twentyhurtz

ok so i have a little stack of amps in my parts room to fix, well i just added another today. Last week a friend of mine was visiting his family and he came across an amp his cousin had thrown in a closet that "doesn't work" so he brought it back to see if i could fix it and he has never laid eyes on this amp, or heard of it at that.. but OMG when he told me what it was i bout shat a brick.. its pretty much in my eyes a collectors item.
I knew what this was soon as i saw it, but hadn't seen one this generation.. its a 1993 US AMPS 100HCA,
the specs on this amp are 50w x 2 rms@4ohms@12v and 400w x2 rms@1/2ohm@12v, and believe me this is WAY underrated.. this amp can produce 1200w rms easy, its fuse rating recommended an external 225a fuse, and was a extremely nice cheater amp in its prime, i hadn't seen the old ones like this with the power leads coming out of them.
i worked at a usamps dealer in 2001, and we had some old pre 1999 stock of the last generation US AMPS hc100, same specs, some shell, except it had a plexiglass bottom instead of the aluminum on, and it had 3 power and ground terminals, while this one has 2 pair..
Not the biggest amps they ever made, but definitely one of the most stout and famous they have made..
I just figured i would show it before i fixed it and returned it, basically this is a peice of Car Audio history right here as far as competition amps are concerned.. and to my knowledge dealers costs on these was in the $700 dollar range.. but don't hold me to that, thats what my old boss told me, and he still has one in the box, mint, never seen power, but blah blah, i just figured since i see so many people on here that are new to audio i would show people something old school..

Davus

I literally said "ooh" aloud. That thing's as big as my 2000 watt power inverter!

twentyhurtz

you think thats big? you should see the vlx400 they made, i swear its twice that big, no joke, 44" long..

dohcvtak

iTrader: (1)

beautiful more pics of your stash/repairing plz haha

LastDetail

Wow, I remember seeing those on the wall at the stereo shop I used to go to, right next to the Zapco studio series amps and Soundstream stuff.

That was 1993? JESUS I'M OLD!

wrx-killer-Sti-eater

iTrader: (1)

I rock that in a heartbeat! Deff a cheater amp in the past. Seen alot of shyt talking because of it lol. Nice

jason0123

Love the old Surfboard amps I collect the old Alpine stuff my self when it comes in

twentyhurtz

well the shop i worked at, we only kept one usamps amp on the display and it was a usa-hc100, same as above, except we ordered it in a mirror red finish, it never saw power though. one thing that was cool about those amps was you could order them in different colors and sometimes get special limited edition colors. i had a usa-150 in my truck some years back and it was like a flat black color. but na you shouldn't feel that old, i'm only 24, but i did start installing audio when i was 15.

twentyhurtz

It's nothing impressive but i will take a quick shot of them.. all i have that i'm fixing right now is my brothers old mtx blue thunder 2150, a friends rockford fosgate p3001 ( i think) and another friends kicker 300w mono amp, and a fusion 325w amp i had sitting around.

It Wasn't Me

Wow .. flashback to our high school audio comps. When companies like PG and Soundstream were still good. Nice find.

djkurious

Check out their new school stuff:

http://usamps.com/home.html

twentyhurtz

yea well the problem with their new stuff is that after about 99, they quit making it in florida and get an overseas company to make there stuff and quality went way downhill, thats why their amps are so cheap now, cause there not as good. but that site links to RE, RE makes some BADASS subs

XSPower-Derek

i hate to break it to you guys, but RE is who owns US amps... lol


anyways, that amp makes baby jesus cry... i regret selling mine every day

twentyhurtz

well i was wondering why Re and Us Amps were on the same site, i didn't know if they were not in partnership or affiliated with each other. So RE bought US Amps.. sweet.. maybe their amps will be of great quality again, because i know they did go way downhill for a while.. I'm a huge RE fan so thats always great news to hear, i used to keep up with who bought who but these days i don't really pay too much attention to that.
Yea i had a USA 150, that did 450w x1 rms@ 2ohm bridged and i regret selling mine as well.

XSPower-Derek

RE has owned US amps for a few years now...

twentyhurtz

Really? wow thats new info to me. i wonder if the boards in the 12.1's and 35.1's are the same as in the usamps.

XSPower-Derek

no... but they were designed/built by the same buildhouse

twentyhurtz

hmm. i remember when i first heard of RE, it was close to 10 years ago, and the first time i heard them was 2 re 15's in a wall, they were first production, didn't even have logo's on dust caps yet, i wanna say they was se or sx series.. i was impressed even with those. but glad to know usamps is in good hands.

mhart

they also own Kove audio now, had some prototypes awhile ago that's the last i heard of that.

XSPower-Derek

they dont dont "own" Kove Audio per say... they just built subs for them a few years ago, IIRC when Kove went down they owed RE alot of money and couldnt pay up... so RE sold off a bunch of their subs they had laying in the warehouse for dirt cheap

DrZFiNeSt

iTrader: (1)

Damn that's old school right there

ken9

That's an Old school U.S amp. I don't think they make those again. Usually you can find them on ebay sometimes. Thoee are strong amp can do underrated their power.

nsxxtreme

I was a senior in high school when that amp came out. Nice amp, probably power supply transistors fried that's 80% of all amplifier failures.

If you replace them I hope your replace ALL of them. Usually when one goes the rest aren't far behind.

I never liked the notion of cheater amps. It really went against what the competitions were about. It's also what turned me away from competing even though I ran soundstream cheater amps. Difference was I didn't compete or run them to compete I ran them because they were bad *** amps and as close to class A as possible.

check out ampguts.com if you want to see how many amplifiers share the same designer. You would be surprised at how many amps are repackaged under a different name.

twentyhurtz

yea i haven't taken the aluminum strip off the top of the transistors yet, but i did see where someone has already been in there doing some ghetto soldering on some stuff. i'm not even touching that thing until i fixing my integra..

nsxxtreme

Just wire a resister in series with the +12V lead power the bad boy on then check the gate of the transistor it should be switching between 40k-60khz. Should be able to check with any DMM that can measure frequency. I have an oscilliscope but still possible with a good DMM. Do not attach a speaker should require very low current to run.