TFade Testing: Taramps HD8000

This won’t be as detailed as usual, but it’s what I have for now. I’ll come back and update it as I gather more data.

I finally got around to testing one of my Taramps 8k. As most of you know by now, I really liked the 3k that I had so I wasn’t much worried about the 8k’s performance. I assumed it would be similar but scaled up.

Just for size reference here. That’s an American Bass 650.1 (which is like a 6k.)

There are always questions/concerns about an 8k having single power and ground inputs. We all know that the amps are really efficient, but they’re not magical. It still takes power to make power and as you can see here, the inputs swallow up 1/0. These will actually fit 4/0awg.

I don’t have any pics of the control side, but those are easily found. The pots are adjustable by hand. I like that. There is only one set of speaker terminals. That’s a pain in the ass, but since it’s more of a voltage monster and not so much a current maker, I guess it’s ok.

Setting it up unloaded. According to Taramps, 130acv is the sweet spot on this amp. And that looks to be just about right according to the amp monitor that was included with the 8k. The scope agrees. That “clip” light isn’t just on/off. The worse the clipping gets, the brighter it gets. It’s almost impossible to tell, but it’s really dim here so we’re just getting into distortion.

This is what you get if you get the clip light all the way off. Still a good bit of voltage, but pretty conservative for a Brazilian.

I apologize in advance for the slack pics of the testing. And for the lack of a scope reading in the loaded pics. It was freaking out on me and I didn’t have enough hands and eyes to keep track of everything and take pics. I know… I’m lame.

This is 5 ohms resistive (like the dyno). This is 2,500w @ 5 ohms and 13.1v with an impressive 91% efficiency. That is just lovely. Since the scope was being a bitch, I was relying on the clip light. You can see it’s illuminated, but it’s around the same “brightness” as the 130v unloaded. I’m ok with it here. This was the same volume and gain as it was unloaded.

Like I said… I didn’t/couldn’t get the data filled pics I usually get, so whatever.

This is 2.5 resistive. 4,850w @ 2.5 ohms and 12.3v. I still had the DC clamp on 400A so it’s “OL”. The next pull revealed it was 415A which would make it 95% efficient. I don’t believe that so let’s just say it’s maintaining good efficiency. And you can see here there’s no clip light (if you trust it).

Unfortunately… this was the last screenshot I got from this one. And the only one I got at 1 ohm resistive.

5,900w @ 1 ohm and 11.3v. With voltage this low and taxing the amp this hard, efficiency dropped to a rather pedestrian 74%. Which is still pretty good, actually.

While pushing and pushing this amp, I noticed that I could illuminate the red “protect” light, but the amp never protected. So, it must be more of a “danger” light than an indication that the amp has gone into protect.

On the 1 ohm resistive runs, I decided to test the low voltage protection since I will probably be flirting with it all season. I think Taramps says it protects at 10.5v so I just turned the amp loose and let it eat at 1 ohm resistive until it popped or protected.

Well….

Whoopsie.

Such is life. So, it never protected, which is odd. But here’s the thing… it popped due to too much power. How retarded is that? Lol. Something Shizzon has been trying to tell us is that this damn amp’s components aren’t rated to produce or even handle 8k for sustained periods. This is the 1 ohm version, but… it’s not supposed to see 1 ohm. Huh? I’m sure he will chime in here and reiterate what he was trying to convey in his “Brazilian vs. Korean” thread.

Taramps is, apparently, counting on your box rise. You’ve heard that you’re not supposed to wire Brazilians down, right? Well, this is why. They’re not supposed to see their lowest rated impedance. And I just don’t even know what to say about that. I mean, we all know we’re not supposed to wire below lowest rated impedance, but we’ve been spoiled by bulletproof Koreans.

Bottom line is, wire this thing to 1 ohm nominal and expect 5-6k after rise. The other thing is… these things are made to live at battery voltages. They don’t even like alternator charging levels. Why? Because it will cause them to make too much power. Sheesh.

I still have (2) more of these to gather more data from so I’m not ready to call it just yet. But you really need to know what you’re getting into when you buy this amp. Don’t charge too high or wire too low and you should have just as much reliability as a Korean. Price to performance is still there and you can see it’s a very efficient voltage machine.

I’m still a fan, but this was definitely a chink in the Taramps armor. I’m putting one of the others in my truck at 1.2 daily so I will update this thread periodically. Wish me luck!