Soundstream Picasso Nano 4.520d review

I bought this amp bnib for $80 from BigAl to hold me over until the kinks got worked out of "plan A". Arc is taking care of it since they dropped the ball on QC but whatever, shit happens. This PN will eventually end up chilling out on rearfill but until then it's running my front stage. Here's the link to the amp.
http://soundstream.com/product/pn4-520d/
And here's the same amp under PPI badging.
http://precisionpower.com/product/i520-4/
And Power Acoustik probably has this board in one of their amps too.

Anyway, I really like the no-nonsense design of the amp. It has a fixed 80hz high and low pass switch just in case you for some reason need it. My guess is most people who buy this line of amps will be using the onboard crossover. Pretty standard cross point so it will work for most people who choose to use onboard crossovers. You can also bypass it for a full signal. CHECK THE SWITCH POSITION after securing the amp. I bumped the tweeter side to lowpass and was wondering why my tweeters weren't playing. Felt like an idiot when I realized what I had done. I like the terminal block on it. It's sturdy enough and the screws don't seem to be prone to stripping out. From a no BS and utilitarian standpoint the design of this amp has all the basis covered.

It does have some hiss in it but nothing too terrible obnoxious. I'll at some point see if turning the gains down has a major effect on it. I have them a little hot right now due to eyeballing them. Remember, temp use. I prefer to have plenty of headroom for those low recordings. The "sound" of this amp seems like it can be tuned to sound however you want it to. You could probably dial in with the processor and forget there's a cheap amp driving the speakers. It replaced half of a JL XD800/8 and I expected it to do about the same or maybe a little less real world. At the output where the 75x4 of the XD amp would fall on its face the cheap 100x4 Epsilon amp keeps on trucking. My ears tapped out before the amp did so I know it's making good power. Stayed pretty clean too.

In closing, for the money I can't say a single bad thing about this amp. It's doing a great job for now. How long it will last is anyone's guess. I've seen cheap amps last many years under terrible conditions so you really can't judge an amp's longevity by its price tag. The Picasso Nano and Ion get my nod for a good amp on the cheap.

Good review and hope it is " All That "

Good info to know.