Hi,

I'm from Germany and I have bought an US Amps Merlin MD-23 Amp on Ebay earlier this year. I never opened it because I didn't have time to work on my car.

Today I finally wanted to look inside my new Amp and I was shocked. On the Packaging Box and the Chassis it says MD-23 but on the Board it says MD-22.

So I guess I was deceived by the Ebay seller.

But I wanted to be sure, so is there any attribute that could tell for sure which Amp I do have here?

I'm looking forward to any reply you can give me =)

Greets Eric

Pics might help to tell the difference. I also know some manufactures will make one board for multiple amps and add, subtract, upgrade components to make different amplifiers.

This is my Amp:

Pic1

Pic2

Pic3

Pic4

And these Are The only other Pics I found on the internet:

MD23

This one's of the 22, but in the Forum Post it says that he modified something, might not be useful

MD22

Uh Oh, Looking at your pictures it looks like you may have gotten scammed. Kinda looks like they switched the board on you, they didnt replace the transistor clamps and didnt hook the chassis ground back up to the power supply end.

I removed the ground and all screws on the board. What do you mean by transistor clamps?

A German Forum Member said that there were MD-23 Amps produced with a MD-22 labeled board. He said that that in the MD-23 there were used brown capacitators which have another colour than the MD-22 capacitators and green coloured load resistors instead of red ones.

I'm not sure about it, but you might be right that I got scammed.

Isn't there any attribute that can tell me for sure? Any part on the Board that is only used on the MD-23?

They appear to be the same (MD22 and MD23). What are the power specs ?

I suspect one is a newer model and the other older, with the name beeing the only diffrence

The transistor clamps are the small metal plates that press down the transistors. Each plate is secured with a screw in the middle and it presses a pair of transistors.

They're not the same, just the Board layout seems to be almost identical. For power specs look into this Thread and scroll down:

Link

I removed the ground and all screws on the board. What do you mean by transistor clamps?

A German Forum Member said that there were MD-23 Amps produced with a MD-22 labeled board. He said that that in the MD-23 there were used brown capacitators which have another colour than the MD-22 capacitators and green coloured load resistors instead of red ones.

I'm not sure about it, but you might be right that I got scammed.

Isn't there any attribute that can tell me for sure? Any part on the Board that is only used on the MD-23?

As long as you removed them. As far as using different components on the 22 board thats what I was originally thinking was that they ran a run of 23s with the 22 board. Short of getting a known 23 and comparing the component values I'm out of ideas.

They're not the same, just the Board layout seems to be almost identical. For power specs look into this Thread and scroll down:

Link

Quite a power diffrence. Especially considering the transformers seem identical in the 23 and 22 pics posted.

Other than finding someone with an MD23 that wants to list out the transistor models and comparing to what you have...I can't think of anything else.

try testing output with that big a diffrence it should be easy to tell with just a sine and a volt meter.

did you test the output. per channel at 4ohm you will either get 6 or 9 volts output. 2 ohm i believe is 12 or 15v per channel. bridged at 4ohm is the same 12 or 15v.