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DaveMade,Fatboy or Xforce

I mostly us am and talk to my local buddy's around the valley,but when conditions are good I do go and use SSB and talk as far as my antenna will let me.
Since looking into amps I have heard that the Fatboys have lost good build guality and cheaper parts,I don't know this is what I have heard and yes I like Davemade but much more $$$ for my pocket book and no SSB and then their's Xforce they meet all I need SSB,Pre amp and good price.I have made my mind on the builder.Now to see if it will be a 6 or 8 pill on the 98vhp.Very good comments and advise,thanks you everyone!
 
ElectronTubesRule said:
Have you considered an RCI 2970 and Switching Power Supply??? Good AM audio, good swing, rock solid SSB, dual VFO very fine small increments of adjustment using the carrot under the last digit more then any slide mod and RIT pot could hop to give and both transmit and receive adjust at the same time. Compact well more so then a 2995dx so if you wanted too or needed to go mobile or pack it in to a remote location you could.Plus a 2970 sells faster should you want to unload it.

It has more then enough power to drive a 4-6 pill that has no driver of it's own. If you should get a unit with a driver too easy to turn the RF output down. I only like rack mount base's if all the space inside the chassis is being used up for parts. The 2995dx is like a bag of huge bag of chip's it is mostly air space not chips int hat big huge bag!Plus OEM never put a good power supply in their base units they always cut corners their compromising the unit both it's output potential and it's long term stability.

If you buy from a reputable shop you can get a TX 500 in what ever flavor suite you and have them fix the weak links inside of it. The POA company's products aka Texastar has well known weak spot's that any tech that has sold more then 5 of them has had to repair for people. So it is not hard to upgrade the weak links before you let the customer take it out the door!

The first 600 watt's is the most important do not get anything that is not at least 600 clean rms watts not pep. Second using Speech compression can give you 1 additional S unit. Most people get 2-3 S units by going to 600 watts and only 1 addition when they double it to 1200. So you could get the same effect or darn close to it by combining 600 RMS watts with speech compressor not a modulator a true speech compressor. The speech compressor will only cost you $49-$60 plus install but going from 600watts to 1200 will cost a lot becasue in that power range you need more storage capacity,more alternator output, much heavier power cables, you name it!

So if it where me and I was limited to solid state bipolar type transistors that worked at 12 volts only I would look for a 6 transistor AB class amp with 2SC2879 transistors. I would remove the swamping circuit so I did not need to drive 100 watt's into the unit and I would match that to something like a 2970 with a an SP1-A speech compressor. I would run the 2970 with the dial at 9 O'Clock most of the time and let it swing. If i wanted more I would turn it to 12 O'Clock and again let it swing. If I was needing to break through a pile up or just really wanted to be heard I would then switch on the speech processor.

I would keep plenty of common failure prone parts on hand so that if and when I let the smoke out I could replace the parts at my leisure.I have never blown an amp before in my life because I never over drive them. I compromise the output power of the radio so that if I am an idiot and forget to rotate the RF knob I can not over drive my amp!It also prevents temptation from taking hold and pushing it just a little harder just a little more and poof......Blue smoke!

I have to admit though that I like Booty Monster's advice. Even though Ameritron is not know for their fantastic build quality or customer service in recent years I prefer tubes over solid state for non-mobil use.

To be honest though a nice auto tune circuit board and a more tightly regulated power supply then they had in the 1970's and earlier and a tube mobil would not be bad at all. It would just be a more power hungry beast is all. I think that today you could do a nice clean 350-400 watts rms in a ceramic to metal triode and single tube set up would probably be fantastic sounding. I think the trick would be to go with indirect heated triode. I think it would behave better under iffy power conditions causing voltage fluctuations like running it with the engine turned off. Control Grids and direct heating do not like to see power fluctuations at all. I might have to explore that at some point it would be fun to play around with a tube mobil so long as you did not have to do the tun and load every time you switched freq. !!!!I bet if we made it single band aka mono band we could eliminate the expensive and tricky auto tune circuitry and still get away with a lot like say mono band 6m tube linear. If we made it fixed bias and just ran ssb it would be even easier to pull off.

You know I do not know if you have thought about this but if you did get a tube amp with 811A's you could always upgrade to 813's I think and get even more power out latter on if you wanted to. You can not really jump up much better in a Bipolar HF transistor then the 2SC2879 it is about as good as it gets until you step up to 24VDC or 50VDC and then you are not looking at Bipolar transistors either so the entire amp would not be right for the new transistors.

Just something to think about? Also you know you can buy an auto-tune board for the input side of any tube amp. The 2008 ARRL Hand Book has an amp project that features one and they give the name and adress I think of the company. They sell the board separately for those that want to work it into their amp or as black box. Might look into that if the only thing you hate about tube amps is the constant tune and load tune and load etc....
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I do like the RCI 2970dx for the base but I do like the meters on the 2995dx since I do watch for meter reading for friends.I thought I would go with the 98vhp witch it has more options I like.The 94HP and 4 pill in the mobile and 98vhp and 6 or 8 pill on the base antenna.
 
psycho said:
He'll grumble then the call will end.
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Well I suppose if that happens then Joe has poor customer service and his amplifiers are no better and will have no more resale value than any other True DaveMade design which is from New Jersey by the way so X-force or Fatboy is the way to go since they offer B-biasing without the phone hangup.

The quality of the building is the same bewteen all of these amps as I've owned all of them so I know and one will not do a single watt more than it's comparative.
 
My experience concerning the 3 examples is different. Living in Philly I can hear and do talk to the original DM. He is fine (there were some health concerns earlier this year and he's getting better) and he's just being low key. I don't know and never knew Joe but he's not the engineer Dave is. I'm not knocking Joe or FatBoy or XForce. They have a right to be in their competitive business'. Sidewinder represents what DM New Jersey has morphed into. He's making antennas, working on wideband audio among other things. Biasing would definately NOT be a problem.


3's
 
mackmobile43 said:
Well I suppose if that happens then Joe has poor customer service and his amplifiers are no better and will have no more resale value than any other True DaveMade design which is from New Jersey by the way so X-force or Fatboy is the way to go since they offer B-biasing without the phone hangup.

The quality of the building is the same bewteen all of these amps as I've owned all of them so I know and one will not do a single watt more than it's comparative.
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Whatever I own at the time is always the best! My brother's best friends ex father in law's mechanic's son owned a fatboy and didn't like it....I'll never buy another fatboy for that review.
When a which is the best amp question is asked, that is the crap you have to sort through.
 
psycho said:
Whatever I own at the time is always the best! My brother's best friends ex father in law's mechanic's son owned a fatboy and didn't like it....I'll never buy another fatboy for that review.
When a which is the best amp question is asked, that is the crap you have to sort through.
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Well the post was about the main 3 builders so I answered on that basis but if the truth be known my amps are the best.
 
i figured running it at 1000 watts would draw similar current to a 6 pill class c doing 1200 - 1500 watts .
 
BOOTY MONSTER said:
i figured running it at 1000 watts would draw similar current to a 6 pill class c doing 1200 - 1500 watts .
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You have the right idea and 500 watts would not make a big difference anyhow but having the biasing you would tell the difference.

And I will go out on a limb and say the Carolina DaveMade Joe is a cb hack if he will not bias an amp that he builds for SSB mode.
 

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