I really hate these threads and shoulda kept out of it. Everyone knows someone who runs a 100w radio into a 1 pill, into a 2 pill, into a 4 pill that works perfectly. And honestly if you spend your money you can run the dog shit out of it for all I care, but bad advice on a new purchase is just bad advise.
The magnum 257hp can drive a 2 pill amp that is setup to take the pep wattage. I have a magnaforce 350hd and it worked quite well with the magnum 257hp, I now am running an older but new style TNT 600hd with toshiba 2879's and the magnum 257hp as a base. It gets great reports! And the only thing That gets warm is the rfx75, which I have a fan on that keeps it ice cold. Read the spec sheet and you will see that 60-80 watts isn't too much pep for these amps.
The spec sheet from Toshiba or XForce?
The Toshiba spec sheet says 10w pep max drive and with anything above 4w the linearity starts to drop off badly. Anything above 100-120w pep out and the IMD starts to creep way up above -24dB down. You're talking about 40w pep drive per pill on the 2 pill, and 20w pep drive per pill on the 4 pill. Now these tests are ran at 12.5vdc and most people are running at least 14vdc, but the principle is the same.
If you look at the XForce specs, the 2 pill will key 100w with a 5w input which is 13dB and pretty typical. However, it also says 120w peak drive will produce 400 peak out and that's only 5dB! The 4 pill says 10w carrier in produces 400w out, which again is 13dB and is expected. Peak drive is 240w with 1000w out and we're back down to 6dB.
Carl can say anything he likes, but he didn't make the transistor.
As for a new amp I woul really consider looking at the Dave Made amp line as well as the xforce. JMO, but to be honest most, If not most newer designs were copied from the original Dave made amps. All the guys that used to work for the old Dave made company started their own thing and the rest is history lol.
I don't know that Carl ever worked for Dave, but that's here nor there.
Anyway, you can use a 4 pill amp with that radio, just be careful and watch the carrier on ssb, use the mic gain and set it at about 1/2 way for ssb use wit the rf power turned all the way up.
SSB doesn't have a carrier.
For am with the 4 pill I keep my dead key around 2-4 watts and pep is 80 watts. I don't really look at the watt meter for numbers, more to check VSWR, but I have seen around 600-750 watts on ssb with the magnum 257hp and the TNT 600hd using a radio shack meter. This is just my expirience, hope it helps. God bless.
2-4w peaking 80w is waaay over modulated. So you've got an over modulated radio producing harmonics, and gain compression producing IMD and the whole setup makes way more heat than needed. The difference in 600w and 400w is less than 2dB plus a lot less heat and garbage.
I'm sticking to my guns, an 80w radio into an 8 pill or maybe even a 6 pill would be the better choice in transistor amplifiers. But the best option would be to use tubes that are capable of taking that drive while remaining linear.
