To rack mount main power amps is the ideal approach for a band with high power level requirements and it's at this market that this powerful amp is aimed.

To drive a stereo PA you would need a pair of these amps and a mixing desk that provides an input of 800 mV at 50 K. The output is then given as 150 watts rms into 4 ohms. We had several criticisms of the design, none of its workings.

Only one output jack socket is provided and although ideally it will only drive one enclosure, there are emergencies when it could be necessary to hitch up a pair. This would cause some delay splitting the output. We also felt that despite being designed for rack mounting some of the exposed components on the exposed printed circuit board were "standing off" too far without any support and there was a real risk of damage to components and wiring during racking and unracking for this reason. It would almost certainly be necessary to solder a new mains cable on the unit for connection to the main rack supply as the one fitted was supplied with a moulded Continental two pin plug, was too short for practical purposes and had no earth core (although the rack naturally earths the chassis).

In performance the amp worked extremely well and on subjective tests offered no self-colouration to the input signal. Power was available in massive doses and the only control fitted (gain level) worked well.

It's a competitively priced unit despite being an import and it is definitely intended for professional use. However if one or two small design faults were ironed out it would offer a challenge to some of the more expensive slave units they would find hard to meet.

Retail Price £110.16