Ever felt ripped off?... just a little bit.

ollyc98

ollyc98

Ex. Club Member
Ok so I bought a 400w class A amp for 14 quid off ebay.

Some people told me I was stupid and it couldn't possibly be a 400w, I did not listen and I apologize to these people.

So I got my amp this morning and, of course, straight away took it apart.

What I found wasn't good, I've included a pound coin to give you a sense of scale:
31-08-07_1613.jpg


What I wanna know is what happened to the rest of it....
 
look like one of those kits you get to make amps, The D.I.Y sorta thing.

the kit probably cost around £10 quid. Dunno about it being 400w though...

at least it was only £14 quid...could have been worse.
 
thats the sort of thing i was making from scratch at college last month!!!! but they were 200w lol....i was bidding on one of these as well i think, thank god i didn't win!!
 
There is a black long thin chip on the left side of the amp on the main board, give me the number of it and I shall tell you what power it is. I hope you have NOT left feedback yet... Oh and by the way its absoutely NOT class A.

Ed
 
to be honest £14 for amp you were never going to get something of any decent sort of quality.......... £14 is just expecting too much lol

just get rid and save up for a new cheap budget one.

Kev
 
Well there you go then. Thats less powerfull than most modern headunits. Quite impressive for a single chip but in real life expect around 18 watts. However its distorting pretty badly by this point. 10%THD would sound pretty poor imo. At around 1% which is still bad for an amplifier, output power is like 12watts.

In my opinion it goes without saying that any modern headunit from kenwood/pioneer would be significantly more powerful and of a higher quality than this amp.

If this was purcahased from a shop you would have pretty good gounds to go for them under the trade discription act. As they are outside the UK there is little you can do but I did report one of the listings to ebay.
 
The seller seems to think peak wattage could reach 400w, I think at a push I could squeeze maybe 100 out before it fries.
I've got a nice set of headphones it would power or maybe a sound system on my remote control car.
 
Impossible. Peak power in this amp is not likely to ever even exceed its rated power as its already so distorted. If you do some basic maths, in a perfect world you could get about 47watts from 13.8w power rail. since this amp is probably around 50% efficient that interestingly (plus other losses) gives approx 20 watts! ;) peak combined power on this amp is unlikely to ever exceed 60watts in a car, let alone 100!
 
lol, ok I'll take your word for it. I was thinking of making a computer speaker project, it's about all it's good for and the trimode ability will make it ok for a low wattage 2.1 system.
 
BURN IT I SAY!

I feel for you bro. It looks so cheap Id go as far as saying it looks unsafe... cheap thermal controls etc. So I wouldnt use it... and 22w? was it... is not enough... and yep looks DIY. You can make those for under a tenner...
 
There is nothing really /that/ wrong with the quality of the amp. Its ok, you just have to look at it from the point of view of its value, not its claimed specs. Its perfectly safe. The main component is made by a good company, and is entirely self contained hence its limitations and the overall cheapness.

There is no way you could make one for a tenner, even the heatsink/case would cost more than that.

If it was claimed 22x2 amp not a 400w amp then there would be no problem and still for £15 it would be good value.
 
If the bloke hadn't lied about the spec their wouldn't be a problem, I might add a pre-amp and make a mini guitar amp out of it.
 
i just also noticed that it claims mosfet powersupply, it doesnt actually have a power supply haha
 
Right, I have been driving it really hard with the sounds of killswitch engage for about 15 mins now and it's still going, the sound isn't too terrible apart from at the extreme ends of the scale. Though I am only powering a 40w speaker across bridged channels.
M<aybe it's not as terrible as I thought...
 
OUCH! when it comes to audio systems if its for a car, house. 99.9% of the time you will get what you paid for. the more you pay the better the quality. personally i would'nt pay less than £200 on a amp for a car. this may sound expensive but its not when you consider the amplifier in my bed room cost me near to £500 and really they both do the same thing just on a different level. then again when it comes to music i'm a bit of a perfectionist lol.
 
My home sound system was very expensive as I like a good quality sound, but in a car it isn't worth it as it could get nicked and all the vibrations destroy the quality anyway.
 
my home system totaled at £2400, stunning sound :D. point taken but its different in newer cars that dont vibrate as much and with the proper sound profing and equipment you can get pretty good sound quality.
 
rightio I see Ed.

just that there were a couple of sites where the circuitry had been squeezed into a tobacco tin.. but may have been a difference in wattage capability etc... learn somethin new everyday
 

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