Which Carver and Hafler amps can be easily modded and produce 500 wpc?

dlucy

dlucy67 (Doug)
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I've seen an eye-opening article on modding the M1.0t to much higher wattage and that makes me guess the other Carvers and Haflers can also be modded.

My Kappa 8's are quite happy with the 200 wpc high current HK PA2400, but I'm picking up a pair of RS-II's soon and want to find a low priced vintage amp that I can restore and mod to at least 500 wpc with the 4 ohms nominal RS-II's.

What models of Carver and Hafler should I be researching?
 
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I've seen an eye-opening article on modding the M1.0t to much higher wattage and that makes me guess the other Carvers and Haflers can also be modded.

My Kappa 8's are quite happy with the 200 wpc high current HK PA2400, but I'm picking up a pair of RS-II's soon and want to find a low priced vintage amp that I can restore and mod to at least 500 wpc with the 4 ohms nominal RS-II's.

What models of Carver and Hafler should I be researching?
 
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The only Hafler amp to meet your specs will be the XL-600. These were the last amps that were designed with David Hafler at the helm of the company and were manufactured from around 1988 - 1990 just before the Rockford buy out of Hafler and the later Jim Strickland Transnova amps came out. My XL-600 is mostly stock, I recapped the driver boards and made some resistor upgrades and replaced the bias pots. It puts out >550wpc into 4ohms @ 0.1% THD+N with both channels driven. My measurements of it are attached. It is one of the few amps that you'll find that the manufacturer actually gave a power rating into a 1 ohm load in the owners manual. The Excelinear amps are very reliable and have a delayed on & speaker protection relay built in. They use a thermostatically controlled fan which is both a positive and a negative. A positive due to the high amount of thermal dissipation it allows and a negative due to the noise the fan can add. I do find the fan noise on mine to be quite acceptable and only really noticeable between songs when its driving a hard load. A nice one can be had for $800 - $1000 and they'll only need minimal work done to them, usually a recap of the main driver boards, replace the bias pots, power up and adjust the bias and you're good to go, maybe two hours of labor. If you really want to go all out you could replace the 4 main filter capacitors too which would cost you about $150.

As far as the other amps go, the only other one I have experience with is the PL-700b which is 10+ years older than the XL-600. It puts out a massive amount of power. I rebuilt one for a friend about 4 years ago. I used some of the white oak parts but decided to rebuild the original driver board and modify the circuit using the tips that Steve Mantz of ZED audio had given on DIYAUDIO as well as user THD+N on the same forum. I rebuilt the amp with a full complimentary output stage and made changes to make it more stable. The amp's distortion dropped after the rebuild by a full order of magnitude and I didn't have a large enough dummy load at the time to test it to full power. But you can be certain it exceeds the Hafler XL-600's output. The one thing I do remember about the PL-700 is the heatsinks. They were undersized for the task and running inefficient speakers at high volumes seemed to get them hot in a hurry. They could have used a fan for sure. The PL-700 fully rebuilt will set you back a pretty penny. Even the units in need of a full rebuild are fetching very high $$$ now and if you go for the full WO rebuild this will cost you probably another $1k.

These two amps are quite different, the Hafler uses lateral mosfets in the output stage and the Phase Linear uses Bi-polar transistors. Some folks prefer the sound of one over the other.


THDvsOutputPwr_4ohm.png
 
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The only Hafler amp to meet your specs will be the XL-600. These were the last amps that were designed with David Hafler at the helm of the company and were manufactured from around 1988 - 1990 just before the Rockford buy out of Hafler and the later Jim Strickland Transnova amps came out. My XL-600 is mostly stock, I recapped the driver boards and made some resistor upgrades and replaced the bias pots. It puts out >550wpc into 4ohms @ 0.1% THD+N with both channels driven. My measurements of it are attached. It is one of the few amps that you'll find that the manufacturer actually gave a power rating into a 1 ohm load in the owners manual. The Excelinear amps are very reliable and have a delayed on & speaker protection relay built in. They use a thermostatically controlled fan which is both a positive and a negative. A positive due to the high amount of thermal dissipation it allows and a negative due to the noise the fan can add. I do find the fan noise on mine to be quite acceptable and only really noticeable between songs when its driving a hard load. A nice one can be had for $800 - $1000 and they'll only need minimal work done to them, usually a recap of the main driver boards, replace the bias pots, power up and adjust the bias and you're good to go, maybe two hours of labor. If you really want to go all out you could replace the 4 main filter capacitors too which would cost you about $150.

As far as the other amps go, the only other one I have experience with is the PL-700b which is 10+ years older than the XL-600. It puts out a massive amount of power. I rebuilt one for a friend about 4 years ago. I used some of the white oak parts but decided to rebuild the original driver board and modify the circuit using the tips that Steve Mantz of ZED audio had given on DIYAUDIO as well as user THD+N on the same forum. I rebuilt the amp with a full complimentary output stage and made changes to make it more stable. The amp's distortion dropped after the rebuild by a full order of magnitude and I didn't have a large enough dummy load at the time to test it to full power. But you can be certain it exceeds the Hafler XL-600's output. The one thing I do remember about the PL-700 is the heatsinks. They were undersized for the task and running inefficient speakers at high volumes seemed to get them hot in a hurry. They could have used a fan for sure. The PL-700 fully rebuilt will set you back a pretty penny. Even the units in need of a full rebuild are fetching very high $$$ now and if you go for the full WO rebuild this will cost you probably another $1k.

These two amps are quite different, the Hafler uses lateral mosfets in the output stage and the Phase Linear uses Bi-polar transistors. Some folks prefer the sound of one over the other.


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Very informative. When I worked for Rockford, the occasional XL-600 came in for service. We had an XL-280 driving the speakers in the raw materials warehouse for quite a long time.
 
I have to agree Hafler sounds better than any Crown. I have installed and used both. Personally I prefer QSC as it has a form of Macs power guard to protect the speakers from damage. They also have High Pass filters and other features to help protect your speakers. If it were me I would be looking for a pre-owned Mcintosh MC 452, I am afraid two MC 501's being able of putting out close to 750 watts would be too much. A MC 402 will put out 500 watts all day too. The 452 has better consistency over long periods no matter how hard you push the amp.

I know its more money but with a 452 you would never need to buy an amp again, but that can be said for its brothers and sisters, too. My reference amps are 1201's and 1.25K. Yes they sound a little different, but they both do very well at less than 1 watt as well above 1000 watts for folks who love speakers that require a ton of power. The secret is to keep the speaker lines short.
 
IMO Hafler will be much better suited for the job at hand. With a nice classy set of speakers like that, Carver is not even in the same league. I used to be a big time Carver fan boy until I realized lots of things.. that I really dont want to get into here. As I dont want to start a Carver bashing thread. Hafler is a much better product all the way around.
And before you ask.. yes.. I have owned lots of Carver. TFM-25, TFM-55, Silver 9t, SDA-490t, C-5, C-19, TX-11, TX-12, M 1.0, C-1, and plenty of others. Never have I wanted any of it back. Ever.
 
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