Most Underrated Amp Ever?

[dB-r 10+ year member]

Orion HCCA 250R ? Red one from back in like early 90s?

 

[frzninvt 10+ year member]

While the 250R was certainly under rated, 50W x 2 but capable of 400W x 2 at 1 ohm and 800W x 1 at 1 ohm it still is not as under rated as the Orion 97.3 or the Soundstream 5.0, 10.0 and Picasso which had ratings in the teens or less.

 

[dB-r 10+ year member]

Yeah, but HCCA 250R is also .5 ohm stable isn't it? I thought it was, but maybe just the way people ran them back in the day.

I know where a pristine, perfect HCCA 250R is sitting, just waiting on me to drop $200 cash on it. Just haven't had a need for it yet, but probably will soon. Sorry not telling anyone specifically where it is, it's in a friends shop, just sitting there collecting dust. I replaced a rectifier in it that had a crack in it, it has never been blown up.

 

[frzninvt 10+ year member]

.5 ohm stable in stereo mode only, not mono. At 1 ohm mono you could cook a meal on the 250 if run hard, better force fan cool it. Nice powerful clean sounding amp though! Orion started the cheapening process after the 3rd generation pop top amplifiers.

 

[Pl8er 5,000+ posts]

Any of the cheater amps back in the day would fall under this. I mean you would be looking at amps that were "spec'd" at 25watts doing well over a thousand. U.S. Amps had some really great cheaters way back when. The VLX series for one.

 

[dB-r 10+ year member]

If I remember right, Orion HCCA series are the first real cheater amp. I used to go to the competitions starting back in 1990. I stopped going around 1993. Too many "show" vehicles, people with BIG money started getting into the competitions and it just got ridiculous. Lanzar busted onto the scene with the first (that I can remember) small enclosure subwoofer. I personally bought 4 Lanzar 10's and put them behind the set of my truck. The sound just was't the same though.... I was used to Kicker comps, Cerwin Vega DVC's, Punch (paper cone). They all sounded way better to me than the Lanzar.

LOL! flashback to back in the day!

 

[Beat_Dominator 5,000+ posts]

I always thought the Pioneer PRS-X amps were pretty funny how underrated they were.

 

[travolta 10+ year member]

Why would a company want to make an amp that was capable of doing so many watts and then give it such a low rating? JW

 

[Max_Power 10+ year member]

Why would a company want to make an amp that was capable of doing so many watts and then give it such a low rating? JW

way back when in the competition circuit. You were put into classes by what your rated amp output was ( I believe). That way if you entered a class with "25 watt" max, and you knew you had 100 on tap, It gave you the advantage. Competitors even put amps inside the boxes to hide them, thus making it seem they did more db with fewer watts

 

[jmanpc 5,000+ posts]

what amps out there could run pretty much to a short? i've heard of some, but cant remember

 

[frzninvt 10+ year member]

The HiFonics Series VIII Ulysses and Isis Platinum Competition amps could run into a dead short. A buddy of mine showed me by twisting the speaker leads together on one channel and powering it up. It did not go into "diagnostic" and the other channel played fine. I ran those amps when I competed in IASCA from '95 - '97 in the 1-150 Watt Novice and Amateur classes.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Good call on the model number on the Concepts, I knew it wasn't the 97.1.

Calling an amp that is stable into a super low impedance making more power as you lower the impedance "underrated" isn't really accurate. They were usually quite accurately rated. The Orion amps (other than the Concept 97.3) where almost spot on in their ratings at all power levels when you consider that they were rated at say 2x50 @ 4 ohms with 3dB of headroom for the 250HCCA. CSR benched that amp at 107x2 at clipping. That's pretty accurate. The Concept 97.3 was a different story for the simple reason that the rated power @ 4 ohms was 1x2. It quite easily did 200x its rating. The rating on that amp was an out and out lie.

The Soundstream Class A amps weren't nearly that bad either. The 5.0 was rated at 12.5x2 and the 10.0 was rated at 25x2 for IASCA purposes. Those were the power ratings with the amps operating in high current mode. The ratings in high voltage mode were much higher.

The older PG MPS series would run into a dead short as well (seen it demoed) and were rated as "stable into any reactive/inductive load."

 

[bds0688 10+ year member]

The amps are stable to a short, but how long can they pull that little trick off?

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

^^^ don't know or care, don't listen to a short, I listen to speakers that present a load. The point is that the protection circuitry doesn't kick in and shut the amp down at really low loads. In the case of the PGs at least, the amps will get hot after awhile and the power supply will actully limit the power available.

 

[CobaltKicker 10+ year member]

RF Punch series Old ones