Amps & dead car batteries.

[piece-it pete]

Hello all!

I haven't had any good unusual posts since "flaming woofer cones", so I thought I'd share this post from AK:

Crown Gear
I have been a Crown fan ever since the DC300A replaced the DC300. Back then I bought a Crown IC-150, DC-300A and ESS amt3 speakers. Still have them, the only repair ever done was replacing melted diaphrams in the Heil air motiom transformers (my fault 1970s emerson, lake & palmer) I have used crown professionally, one time the rental car would not start at the hotel and we could not get a jump anywhere. No problem, hooked the cables from the car battery to ONE channel of the 300A and hooked up a 1.5 v penlight battery to the input of the Crown, slowly turned up that channels gain til the outputs started getting warm, waited 5 minutes then started the car. True story. I also used a D150 to drive a spark coil to trigger a strobe light lightning effect, talk about an inductive load.
All True,
Richard.

[Pete Note: not R.G. that I know of.]

Also another use for bigger amps: I read a story of how a college kid used a fairly well-known homebrew amp (can't remember the name - one version is referred to as "dbl-barrelled") to heat his dorm room when the furnace went down!

Pete

[Worf101]

I've been playing music professionally off and on since the Nixon Administration. I've used Crowns in just about everyway imaginable. I've had them survive torrential downpours, raging heat and freezing cold. One fell out the door of a moving van, bounced a couple of hundred feet before grinding to a halt on the the side of the Sunrise Highway. An hour later the sucka fired up like a champ, you couldn't kill em with a nuke. However all that being said, start a car with a Crown PA amp? As they said in the movie "Tombstone":

"You ever seen anything like that before?"
"I ain't never heard of anything like that before!"

Nuff said...

Da Skeptical Worfster

[piece-it pete]

I've been playing music professionally off and on since the Nixon Administration. I've used Crowns in just about everyway imaginable. I've had them survive torrential downpours, raging heat and freezing cold. One fell out the door of a moving van, bounced a couple of hundred feet before grinding to a halt on the the side of the Sunrise Highway. An hour later the sucka fired up like a champ, you couldn't kill em with a nuke. However all that being said, start a car with a Crown PA amp? As they said in the movie "Tombstone":

"You ever seen anything like that before?"
"I ain't never heard of anything like that before!"

Nuff said...

Da Skeptical Worfster

Wow that's one tough amp!

Since Nixon? Showing your age, the old-timer Worfster .

I checked a good chunk of his previous posts & he comes across as very mature, quite tech. savvy, somewhat no-nonsense. Perhaps someone here knows if this would work?

Pete

[skeptic]

Well it is certainly a unique way to use an audioamplifier by exploiting the response down to dc to use it as a battery charger. Crown originally made tape decks. And they were among the toughest best tape decks available. Their circuit boards were built to military specifications and the entire unit rated to survive a parachute drop in their own case. Yes they are probably among the most rugged electronic equipment ever offered to consumers. That is only one reason professionals have relied on them for 40 years.

[Worf101]

Wow that's one tough amp!

Since Nixon? Showing your age, the old-timer Worfster .

I checked a good chunk of his previous posts & he comes across as very mature, quite tech. savvy, somewhat no-nonsense. Perhaps someone here knows if this would work?

Pete

Yeah, I'm old. It's not like Moses was playing drums in my first band or anything.. but I been around. As for showing my age.... yeah so... LOL. I know too many guys from my old neighborhood that DIDN'T live to get this ole. So I'm enjoying my long slow trip into decrepidity....

Da Worfster

[Swerd]

Yeah, I'm old. It's not like Moses was playing drums in my first band or anything.. but I been around. As for showing my age.... yeah so... LOL. I know too many guys from my old neighborhood that DIDN'T live to get this ole. So I'm enjoying my long slow trip into decrepidity....

Da Worfster

Hey Worf

By far the best part of getting old is that it beats the alternative!

Tell us about your new avatar.

[piece-it pete]

Yeah, I'm old. It's not like Moses was playing drums in my first band or anything.. but I been around. As for showing my age.... yeah so... LOL. I know too many guys from my old neighborhood that DIDN'T live to get this ole. So I'm enjoying my long slow trip into decrepidity....

Da Worfster

Lol! I'm glad you made it, Worf. The United Federation of Planets wouldn't be the same without you!

Pete

PS I don't know about that Moses thing, though - that's not what I heard!! :)

[piece-it pete]

Well it is certainly a unique way to use an audioamplifier by exploiting the response down to dc to use it as a battery charger. Crown originally made tape decks. And they were among the toughest best tape decks available. Their circuit boards were built to military specifications and the entire unit rated to survive a parachute drop in their own case. Yes they are probably among the most rugged electronic equipment ever offered to consumers. That is only one reason professionals have relied on them for 40 years.

I thought you might have confirmation on this!

I'm assuming, hopefully not in a Tony Randall way :), that because a Crown manual I read says it's stable from 16 ohms to dc, that a lesser amp would probably fry?

So to heck with jumper cables. I'll keep an old monster Crown in the trunk.

Since it's back there I might as well get a transformer and hook it up to 7 subwoofers & 1 tweeter - I'll fit right in with the kids :). And if they laugh at me as an untrustworthy 30 something I'll bounce an old Crown tape deck off'em!

Pete

[Worf101]

Hey Worf

By far the best part of getting old is that it beats the alternative!

Tell us about your new avatar.

"Which wallet is yours?"

"The one that say's 'bad muthaf**ker on it!!"

One helluva character....

Da Worfster...