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Nakamichi PA-100 The Smallest Car Audio Amplifier

I make this post after I cleaned my storage room last weekend.

I found this unique small car amplifier. It is Nakamichi PA-100. This finding is surprising me since I don't know that I still keep this old school amplifier until now.

If I don't mistaken, I bought this small amplifier in the second hand condition around late 90's and I have no idea where is it now until I found it.
 

Nakamichi PA-100 is the original car amplifier that made in Japan. This is not a today Nakamichi brand that owned by other Asian company.

This amplifier size is so small, just the same size of your palm of the hand. It is built by all thick aluminum casing that use for the amplifier heat-sink as well. The bottom plate is also an aluminum sheet with gold wording as the characteristic of all original Nakamichi amplifier at that era.


This amplifier power output is only 14 watt per channel. By any means, this is a small power output compares to today amplifier.

I have a question across my mind about how this amplifier perform. Will it compete with the built-in car head unit amplifier that have bigger output power? As we all know head unit like Pioneer, Sony or Alpine have the power output much bigger than this. But I don't know how is the sound quality.

The good point with this amplifier is it has independent gain control for each channel. This could be a useful adjustment for each channel gain to get more balanced sound level.


As my curiosity go up, I want disassembly this unit and look the components inside.

I found this unit using high quality electrolytic capacitor such as Nichicon MUSE and Elna Cerafine only for the input capacitor. The cables for the RCA input is using hi-grade copper shielded cables.

I have a difficulty to taking photo of the power amplifier IC. For sure the IC is TA7240AP using one per channel.
 


That's all about this Nakamichi PA-100 power amplifier that looks nice and I glad I still have it.

Disclaimer: Any statement and photos in this article are not allowed to copy or publish without written permission from the writer. Any injury or loss from following tips in this article is not under writer responsibility.
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