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Lately in my search for a new amp, i've come across a lot of old school products that are almost described in legendary terms. Are these amps from the 90's that good?

How good are the old school products?

Hifonics
Audio Art
Soundstream
Fosgate
PPI
US Amps
Orion
Pheonix Gold

etc...

How would they compare to say today's RF, JL, Audison, Arc, Zapco... How are they better, how are they worse?


I would have thought today's stuff would be more efficient and play tighter/cleaner, but listening to some of the veterans of the trade you'd think that old school has the new school beat hands down!

What do you think?

Ok, the mid 90's stuff is about when I started hitting the scene hard.

The PPI Art series was ruling the roost it seemed like. Orion had some killer amps, RF had the PUNCH line rocking hard... Lanzar had the Opti, mainly the 50 kicking ass in the .5 Ohm range... Which was unheard of then...

US Amps has always been good...

Phoenix Gold had some good offerings as well an Xtant.

Sound Stream was at its peak. THen it hit a very quick downfall... SPL170, look into that sub Liquid cooled motor... hehe

Basicly what you had were the customer driven companies producing the products the customers wanted and were very inovative. Basicly absolute cutting edge. Another big + was they were all made here in the USA, so quality was at absolute BEST.

Down side was it cost about ore more than $1.00 per watt RMS on decent amps, more for higher quality...

Todays amps put out decent power, nothing to cutting edge anymore, and are cheap. Thats to Asian factories. Quality however isnt near as good... Lastly instead of these companies making products to what the customers wants, they make it to what they want to sell us... So essentialy they dont care what the customer thinks/wants, they do what fits into their scheme...

Ryan from Ohio wrote: Todays amps put out decent power, nothing to cutting edge anymore, and are cheap. Thats to Asian factories. Quality however isnt near as good... Lastly instead of these companies making products to what the customers wants, they make it to what they want to sell us... So essentialy they dont care what the customer thinks/wants, they do what fits into their scheme...

That sounds like a lot of the garbage from circuit city and best buy, but how would you compare the old stuff to today's recommended brands... Arc, JL... I see a lot of older amps for sale and i wonder how they compare to what i could get new today.

One of the biggest things is the damping factor and the THD most of now a day amp are 1%THD which isn't bad but not as clean. There are some of the now a day amps that produce .01 or .02 but (Example Diamond Audio .002 THD) that is around $1000. I can vouch for Lazar 50c I have one and am still yet to hear an amp that clean @ .5 ohms (Take alot of power and Sub to work it right). And The PPI are loud and soundstream made one of the badest amps in the day with the Trantula.

But now a day the difference is to ME some ppl or less idiots that just want it loud don't care about some of these features they just want it to get loud @ mono, the older ones took a little wisdom. And I'm not knocking the ARC, JL or any other hell I'm going with a alpine PDX due to the voltage intake.

It all comes down to you. Remember this is all my opinion so take it and do what you want. One of the better thing of now a day amps is the they have fans the old one didn't that I can remember, some maybe but it really doesn't matter if you have it ohm right.

But now a day the difference is to ME some ppl or less idiots that just want it loud don't care about some of these features they just want it to get loud @ mono

easy there i can agree with you but not all of us "idiots" (ill get back to this in a min) forget about thd and damping factor i have a class d amp that has a thd of .1% and produces 4000 watts. i can put tons more power to a sub because the distortion is lower than i can with a cheap amp. and in the spl world power means alot and what your subs can take means alot. so basicly what im saying is even us spl competitors still look at those specs.

now get back to the idiot comment not all of us guys who like it loud are idiots i for one love my stuff loud and i compete with it does that make me an idiot? maybe a better choice of words would be good before you start insulting people. maybe im taking it a little far but next time just make sure your not to offensive however i do know what your saying all these "boom car boys" do car about is loud and all they want is shit quaility.

God what i would do for a PPI Art series amp... First off they are just incredible pieces of equipment, second off... if u have one... wow... just show it off and be happy

I wasn't talking about you in the case of SPL!!!!!LOL I have just seen some kid think that just cause an amp says 3200watts that this is going to be awsome, but let alone subs only lasted 1 month due to the distortion (playing it to loud and that was only at around half on the head unit). I used to be an idiot that just wanted it loud (Blew many Subs) but like I said take time and understand. I know that a .1 amp and subs will last long, as long as their they are ones and wired right, not at .5 ohm on a mono block(I've see it done LYAO laugh your ass off) they fried the amp and subs. They paid 2000 for the amp and sub and it was gone.


Sry if I affended anyone wasn't trying. I should have worded it better.

well a better quaility amp can handle low loads like that for instance my mm4000.1 took a .7ohm load when it was only stable at 2 ohm bridged (dual channel mono block)

Hey Captian pioneer check out ebay there are some nice ones, just wish my car could produce the power. Sucks not having an HO alt.

How long before it got hot