Budget amp lines from QSC, Crown and Thomann??

[Malcolm Gordon]

OK, thanks for your suggestion. I'll suck it and see, unless someone familar with the TSA knows different!

 

Malcolm

[ossie]

The 4 700's are fantastic amps, I've not managed to get one to fail yet under lots and lots of stress. 2 lots of 4ohm bridged and they keep going and going. YMMV of course but I can't find fault with them.

 

Rob

We got a TSA 4-700 amp which we are using primary for driving a couple of JBL Control 1 Pro's wired in series (resulting in a 8 ohm load) on each channel and are quite satisfied with it. I read a bit about this amp on a german forum before buying it. Their findings was that this amp was not suitable for driving a 4 ohm load bridged. (Amp going in to thermal protection mode etc.)

 

Therefore I was surprised seeing this post with a successful report of using these amps in 4 ohm bridged. Because of this, the other day we tried to use this amp bridged to drive 2 "The Box Pro" TP18 subs (rated 600 W AES, 8 ohm, 18sound 18LW1400 driver) connected in parallell and the result was quite disappointing. Compared to a QSC MX 1500 amp (speced at 1500 W@4 ohm bridged), the TSA 4-700 (speced at 1800 W@4 ohm bridged) did not produce as high SPL before lighting up the clip LED's.

 

We tested the amps by playing bass-heavy music (house and techno). We did not have any measurement instruments so this is enteirly subjective, but the differance was very noticeable. My estimation would be that the difference in SPL to be at least 2 dB. Which would mean that the actual output of the TSA 4-700 in 4 ohm bridge mode would be about 1000 W! (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

 

Still I believe that this amp is a very good value. But take the specs with a pinch of salt I guess.

 

http://www.party-pa.de/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=62185

The forum thread about the TSA 4-700 amp I was referring to earlier. 27 pages long. :)

 

P.S.

People are asking how to get hold of the user manuals for the Thomann branded equipment. You can find most of them on Thomann's german version of their website. Here is a link to the TSA series manual. For some reason a part of the specification table is not filled in here (it is on the printed version).

http://images1.thomann.de/pics/prod/218912_tsa_manual_en.pdf

[Rob_Beech]

Running a pair of different amps until the clip LED lights up and calling it quits isn't a very accurate way of comparison. It only takes one amp to light the LED when the amp is clipping, and one to light up to warn that you are say, 3dB away from clipping, or the circuit is not as accurate at a lower impedance thus lights up early (more common than you'd think). You could easily regain that 2dB that you heard or more if the inaccuracies or genuine specifications were in the favour of the TSA amp.

 

My guess is that on LF reproduction the QSC amp will perform as well or better, but it weighs twice as much, and costs or cost, more. Quite a bit more.

[Biskit]

Thought I'd ressurect this thread as much of the comment is on the T-Amp TSA 4-700. I'm looking to purchase one of these amps as a lightweight solution for my old Ramsa system (2 x WS-A200E tops and 2 x WS-A240 subs, with the dedicated WS-SP2 processor). All cabs are 8 ohm, subs rated at 400W, tops at 250W.

 

Firstly, would this amp be able to do justice to this system (main use wil be small disco music playback)? Secondly, I have the speakers fitted with NL4 Speakons, with top signal on 1+/1- and sub on 2+/2- so just one 4-core cable is needed to each side, with a link from sub to top. Are the TSA 4-700 outputs wired to easily allow this - ie. channel 1 output also having channel 2 on its second pair, bit like the Behringer amps, and the same with 3 and 4? Can't find a manual, and the photos don't give a close enough view to read the labelling.

 

Alternatively I wouldn't mind opening up the amp and adding jumper links inside if this were possible (usual warranty disclaimer etc)... does anyone have one and could have a look to see if this would be an option?

 

Many thanks,

 

Ben.

[dwright2104]

If you are looking to replacing to monitors with D&B, Id suggest get some D&B amps, as the D&B amps are more likely to be happy to power other speakers by selecting Linear Mode, than another amp powering the D&B speakers.

 

D&B now do the D6 or the D12 here some info on them.

Max. sound pressure (1 m, free field) with

D6 in passive mode 130 dB SPL

D12 in passive mode 134 dB SPL

D12 in active mode 135 dB SPL

Cabinets per channel D6 / D12 (passive mode) 2 / 2

Cabinets per D12 (active mode) 2

[Malcolm Gordon]

Can't find a manual, and the photos don't give a close enough view to read the labelling.

From 2 posts up

People are asking how to get hold of the user manuals for the Thomann branded equipment. You can find most of them on Thomann's german version of their website. Here is a link to the TSA series manual. For some reason a part of the specification table is not filled in here (it is on the printed version).

http://images1.thomann.de/pics/prod/218912_tsa_manual_en.pdf

I have one but I'm not ready to open it up I'm afraid. The spec says 4 x 490W into 8ohm (1/8 power is 400W) but others will have to say if that is adequate for your 400W speakers.

 

The manual says 2+ and 2- are not connected; on the other hand, in bridge mode one connects Channel A to 1+ and 2+ (visible in the manual picture of the back if you zoom it enough, more legible than on the amp itself), so I'm not sure what that implies about the internal connections.

 

Sorry not to be of more help.

[Biskit]

The manual says 2+ and 2- are not connected; on the other hand, in bridge mode one connects Channel A to 1+ and 2+ (visible in the manual picture of the back if you zoom it enough, more legible than on the amp itself), so I'm not sure what that implies about the internal connections.

That means that B's positive terminal is on 2+ of A's output connector... so we're half way there! I wonder if the negative is on 2-... but it just doesn't mention it. Ditto channels C and D. I suppose if not I could link 1- to 2- at both ends of all my speaker leads, which I imagine would work fine. Any comments about this approach?

 

Thanks for the replies so far. Not too sure about the D&B reference though... I'm not replacing any gear with D&B (wish I could afford to ** laughs out loud **)!

[dwright2104]

Thanks for the replies so far. Not too sure about the D&B reference though... I'm not replacing any gear with D&B (wish I could afford to ** laughs out loud **)!

 

 

You mentioned in the first post about the Max 12's sorry if u aint. just been in a theatre that used a crown amp to run max 12's and it just dose not work, theres too much settings programmed into the D&B amps that are typically needed.

[GridGirl]

Thanks for the replies so far. Not too sure about the D&B reference though... I'm not replacing any gear with D&B (wish I could afford to ** laughs out loud **)!

 

 

You mentioned in the first post about the Max 12's sorry if u aint. just been in a theatre that used a crown amp to run max 12's and it just dose not work, theres too much settings programmed into the D&B amps that are typically needed.

 

Errr, that was the original poster, a year ago, not Biskit!

[dbuckley]

And can I say - my D-500 popped a channel last week.

 

Not best pleased.

 

These amps may well have a three year guarantee, but I'm assumin I'm now going to have to ship the thing back tho Deutchland...

[Alex_C]

email thomann, they paid for shipping when I've had to send things back. including a 35kilo proline 3000

[callumb]

email thomann, they paid for shipping when I've had to send things back. including a 35kilo proline 3000

 

Yeh thats what I did for a mixer I had. Was two years old. Sent them an email stating the order number. They sent me a PDF with a shipping label. UPS picked it up and everything worked out perfectly! :(