1st of 2 PDX's came in today...I'm in love.

[bikinpunk 10+ year member]

Got the amp in last night. It will be powering my tweets (Hybrid Audio L1's) and midrange (Vifa tg9's). The amp it is replacing is an older Alpine mrp-f240 which does roughly 40x4 rms.

I bought this from discount sound via e-bay for $283 shipped to my door. This is easily the best price I found. Here's a link to their store. I likely will be ordering a 2nd sometime soon to power my midbasses. I was a bit concerned I would get some knockoff amp or serial-removed amp. To my delight this looks as legit as can be. Comes with a serial number and birthsheet.

I hope to get this installed by tomorrow night and have a somewhat-full review by Saturday morning. Until then, here are some teaser pics:

Underrated FTW! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

Click to read more...

 

[CrazedCat 10+ year member]

Congrats they're great little amps. It's rare to get birthsheets from ebay stores.

 

[bikinpunk 10+ year member]

I know. I was really surprised.

 

[bjayjr5679 10+ year member]

What did you do with the old alpine f240

 

[bikinpunk 10+ year member]

sold it.

I've got a Blaupunkt va4100 for sale here, if you're interested. Link

 

[bikinpunk 10+ year member]

Got it installed tonight.

Since listening is so subjective, I'm not going to go into great detail about what I thought this amp sounded like. I will, however, state that I noticed a very large improvement over my old amp. The music is a lot more "in your face", but I suspect that has a lot more to do with me resetting gains...but ****, it sounds nice.

Now that that's out of the way let me start off with this: HOLY CRAP THIS IS ONE IMPRESSIVE AMP! This is easily one of the most well-engineered designs.

First off, the amp's four corners has screw-caps. These only need a budge from an allen wrench (supplied with amp) and then you can take them the rest of the way off. From there you use the 4 screws Alpine also provides to screw the amp into place, then put the caps back on and tighten them down by hand.

Secondly, the ground/remote/positive terminal has a very nice design. Alpine provides the 2 allen wrenches needed for this assembly. Everyone knows how to tighten wires on a conventional terminal so I'm moving on to my favorite piece...

Thirdly, the freaking speaker terminals incorporate the BEST design I've EVER come across in car audio. Instead of screwing down speaker wire directly to the amp via terminals, Alpine uses a "clip" (can't think of a better name) that you put the wires into, tighten wires in place, then insert the clip into the amp. The pictures below show the basic operation. It's freaking awesome. Made my install a cinch. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

Finally, the crossover/gain panel. Pretty normal. No band-pass feature here, but for those who have a processor it's no big deal.

Here are some pictures from tonight's install.

"Caps" taken off. You can see that the cap incorporates a threaded "bolt" that screws into the amp itself. These caps appear to be plastic, or something of the sort. They sure don't seem like metal as they appear to. No big deal though.

Two of the 4 total "clips".

One clip wired up, with allen wrench to show how this works. Basically as you tighten the wrench, the speaker wire is squished into place by being pulled to the outside of the clip.

Crossover/Gains panel

Self explanatory:

Overall, to say I'm happy is a drastic understatement. I will, without a doubt be buying a 2nd one of these. Heck, I'm even considering replacing my JL 1000/1 with a PDX 1.1000 now. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

Oh, and note that the gains come set to the max. I assumed it was to the minimum and nearly blew my speakers.

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

neat.

wonder if those terminals give just as good of continuity as regular terminals.

 

[bikinpunk 10+ year member]

I kind of wondered that myself, but I'm willing to say yes.

I don't think Alpine would put that much design work into something and not factor that in. At least, I hope they wouldn't...

 

[MBrock4u 10+ year member]

Very nice post! Those Alpine amps are just plain sweet. I have been very happy with both of mine and I don't have the PDX amps. Maybe one day? Enjoy //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[blacksunempire]

One question: How do you mount the amp to the back of a seat or something that is not a horizontal surface? It appears there are no places to screw it down. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

 

[MrSwiss 10+ year member]

i hope u have a 14.4v system, or u wont be getting that kinda of wattage.

 

[bonesninja 5,000+ posts]

take off the 4 corners and it screws thru there

 

[bonesninja 5,000+ posts]

on a side note...i ordered my alpine amp and comps from the same place. quick shipping great packing and awesome pricing

 

[bonesninja 5,000+ posts]

i hope u have a 14.4v system, or u wont be getting that kinda of wattage.

he has an 06 civic...he has 14.4 volts

 

[bikinpunk 10+ year member]

on a side note...i ordered my alpine amp and comps from the same place. quick shipping great packing and awesome pricing

The best pricing I've found yet.

Thanks for answering the questions. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif