Is my orion bridgeable?

[chillin 10+ year member]

I have an old orion hcca250(its gold plated, if that helps with the model), and was wondering if it is bridgeable. If it is not bridgeable, can both left and right channels be put to the input for one sub as I know tha only running one channell is bad for the amp.

Any help would be great.

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[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

The gold amps from Orion were the GS series; your model being the GS-100. They were not high current. There were two versions, one was bridgable without any external hardware, but the original version required a 400BDG module to be bridged.

 

[chillin 10+ year member]

so can i run it to 1 sub without causing probems?

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Not sure which version it is.

 

[chillin 10+ year member]

it only says hcca-250.How can I tell what model it is. It has a wire harness on it , but not sure exactly what the wires are. One plain black wire, one that says pos, one that says neg, a yellow wire, and a blue wire with a yellow line.

I assume the blue and yellow wires are one channel and the pos, neg are the other channell

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Something about that amp Doesn't add up. Pics?

 

[chillin 10+ year member]

dont have a digital cam. however it also sas hand crafted in california in writing on top and under the inputs it says orion industries. ????

 

[chillin 10+ year member]

i forgot to mention it doesnt have any crossovers, just a gain control so I am guessing it was one of the really early ones....or maybe its a fake

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

What doesn't add up is that it is gold and has HCCA250 on it. The HCCA series even from the very beginning have been a very deep red. If it is an HCCA, based on what you said I can tell you three things: 1)the color isn't original 2)it is the very first generation of Orion amp and 3)it isn't bridgable without the 400bdg bridging module.

 

[chillin 10+ year member]

thanks for the info. So the next question is can I connect it to a single sub or will that fry it.

 

[05fronty 5,000+ posts]

can you post some pics? i used to have one but he is right it needed a bridging module.

 

[BoomBoomBoy 10+ year member]

400BDG module as stated earlier is required to bridge the older Orions. They're pretty rare to find. I have an old 280 GX and was looking for one on ebay and finally gave up.

I was able to work around that problem using an older Audio Control 2XS crossover which has a built in bridging unit that is identical to the circuitry in the 400BDG.

They're still pretty available on ebay. Make sure the 2XS has the bridging option. The current models do not.

 

[chillin 10+ year member]

ok, sincE i might have dificulty bridging this amp, what do you think about using it for the fronts, and getting a hifonics to run the subs. The thing is I already have two tens wired in a box, so it makes sense to get something stable at 1 ohm. Im thinking the hifonics txi 5006, which will give me 750 watts at 1 ohm. then i will use the hcca for the components.

Any thoughts????

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

They are great amps for mids and highs. Quiet, powerful, etc... You will obviously need an external crossover of some kind.

If you needed to drive a 1 ohm load, that is the wrong amp anyway. The original HCCA 250 was only 1 ohm stereo stable and 2 ohm mono stable.