modding?

i have heard people speak of modding amps to produce more power on multiple occasions. what is involved in this procedure and what kind of amps can this be done to?

Maybe taking them apart and tweaking the Potentiometers inside for MAX gain. Your have one on the amp, usually, but they have internal ones to protect them from burning the input channels out.

modding can mean changing resistors and transistors inside the amp to those of different values, so as to let more power in or allow a larger amplification of the signal...sometimes it is as simple as overriding the factory protection circuitry so the amp wont shut down under heavy or stressful loads...

is this something that i oculd do myself?

If so, then where do i get  the stuff to do it?

on some amps its easy enough to do yourself...on others its not worth the risk unless you are some kind of electrical engineer...you would need wiring schematics and have to know the values of all the resistors and transistors and be very competent with a soldering iron...

I saw a guy on ebay selling a modified ampthat he replaced somecoilsand rails on and put plexiglass cover in place of the bottom. It was an older Alpine am that started its life at 50 x 4 but after the mods he said it out out about 85 x 4. I almost bought it, the sodering work was pretty much perfect, but I passed for a 2002 modem Alpine instead. Oh well.. Allan

Powerslave,     Gain has nothing to do with the amount of power an amplifier can put out (A lot of people misconcept it for a volume control). Adjusting the gain to maximum will only allow all of the signal coming from your to be amplified, (including line noise, which will kill you S/N ratio) and will more likely than not give you a prematurely clipped signal (which will damage a speaker faster than you would overpowering it with a clean wave). The only time this is going to help is when you have a POS deck which is giving you a weak line level signal (500mV, for example). As far as "modding" and amp I wouldn't recommend it to an amatuer... Like purds said, you have to know what your doing before you do it. If you can understand how the power supply in your amplifier works than you might be able to squeeze some more juice by modifying it. As a beginner, and if you have a amp to experiment with, start with the caps... A lot of inferior amplifiers have components in them that you can replace with higher quality components, like capacitors... You can get good results from this. In fact I did this once with an old pyramid for kicks (among other things) and was surprised with the results... As far as transitors, transformers, and MOSFETS go, I'd definately get a schematic before tearing into any of that, and get product manuals for all the IC's on the board.Jesse

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