Well, it's been over a month since my last post. Such a long time. Now that doesn't mean I have neglected my thrifty ways, mind you!
Yesterday we went to the Oklahoma Arts Festival and took in the nice weather and the starving artists' works. It didn't last as long as I figured it would, since it's a pretty big event.
Anyways afterwards we went thrift hunting at the usual Goodwill stores. The intention was to let Rosey go find baby clothes for her best friend, who's pregnant with her first child. It just happens that Goodwill is also one of my favorite place(s) to go. We went to the one on SW 89th st and Penn first, since she didn't really look too much there last week. We walk in and she goes to get some clothes, and I do my walk back to see if that pair of Advent 1's were there from last week. I've read that they're some pretty awesome speakers, unfortunately one was water damaged and the cone on the woofer was disintegrated. It was probably a $5 fix for a $15 set of speakers that could easily bring in $150. They were there, and still marked at $15. I passed on them again, and went to their crappy electronics section. This store never has anything good.
The first thing that I spot is some weird rackmont piece that's silver. My eyes were blurry since I had my prescription sunglasses on (they're old) so I had to let them adjust. Instead of looking to see what it was, I just knelt down and grabbed it. Upon further inspection I saw the price tags for $10, so I didn't figure it was anything special. The front said "XTi 1000". Big whoop, some random off brand piece of hardware. Then the brand logo was revealed from under my hand: "Crown".
Really? A Crown amp sitting in Goodwill? And for ten dollars mind you. This thing was in excellent shape. I plugged it in, and it booted up (I say that for an amp because this one has an LCD). Great! Blinded by my thriftiness I just walked over to Rosey, told her what I found, and bolted for the register. I paid for it and put it in the trunk. We picked out baby clothing after that and left.
I didn't find much else, just some box called "Prozone". I'm guessing it's an ozone generator with a UV lamp inside. It now sits behind the kitty litter box.
Anyways we got home and I waited until the rain stopped to bring the amp insite. It really was in great shape as you can see from the picture above. Well I hooked it up, but realized this thing only takes balanced XLR plugs instead of the normal 1/4" Phono or RCA plug. The previous owner had ghetto-rigged a $.02 RCA cable into a cheapo XLR plug, but only did it with one. Well I guess I could test one channel at a time, which I did. I hooked it up to my B&W 2000's and well, it sounds pretty good. It's no NAD amp, but for how much power it puts out, it's certainly a clean one. The specs list .02% THD which is pretty good, with 275w per channel into 8ohms and 500w into 4 ohms, which is damn powerful. Price tag? $499, and it's still a current model!
Well now I'm on a quest for a decent set of XLR connectors, unless I use this with my new EMU 1212 sound card which has 1/4" TRS connectors. I'm positive they make TRS to XLR since they're both balanced.
But what about the black amp sitting underneath the Crown? That's a Behringer EP1500 amplifier that I picked up the day before, not knowing this Crown would come into my hands. I was going to use the Behringer with a passive subwoofer in my home theater, well I probably still will, unless the Crown does a better job. I've been eying this set of Polk Audio subwoofers that have their amplifiers removed but come with a beautiful ebony enclosure and dual 10" subwoofers with a power handling of 1000w rms. I'm thinking of getting two, wiring them to 2Ohms each, and driving 700w to each with the Crown, or the same with the Behringer.
I tested the Behringer the day before, it uses XLR and 1/4" inputs, which means I can use the 1/4" to RCA plugs I bought for my sound card. Sound quality? Great, along with punchy bass and tons of headroom. 260 watts per channel at 8 ohms, this amp is very similar to the Crown, at 1/3 the cost.
I like them both, we'll see if I flip them or not!
Crown Rating:
Price: $10
Status: Probably flip it
Condition: 5.00 Stars
Cost: .5 stars
Flippable: 4.5 Stars
Potential Income: $300-400
Behringer Rating:
Price: $100
Status: Keeper
Condition: 4.75 Stars
Cost: 2 Stars
Flippable: 3.00 Stars
Potential Income: $50
