DAVE MADE?

[Sonar]

This recently sold on eBay for $750. It was specifically advertised and labeled as a Dave Made. I recently saw a YouTube clip of a knockoff Dave made. This one looks very close to the one in the clip. My technical knowledge isn't good enough to discern whether it is or isn't. I'm sure many of you will know within a second if this is a Dave Made or a hand grenade. I was also thinking that if it indeed is not a Dave made, that would be an outright deceptive description, and the buyer could probably get a refund if he indeed chose to do so. I have read and heard that there was a guy in the Carolinas building amplifiers and labeling them as Dave Maad when they are not. 73

 

[LeapFrog]

While i'm not old enough to have owned a DaveMade in the hay-day..
This one seems to have a mechanical connection made between the component leads (twisted together/hooked) before soldering was done. (Mikes talks about that in his review of the copy-cat amp) Anyway it is hard to tell from the picture if the leads are twisted around each other or not, this amp looks like it has some age to it, if that means anything at all.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

WOW! Why use a single hefty transformer when three will do. Also why bother with a few decent high current rectifiers when a half dozen cheap bridge rectifiers in parallel will do. The more I see stuff like this the more I miss working on commercial gear.

 

[543_Dallas]

Joe in NC has been building these amps for years. Mikes radio repair was 15 to 20 years late when he solved the mystery of the fake davemade.

 

[Sonar]

Joe in NC has been building these amps for years. Mikes radio repair was 15 to 20 years late when he solved the mystery of the fake davemade.

Even with the differences between the one I showed and the clip your conclusion is they were both make by the same guy (Joe?) Honestly until Mike's clip I did not know about the knockoffs. I've been out of the hobby to long. Although my knowledge is little I couldn't imagine the guy who built those excellent sounding transmitters built amp. If I were the person who spent $750 I'd be pissed big time. Besides Nostalgia I don't know why people keep buying these amplifiers?! I myself with a lot of advice for you guys and some time for it to sink in have realized that CB amplifiers no matter how popular they were back in the day is not the way to go. I owned my amps for quite a while. That and an uneducation is why I ever acquire them in the first place. Those days are definitely long gone.

 

[543_Dallas]

Even with the differences between the one I showed and the clip your conclusion is they were both make by the same guy (Joe?) Honestly until Mike's clip I did not know about the knockoffs. I've been out of the hobby to long. Although my knowledge is little I couldn't imagine the guy who built those excellent sounding transmitters built amp. If I were the person who spent $750 I'd be pissed big time. Besides Nostalgia I don't know why people keep buying these amplifiers?! I myself with a lot of advice for you guys and some time for it to sink in have realized that CB amplifiers no matter how popular they were back in the day is not the way to go. I owned my amps for quite a while. That and an uneducation is why I ever acquire them in the first place. Those days are definitely long gone.

Dave from NJ designed the amp that fat boy, xforce and everyone else builds today. It was designed to run on 20 volts and to be used in a competition situation. He didn't intend for it to be clean or used for rag chew. The guys copying the design sell them as such.

My understanding is that Joe was an assembler for Dave. He kept on doing it after after Dave moved on to other things. Unless Joe has really slacked off in the last several years the mobile amps be built are still one of the best out there for a class C comp amp. The layout and tuning are right and the cooling system works.

The base amps are built in a case more suitable for a tube amp. There is nothing forcing air flow across the heatsink. The whole power supply sucks. A person woukd be better off with a joemade mobile amp and a separate power supply.

You're absolutely right. There aren't any good CB amps commercially made. Unless you can build it yourself or know someone that will the best you can do is a ham amp. Most of those are built with ssb in mind and are stressed in AM mode.