November 12, 2018

90's Car Amplifier (Part 1) SONY XM3020S

No doubt for the quality of 90's car audio is the best ever. They are great in sound and mighty in build. That era is a booming in the consumer industry and such as this car amplifier build by Sony, the XM-3020S is no exception.


I got this unit in mint condition. The box itself is also still in good shape consider the age of this unit is reach 20 years old.

One that you will notice about the specification of the 90's amplifier is not spectacular. Not just like today marketing gimmick on the amplifier that they put so many zero in watts, then dumb people will buy it based on that information. This is pure amplifier, they rated based on RMS watts, they are true watts for certain tolerance of distortion.

Oooh.. that Styrofoam.. almost all electronic product in 90's using it inside their box.

The cables are included in this package. They are very sufficient for standard installation.

The cables are never been use, some of the terminals has a little bit corrode due time.

And this is the amplifier unit, the neat SONY XM3020S

It is still made in Japan.

Not complete if I am not open it and find out what inside:)

Full DC to DC converter and discrete amplifier, all in one package that not more than size of both of my palm hands.

The design of the power supply is also very neat.

Discrete amplifier using TIP transistor from Sanken.

Do you notice the green capacitors? They are Nichicon Muse which very popular in the mid-range audio product in 90's. They are cheap, yet sound great.

This amplifier also can get input from the signal directly from the OEM head unit speakers output. We are talking when the head unit doesn't provide the line output. The Hi-low converter filter using high quality transformer.

I am not going deeper, I believe there are more components such as SMD and IC's at the bottom of this PCB controlling the PWM signal of the switching power supply.

Overall size of this amplifier is 25 cm in length.

And 12 cm in wide.

That's all for this great little car amplifier, I will not mind to put this in my collection.

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1 comment:

  1. Thank you posting on this cool little amp. I appreciate your time and effort. Cheers from Austin, TX!

    ReplyDelete