wow......thats some nice "old school" stuff. someone needs to put these to use....rock solid, underated power

 

had a RF Punch 400.4 and swapped it for a Power 800.4. I really noticed the difference in "clean" recordings, especially in the midrange. Don't go with too little power. You don't want your amplifier to work harder than it needs to. Just my opinion.

San

 

the 800.4 is a good amp but id take any of the old school dsm amps over it they were the best it was all down hill after that

 

a thread about that very subject on Rockford's site. Basically it says old memories don't necessarily validate opinions about "old vs new". Regardless, I feel you can never have "too much" power. The less strained your amp is, the nicer it will sound.

San

 

There's lots of opinions here already, but i'll throw mine in as well..as for the speakers you're running i've ran both of them, don't know which models u have like the type s or r for the alpines, but because they're coaxials they don't require much watts at all. infact too much is not good. if you had component sets then yea, you'd need a lil more watts. if you go w/ a 220-300 watt amp you'd be fine. another opinion of mine, i won't ever use a rockford amp, i've used a BUNCH from the old school to the newer ones. maybe highs they're a lil better, but for subwoofers they run very hot (which i never was a fan of), and they're quite big. The only rockford amp i've been satisfied with was the power series, and i used a mono block amp for my subs only. but back to the highs, i'd ultimately go with a JL amp, JL amps RAWK for both subs and highs, maybe go w/ the 300/4. you'll probably be spending a little more than other brands, but i'd say it's well worth it. you can really fine tune your highs w/ that amp and not have an equalizer. either that or go for an eclipse 220 or 240/4 amp? i don't remember exactly what it is, but i used that at one time for my alpine highs and it was more than enough. I wouldn't worry too much about making your amp push a lot for your highs. If you're running a subwoofer that requires a minimum of 1k watts and your amp pushes just that, then that's a different story. subwoofers require sufficient power, more than highs do..another thing i'd take into consideration is the deck you're running. I don't know what deck you have but decks make a HUGE difference which not too many people take into consideration. make sure your deck has at least 4-5 volt preamp outputs. this will make a huge difference with the signal it carries to your amp, you can have an excellent amp and a crappy deck and you won't be getting anything to what you're capable of having..just my 2 cents..pm if you want some ideas/advice I use to be a HUGE audio guru, but i've been out of it for the past 2 years and doubt i'll really get back into it because i got a lil one in my back seat and i don't need him to go def like me...Aloha, Brandon

 

I wasn't expecting this much response to this thread, but I really appreciate all the advice. I think I'm going with the JL 300/4. I'll make sure and let everyone know how it turns out.

J

 

Unless your speakers are extremely efficient, I'd go with more power. It really depends on your listening preferences. I'm old school and like it loud sometimes.

San

 

I don't need it to be loud, I just want it to be clean and crisp.

 

same here, but the larger amp was noticably cleaner in the midrange and slightly better up top.

San

 

that is true go with the larger amp and turn the gains down
thing of an amp like a truck towing a car up h3 sure a six cyl will do it but an 8 will do it with alot less effort
im ordering the 25 to life series amps for my car this weekend puch 75 same as a 5002 to the front 45(same as a 2002 to the rears and a 150 same as a 8002 to my subs should be fun