Roots Lightweight Amp Shootout Southall May 2011

For further information..

Ren was in charge of his control tower, and Tweeter Box in charge of his.

So idiotic armchair critic comments on SP, about the Matrix not being setup correctly are redundant. The owner of blown matrix, was right in front of amp, ensuring all was in order whilst it was being tested.

All amps were tested until just before clipping was indicated, except in the case of K10 & Inf8MK2, as they had more headroom than any other amp, and could easily have blown the subs before clipping.

However can still stay, The Inf8MK2 and K10 were tested harder than any other amp.

Fact of the matter is, the load per amp was only 4 ohms stereo.. Some of the amps really excelled, and some didn't..

Obviously, in Roots scene, only the strongest lightweight amps are usable for 4 ohm stereo, driving '50s or Turbomaxes for long periods.

out of interest,

what tunes got played? and how long per amp?

levyte357 wrote: For further information..

Ren was in charge of his control tower, and Tweeter Box in charge of his.

So idiotic armchair critic comments on SP, about the Matrix not being setup correctly are redundant. The owner of blown matrix, was right in front of amp, ensuring all was in order whilst it was being tested.

All amps were tested until just before clipping was indicated, except in the case of K10 & Inf8MK2, as they had more headroom than any other amp, and could easily have blown the subs before clipping.

However can still stay, The Inf8MK2 and K10 were tested harder than any other amp.

Fact of the matter is, the load per amp was only 4 ohms stereo.. Some of the amps really excelled, and some didn't..

Obviously, in Roots scene, only the strongest lightweight amps are usable for 4 ohm stereo, driving '50s or Turbomaxes for long periods.

You know, I would neer have belived this if soemthing similar haddn't happed to me recently.

Much smaller scale, but similar:
I have had some Audiohead amps for a while, sang their praises, but I thought I'd try some heavy dub through my Gsubs, plus 45hz etc.
Now these amps have worked continuously, perfectly in normal dance/house mode for ages.
Within 20 mins power supply caps gave out on the above test.
It seems this Roots/Dub enviroment is very severe.

saul wrote: out of interest,

what tunes got played? and how long per amp?

On Ren's set (where 99% of testing took place), mostly very old school 70s/80s Roots Dub.
With few modern tracks here and ther.

All Vinyl... The stuff you would need to know the name of first, before impossible task of finding it.

All nice entertaining Roots Reggae, produced so to be heard and felt, not some of the mind numbing 21st century derivatives some sounds think is good.

Each amp got approx 3 or 4x tunes. Ren & crowd wanted to hear more of K10 vs ITech8 playoff, as those 2x really impressed..

Inf8MK2 got serious thumping of Tweeter Box most of the day...

Rumour is he even got to Current draw up to 19A. Ren, only took the Inf8 to 15A on his set. :lol:

So you can gather, we were'nt listening to TOTP or Country & Western on Sunday.

dammit, and there i was thinking i would get to hear it thru ren's boxes

No rumours Lev....my mate whos amp it is saw it with his own eyes flash up to 19.something a and quickly told me, soon as i looked it hit 18.something so definatly believe it went to 19.something when he saw it smiley1
You missed Ren play some newer roots and dub though when he first set up....went through selection of king earthquake

19a is perfectly doable

in manchester a couple of weeks ago, got a infi8 mk2 up to just over 22a on friends supers loaded with 1851.

with Vibronics doing selection.

vision was seriously blurry - was struggling to read the infi8 display

and it was all through my 13a plug adaptor.

how did the supers sound? what was the ohms the amp was running at? Looks like we've got a new score to beat smiley36

luton_soundman wrote: how did the supers sound? what was the ohms the amp was running at? Looks like we've got a new score to beat smiley36

hard to say, without comparison next to other boxes. but the '51 does work waaaaay better than the '50 in a superscoop.

it was 4x 8ohm boxes - 2 a side.

supply was very stiff. never seen an infi8 go so high on standard mains ring before limiting/clipping.

saul wrote: 19a is perfectly doable

in manchester a couple of weeks ago, got a infi8 mk2 up to just over 22a on friends supers loaded with 1851.

Was shame we didn't have the pro distro I heard Tippa Audio owns.

One those with 3 Phase Voltage/Current meters.. Really wanted to see readings for the lightweight amps..

But can safely say, with the exception of K10 & Inf8MK2, no other amp tested yesterday was producing more than approx 2kwpc @ 4ohms.

Why? Because even with all of them driven to just about clip (PKN was actually clipping), the 1850s were'nt distorting, or making the Growl of death noise.

And experience tells me, an 1850 will withstand upto approx 1kw of roots man sub before, "Good night Mr Bond".