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As you can see, I've been bitten hard by the amp bug lately. All my speaker projects have taken a back seat to amplifiers. Craig Salin and Bob Cottiers are not helping either by constantly bringing up the virtues of tube amplifiers, and coaching me in the background.
After extensive listening to my Chinese made MOSFET amp, and really loving the sound quality, I decided to build a truly reliable Class AB amp, and picked Rod Elliott's Project 101 Rev. C. The total cost of 2 PCBs, plus shipping to California was $52.00. The lateral MOSFETS were $25.00, and the BOM for the rest of the passive components were $48.00, so the total for just the amp came out to $125, a complete bargain for a high power, high quality amplifier. This amp is capable of producing 180W RMS into 8 ohms, and 250W RMS into 4 ohms, with short term power of 240W and 380W respectively using +/-56V rails.
The PCBs were shipped by Rod very quickly from Australia, and made it to CA in 7 days. The build was straight forward because of the complete instructions, and the great email support I got from Rod over the course of 2 weeks. I've never performed a bias adjustment on an amp, but Rod made it easy with his pictorial instructions. Try to get that on eBay!
With Chinese amplifier kits, making the finished product work is sometimes a crap shoot. Hum, hiss, blown transistors, non working components, and extensive modifications are the norm. On the other hand, P101 is simply a piece of cake to put together. The MOSFETs are mounted on the opposite side of the passive components, and are isolated with mica from the heat sink. The PCBs do not have holes for stand offs, and can be mounted vertically on the heat sinks. I elected to mount them on a 1/8" thick aluminum right angle, then attached them to the heat sink. This way, the amp is horizontally positioned, and adjustments can be made with ease. With earth ground and the PSU ground in place, speakers attached and source material on pause, the amp is just dead silent. When the music came on using high quality FLAC, the sound is insanely awesome, and that's going to be the extent of my subjective assessment of this amplifier. At high volume, I like it so much better than my Sure IRS2092, especially with female vocals and strings. Screw the efficiency and small heat sinks, I like my Class AB amps.
Hong
After extensive listening to my Chinese made MOSFET amp, and really loving the sound quality, I decided to build a truly reliable Class AB amp, and picked Rod Elliott's Project 101 Rev. C. The total cost of 2 PCBs, plus shipping to California was $52.00. The lateral MOSFETS were $25.00, and the BOM for the rest of the passive components were $48.00, so the total for just the amp came out to $125, a complete bargain for a high power, high quality amplifier. This amp is capable of producing 180W RMS into 8 ohms, and 250W RMS into 4 ohms, with short term power of 240W and 380W respectively using +/-56V rails.
The PCBs were shipped by Rod very quickly from Australia, and made it to CA in 7 days. The build was straight forward because of the complete instructions, and the great email support I got from Rod over the course of 2 weeks. I've never performed a bias adjustment on an amp, but Rod made it easy with his pictorial instructions. Try to get that on eBay!
With Chinese amplifier kits, making the finished product work is sometimes a crap shoot. Hum, hiss, blown transistors, non working components, and extensive modifications are the norm. On the other hand, P101 is simply a piece of cake to put together. The MOSFETs are mounted on the opposite side of the passive components, and are isolated with mica from the heat sink. The PCBs do not have holes for stand offs, and can be mounted vertically on the heat sinks. I elected to mount them on a 1/8" thick aluminum right angle, then attached them to the heat sink. This way, the amp is horizontally positioned, and adjustments can be made with ease. With earth ground and the PSU ground in place, speakers attached and source material on pause, the amp is just dead silent. When the music came on using high quality FLAC, the sound is insanely awesome, and that's going to be the extent of my subjective assessment of this amplifier. At high volume, I like it so much better than my Sure IRS2092, especially with female vocals and strings. Screw the efficiency and small heat sinks, I like my Class AB amps.
Hong
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