh at my array of purple Linear Power amps and my a/d/s speakers and my subs with no logos, and insinuating that his Audiobahn gear is the best available on the market. Of course, to him being heard from 1 mile away is what's important. But the example shows that because he hadn't heard of LP amps and a/d/s speakers, and his own belief that he "knows" car audio, and that I'm an old man, and thus DON"T know anything, lets him believe in his mind certain things that simply aren't true. The fact that my amps and speakers are some of the finest ever made doesn't mean a thing to him because he doesn't know much, in reality. So remember that when you solicit advice, take into account the fact that most of us don't know as much as we think we do. While you readily admit that you are a "newbie", not everyone wants to admit that. Most, I think, would rather try to "appear" to know more than they do. I use several of these forums, and I once replied to a post, and later was on another forum and there was my reply, word for word, written to someone on that forum. So, there you go. Take any advice however you want, but in the end, do your own research and get what makes you happy. And, above all, whatever you buy, be it average or high end, use it as it's designed to be used and it will last for many years. In my experience I've learned that not all, but almost all failures of reasonably good quality gear is because of misuse or abuse or both. While they may not perform on a par with high end gear, even very average stuff will last and last unless it's abused. And just because someone doesn't know they are abusing their equipment doesn't mean they aren't. People connect things incorrectly all the time because THEY DON"T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING. Then they have a failure and they're on here recommending to you NOT to buy such and such brand because it's junk, when actually their own lack of knowledge is the problem. So, keep that in mind also.

 

You guys are on crack.. JL is quality.

PG are OK as well.