Sundown Amps Made in America?

[galacticmonkey 0]

I havent read the thread yet but heres my view on things:

As long as the manufacturer has tight specifications and makes sure they are upheld, uses quality materials, has a well designed product, and does a good job serving their customers, I could care less where it is built/comes from.

[troublemaker 0]

For what its worth, i think the Zenon products are about as good as you can get for the monoblocks and "regular" amps - i would love to see a Akaya/Abyss made high end SQ sundown, with jacobs fantastic crossover design implemented - and a tube or the like. Would be fantastic.

THAT would SO porno

x2 on a high end sundown SQ amp

As a distro do i get another vote to make it x3? ;)

[troublemaker 0]

Quote from Officer Steve

"Somewhere, someone counts on me to buy a product he or she builds just to keep them employed. Now its my choice, I can get one built by George Walker, in Greenbo, AL or someone with a name i cant say...

Ill take George."

George will know what the product is and will probably have one in his car. Unspeakable name person doesn't know much about the product, has never seen anyone with one and will never be able to afford one. To them it's something they make for rich Americans far away.

the issue is that the amplifier which cost $400 from Booyunwaanhunglo San is going to be $650 when George makes it.

if not more. because every COMPONENT that George uses comes from korea or china anyway.

and the best amps are normally those that are machine made for better reliability.

i was the US Amps rep before they went crap/sold out/went overseas/were bought out* (*delete as appropriate) but the real truth is if they hadn't been bought out then they wouldnt be here. period.

i met a good friend there in Greg (usampfreak) and a great engineer in Dirk, plus an enigmatic man with serious issues in Jack.

Yes i loved their amps, the TU600 is still one of my all time favorite amps. The DE amps were (and IMO still are) flawed - the early ones are the only ones though that are true to the DE concept.........i digress.

Are those amps that much better than sundowns? thats hard to say. I think that US amps designs are awesome, however i have to ask what have they done since about 2000-2001 thats really groundbreaking?

MLT is clever, but i see little application for it as the amps its on cost so much.

People dont want big class a/b amps anymore when they can have class D's for half the cost. And if its class D who cares about the finer points of SQ so meh to the best quality amp anyhow.

So i think they have somewhat lost their lead now. Shame, but a fact of life.

I would imagine that a sundown is close if not equal to a us amps in SQ, i certainly think they have a different sound - the Sundown warmer the US Amps more open (tube or transistor) - the us amps tend to sound a bit more ballsy (this is all regards a SQ side on the class a/b's by the way) but it is personal preference.

i LIKE the fact that Sundown says "yeah these come from Zenon" and dont try to lie about the amps to us (although in this modern age, people would know anyway), i love the crossover designs, and i love the service.

Therefore i think we should appreciate the good points such as those, but also celebrate the korean RELIABILITY and GOOD DESIGN that Zenon do, and understand that ALL consumer electronics is made in the far east, consider the Sony "made in japan" of 30 years ago - korea is the new japan.

and this is some of the best of the best!

Enjoy :D