Back in earlier 90's, I was on military leave and visiting my home town. I stopped by the local car audio store and met a veteran who was the amp repair guy. I explained that I was looking to start a car audio build but was low on funds. He grabbed a non working Alpine 3554 amp and said come with me. He sat me down at the repair desk and guided me through removing the back cover. I looked at the circuit board and he asked me if I saw anything that looked different? I said I have no idea what I am looking at but that silver stuff is not as bright as the other silver stuff. He explained that was cold solder. He showed me how to desolder and re-solder the area. He had me hook up the amp on the test bench and it worked! He gave that amp to me and I ran it hard for 15 years.
Wow, i haven't seen this amp sense back late, 80s and early-ish 90s. They were awesome . Back then, that amps had to be about 500 american dollars or more. Car audio magazines used to have an almanac with the cost . Thanks for posting .
Todd Matsubura had a pair of 3554 amps (and two 3544s IIRC) in his IASCA Triple Crown winning TBird in the mid-90s. That inspired me to collect three 3554s, which I still have. Excellent pieces of equipment. My 1989 Alpine catalog shows both the 3539 and 3554 in it. It was a crossover year for the changing of the styling.
The caps may have tested fine but with constant use and heat the could still fail in time. What you did will ensure that your amp works for years to come. Preventatve maintenance is never a wast of time.
Shame the project didn't go as planned, but atleast it was a valuable lesson for future testing procedures and you still ended up with a clean amp. Speaking of clean amps, it would be nice to see you clean the heatsink and try to refurbish the exterior finish of the amp. I wouldn't mind using old amps except for the fact that you often find them in pretty nasty condition and full of scratches, so it's not really possible to do a clean install without some restoration. Restoring one of those old Alpine's would be an interesting video for sure.
I did restore a few amps that way, made only pictures for FB, no videos. The problem with that type of restoration is that you are losing all the logos, and factory writing. But I still might repaint it
@@RAW-CAt Yeah I guess in case of those painted lettering, you would have to make masking stencils based on the original design, paint the whole thing white, apply the masking, and then paint it the primary color. That's just an idea that came to mind, not an expert painter obviously. A ton of work for sure, but would be cool to see if it's even possible to do on your own.
Well capacitance and resistance are not the only attribute of cap. Normally only caps in PSU goes bad. Anyway if you are going to buy another caps, get all Nichicon and also do not use 16V! It is a limit for car audio and they die sooner so get 25 or 35V. Also if possible get as high as possible capacitance for these first caps. You can also try to change EL caps in preamp with WIMA, they are much better for this.
@woldemortxyz7996 They just have an extremely good reputation for being accurate, well built and lasting a very long time. They may not actually be better.
@kiklop8362 Here is the real question, though. Are the Nichicon caps of today, the same quality as they were 30 years ago? Hopefully they've maintained their reputation, but we won't know for another thirty years. 😂
Interesting project, but sorry for the REALLY bad luck with the faulty RCA cable. My best sounding amps that i bought NEW back in the days was the Alpine 3539, that was the older chassi of the Alpine 3544. Alpine speced them both as 2x150w 20hz to 20 khz. 4 ohm. 🙂👍
Well, the 3539 and the 3544 was BOTH my best sounding amps. They sounded as i remember very, very similar. If not exactly the same… Very Long time ago 😁
I am glad to see I wasn’t the only amateur that ran into problems sourcing capacitors. It is very difficult to find the larger capacitors in the low profile dimensions used in some vintage amps. In recapping my own vintage Eclipse amp I found caps that were too tall by a couple of mm so I simply did close a cutout on the original cover and left it at that.
Did Alpine shoot themselves in the foot my spending so much time and money building a high-end amplifier that hardly anyone would actually be able to use to it's full potential? Maybe it would have been smarter for them to bring down the cost? Maybe it would have sold better?
I think at that time Alpine (as many other brands) were making the best stuff they possibly could and pricing it accordingly. Only later on budget options appeared.
After watching this video would it be safe to assume that if the caps aren’t bulging and look perfectly fine then they’re probably ok? The reason I’m asking is because I have an MTX Thunder series amp from the early 90’s. The same amps Mark Eldridge used to dominate IASCA from the same time period. It works fine but it started to pick up alternator whine. Everything in it looks brand new because I’m the original owner and have taken good care of it. Never abused it or pushed it. BTW the birth sheet says it has .003 THD+N. I wish you could get your hands on one for testing. They were still made in Arizona during that time and gave Alpine and Rockford a run for the money.
I would say that if they look ok,they will be ok. Assuming that the original caps are quality ones. Especially the smaller ones. The big power supply caps might benefit a replacement, just to make the life of the amp longer. As they are working the hardest.
