Lets discuss some Old School ...

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Old School Soundstream;

Cosmetics - 3 star

Build quality - 3 star {Not amp repair friendly}

Price/Performance - 2 star

Misc; Class A over-hyped.

It wasn't true Class A either.

Rockford Fosgate;Cosmetics - 5 star {Pretty amps}

Build quality - 5 star

Price/Performance - 2 star {too expensive per watt}

Misc; Over-hyped.

Pretty? They looked way worse than the Linear power and Soundstream. At least the Punch series did. The fan shroud for the Power series were nice looking. The DSM series looked good IMO.

Precision Power;Cosmetics - 5 star

Build quality - 5 star

Price/Performance - 4 star

Misc; Good bang for buck, Cosmetics vary, some are ugly.

I can't think of a PPI amp that I would classify as anything other than elegant, at least until the PC series came out. Wasn't a fan of those.

Orion;Cosmetics - 5 star

Build quality - 5 star

Price/Performance - 4 star

Misc; Good bang for buck. Cosmetics vary, some are ugly.

The first edition Orion amps were plagued with bad annodizing. It got better and thus prettier.

Hifonics series VICosmetics - 2 star

Build quality - 4 star

Price/Performance - 5 star

Misc; IIRC, new design.

Hifonics series VII

Cosmetics - 4 star

Build quality - 5 star

Price/Performance - 5 star

Misc; My favorite. Best dollar per wattage ratio, highest power per real-estate,

looks better than series VI or series VIII.

Hifonics series VIII

Cosmetics - 3 star

Build quality - 5 star

Price/Performance - 5 star

Misc; IIRC, same as series VII, different look.

These were some of the amps I really wanted back in the day.

I used to do amplifier repair so guess what happened? I never got a Hifonics or Zapco for repair,only Rockford Fosgate, Soundstream, PPI, Orion, Alphasonik {junk}, flea market amps.

Hifonics and Zapco were very well designed and made but I would venture to guess that the others that you saw a bunch of was mainly due not to their inferiority but due to their sheer numbers. They were the in demand item and were fairly commonplace. As a result, I would bet that a lot more of them got abused compared to the Hifonics and Zapco amps.
Some you forgot:

Phoenix Gold:

Cosmetics: 5

Build: 5

Price/Performance: 5

Comments: The MS, MQ and MPS amps were, IMO, some of the best amps ever made. No frills. Rock solid design. Elegant cosmetics. The M series were good. I would pay a mint for a NIB MPS-2500 or MS-2125.

Audio Art:

Cosmetics: 4

Build: 4 (based on heresay, no personal experience, though I have been trying to get ahold of one or two for "evaluation")

Price/performance: 5

Comments: By all accounts I've seen they make rated power + and are solid amps.

I LOVE old amps. Solid design and construction. Function was the most important thing, appearance was secondary at best. As someone mentioned above the newer mass produced amps are marketed to the typical car audio buyer; younger people without a lot of money who just want loud and pretty. Appearance is more important than quality. If it wasn't Audiobahn would have gone under a long time ago. These amps are disposable IMO.

OTOH I have 4 Orion HCCA amps that are still going strong after 10 years. I ran the hell out of them when they were new and they shrugged it off. They were expensive at the time, as the high end amps of now are. They were meant to be competition amps in a time when SPL was not the emphasis, but doing the most with the least amount of "rated" power and sounding good was. Solid power wasn't cheap. But 10 years later I still think it was money well spent.

 

[thylantyr 10+ year member]

Hifonics and Zapco were very well designed and made but I would venture to guess that the others that you saw a bunch of was mainly due not to their inferiority but due to their sheer numbers. They were the in demand item and were fairly commonplace. As a result, I would bet that a lot more of them got abused compared to the Hifonics and Zapco amps.

Where I live, 1.5 hours away from Zapco, we saw alot of Zapco, alot of Alphasonik, alot of Linear Power, alot of Hifonics.. later came the Fosgates,

PPI's and Orions... There were plenty of blown Zapco's sent to the factory

for repair as I used to talk to the repairman, the reason those amps blew

is because user replaced the 20A fuse with a nail because the fuse blew

when the amp was over-driven beyond it's ability, so the dummy person

would bypass the fuse thinking it's a good idea only to have the amp smoke.

/lol/ ... If you used the product correctly, it was reliable.

The other amps mentioned came later in my area..... by then I lost interest in

car audio and went into hiding -- lol

The big thing was Zeus and Colossus for the folks who knew better, the trendy stuff

was the Fostgate chromed Power 1000 for $3k... /bleh.. I wasn't impressed.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

If you used the product correctly, it was reliable.

From what I've seen this is pretty true of all the US made amps from the late 80's early 90's when the profit margin was made with a higher price rather than cheaper raw components and build quality.

 

[pjm2211 10+ year member]

I'm 30 so I've owned several of the old school ams. Here are some of the favs I've had. I love the old school us amps...and still use them to this day....pics of mine in my gallery..... but also the old orion sx and hcca amps were the bomb. The hifonics series VIII were the best hifonics ever IMO...I had odin, boltar, cupid, etc.... Soundstream made some Class A amps...the Class A 5.0 and 10.0. And who will ever forget the Phoenix Gold MS amps....not me. What else....um..... the Kicker XS and ZR amps were awesome as well. Rodek made some cool amps I used to have....but I don't think they were around for long, so not many people remember them. My favorite sq old school amps were the Adcoms.... 4402, 4702, and 4404...... oh yeah..

 

[Slammed 5,000+ posts]

PPI art series

old school Rockfords (owned)

old school HiFonics (owned)

Orion HCCA

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

Can't believe nobody's mentioned Adcom yet.

Oh, and I'll toss out the Coustic Design Reference series //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/up2something.gif.dd110ecf3ae4b76050d87598f2f8de7c.gif

 

[pjm2211 10+ year member]

I mentioned adcom a couple of replies up.... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif I still have a couple of em...

 

[squeak9798 5,000+ posts]

Soundstream made some Class A amps...the Class A 5.0 and 10.0.

Those were not true class A amplifiers.

More of a marketing ploy.

 

[Slammed 5,000+ posts]

how about Audio Art?

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[pjm2211 10+ year member]

true on the soundstreams....but those were the model #'s. I forgot to mention Autotek BTS series amps. I had a 7150BTS and 7300BTS that were bad *** amps.....when I had those running, I blew an alternator the first day. very power hungry.

 

[pjm2211 10+ year member]

Audio Art rocks....I still have a 100hc....wish it was able to accept larger power wire, but it's awesome sounding.

 

[fosgate140 10+ year member]

autotek was very reliable and powerful wish i still had them. but i sold them for way to cheap lol.

 

[fosgate140 10+ year member]

and audio art was solid wish i could find a brand new 1

 

[Slammed 5,000+ posts]

Audio Art rocks....I still have a 100hc....wish it was able to accept larger power wire, but it's awesome sounding.

awesome amplifiers...underrated and clean

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Meh, Adcom came out in the mid 90's, that's not old school. They were sweet though //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

I remember dreaming about building a system with the little tiny half ohm stable US Amps model (12.5 watts per channel @ 4 ohms) for the subs and its 2 ohm stable little brother to compete in IASCA 0-50 category. This was back when they were based in Florida.

Whoever mentioned the Soundstream Class A 5.0 and 10.0, those weren't even the original Class A's from Soundstream. The 3.0 and 6.0 were older and the 50 and 100 were older still.

I always wanted the PPI 2350 matched pair that the shop near my house had. He also had a harmon/kardon CA260 in the same case. On the demo board he had his baby, a Hafler amp, don't remember the model number but it was sweet.

I almost bought a couple of Rodek amps back in the day. Solid power blocks those were.

No one has mentioned a/d/s either. Solid amps. Not a ton of power but nothing made a ton of power back then and you didn't have the power ***** subs of today to deal with either.

There was also Nakamichi. Excellent but really expensive amps.

How about some of the imports from back then?

Sentrek anyone? As long as you didn't push them hard, they were fine but they didn't do well at high volume.

Targa? A shop I went to from time to time used these all the time. They would get an amp twice the side that they needed for the application and set the gain low. In that configuration they sounded good and they were still cheaper than a US made amp of the same power than they were actually putting out.