Just an amp....

[TheTodd]

I wouldn’t bother with new Orions. They’re junk. How many channels total are you looking to run? I’m getting ready to pull my Soundstream 4ch amps (TN 4.900) from my car. I’m putting one in my other car but I thought about selling the other. I have the box, manual and everything that came with it. It does about 140x4 and about 430-ish bridged into 2. You could run it 3ch and it’ll get plenty loud. It’s pretty much the same amp as the PPI Phantom 900.4.

[steelwindmachine]

4 channels for front stage + 1 channel for sub

[TheTodd]

The ~$400 budget kinda puts a kink in the works but it’s not impossible. You’ll just have to accept a few compromises. Any amp these days without crossovers and such are going to be your higher end pieces. It’s the exact opposite of the good old days where we paid out the wazoo for amps WITH crossovers.

I can’t recommend them from experience BUT I have heard decent reviews of the better NVX amps from Sonic Electronics. Check out the VAD 11005. It’s 80x4 + 350x1 all for $320. It doesn’t look like the crossovers are defeatable (boo) but depending on what you’re using for that duty, it looks like you can adjust them all the way up/down on the amp out of the general range so that they would be ineffective to whatever signal is coming in.

Every other option I could think of was either out of your price range or out of stock with no timeframe for availability. You MAY be able to find something decent used on eBay or on other forums. I just picked up 2 Alpine PDX amps (4ch & 5ch) for a little more than $600.

[steelwindmachine]

thanks for the suggestions!

I'm also looking at the Kenwood X802-5.

I'll keep my eyes open for a good deal.

[TheTodd]

That Kenwood is a nice amp. I just didn’t see it in stock on any of the sites I frequent. (Crutchfield, Sonic & Woofers Etc.)

[steelwindmachine]

yeah, i'm not against buying used or recapping if need be.

[Justin Zazzi]

yeah, i'm not against buying used or recapping if need be.

If that's the case, you can likely afford to have a tech bypass the gain/crossover controls of any other amplifier .... ?

[steelwindmachine]

yes, given my electronics repair aptitude I could recap and schematic in hand I could bypass an internal xover network.

The US Acoustics amps do have a line input option that bypasses the internal xover and are reasonably priced too. But, I may opt for one of the Kenwood amps since they tend to be very inexpensive used and they made many.

[Jdunk54nl]

The nvx amps measured pretty good. This is one I sent in to have measured:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...plifier.28866/