If you haven't figured out by now, I am a huge fan of Old School installs and equipment. I think some people are fans of old school equipment because of build quality, build location or some emotional connection you made to a piece of gear you lusted after as a kid.
Old school amplifiers are things I remember fondly. Ones that LOVED getting pounded by low ohm loads. And because IASCA had some really weird power classes, amplifiers were built to get you into various power classes. One of my favorite classes of amps were the so called cheater amps. There are a few that pop to mind. The Orion HCCA Series, the MPS Series from Phoenix Gold and the Precision Power ProMos 450. (PPI also had smaller ones, including one I ran called a ProMos 12, which was 12 watts x 2 channels.)
Some many people and competitors are running fully active systems today. but with the limited number of channels to compete in power classes, that wasn't always an option. And with signal processors today support so many channels that is now an option.
Back when I first started looking at Car Audio, a three way setup was about as many channels as you could get unless you daisy chained two three ways together. While cleaning out the garage, I ran into a relic of a by gone error. How about a Phoenix Gold XVR? They were a sophisticated crossover system used to drive a front stage, center channel and sub all from a two channel amplifier. While very rare to find now days, I managed to get two of them in my collection, one you see here that is a working copy and one that is still new in box, thanks to a friends and family warehouse sale @ PG a couple of years ago.
Do you have any old school pieces of gear you have been hoarding?
In case you are interested, here are some scans of the now impossible to find manual.
