# Educate me on old Orion amps



## Buickmike (Aug 10, 2012)

So I already know about the reds, but what about the old school blacks or Cobalts? Are those any good? I had a Cobalt 260 for awhile as a sub amp and honestly I remember it sounding really good although people seem to bash them.

What are the technical differences between the 3 lines?


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## GEM592 (Jun 19, 2015)

I still use all 1st gen gx (black) and hcca (red). I like, in no particular order, the nostalgia, simplicity of design, relatively high availability at low cost, ease of repair (which only happens if you're using bad speakers and they short under power - no protection circuitry!), high performance, strong and detailed sound.

People complain about heat (yes they run hot, but will not ever shut off if you correctly add a fan), and "efficiency" which is almost never properly qualified. Yes better amps are available these days, but they are not much better, often have proprietary parts that get discontinued after a few years, and almost always have a bunch of needless features designed mainly to inflate the price. They are class AB, a design that really hasn't changed that much over decades.

They can be difficult to set up/use properly. They are unregulated, so your power needs to be solid (but you want that anyway) or the performance will noticeably vary with vehicle voltage - this is a tradeoff most people these days don't like. They have fixed voltage rails, so to get the best power transfer you need to operate in a certain load impedance window and accordingly set the gain or you will get clipping/overdrive during transients. Headroom is very important. Again these days people want to set it and forget it.

Don't know much about the Cobalts, never owned or operated one. Orion and PPI both had several lines of knockoffs. One of PPIs was "Special Edition" - I had an A2200 and never had a problem with it and thought it sounded great. I tend to think knockoff designs were for the most part just as good, but manufacturing quality was not.


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## GEM592 (Jun 19, 2015)

Blacks and reds are basically the same design for different output impedance specs. 

"Blacks" were designed for 4 ohm nominal / 2 ohm minimum per channel operation. 
"Reds" are the same design shifted for 2 ohm nominal / 1 ohm minimum per channel operation. 

"Reds" will often play lower (generally the smaller the amp the more you can drop the impedance "safely"), and because of this some have assumed any amp that says Orion on it will do the same. The "blacks" will not, but their quality level is really the same.

I generally use blacks for mids and highs, and reds for lows. But you don't have to, provided your load impedance/gain setting is correct. For example, since most tweeters fall into the 4 ohms or up range, they are harder to drive correctly with the red version.


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## jackk (Dec 27, 2010)

GEM592 said:


> "Blacks" were designed for 4 ohm nominal / 2 ohm minimum per channel operation.
> "Reds" are the same design shifted for 2 ohm nominal / 1 ohm minimum per channel operation.
> 
> "Reds" will often play lower (generally the smaller the amp the more you can drop the impedance "safely"), and because of this some have assumed any amp that says Orion on it will do the same. The "blacks" will not, but their quality level is really the same.



That I can confirm cos I ran an hcca 12d at 1 ohm on a black 2150sx (if I remember the model correctly) for a good 2 years w/o any issue. Yes it ran very hot but adding 2 120mm computer fans helped.

I still added fans for the now 250 driving the same 12d after 16 years....











Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## cmusic (Nov 16, 2006)

I miss the Orion HCCA amps. They were beautiful! 

Here's an overview of the HCCA amps:





Here's a HCCA 225 being tested:





A HCCA 250: 





A HCCA 2100 part one: 





and HCCA 2100 part two:





Here's the XTR-225 vs the Concept 97.3. The Concept 97.3 was the ultimate cheater amp, rated at 1/2 watt per channel:





And here is a test of the XTR-225 "Beast":





I had a friend with a four channel Cobalt amp he bought in new 1992. Two channels on the front speakers and the rear channels bridged to two 8 ohm 10" subs wired in parallel for a 4 ohm load. He installed it in a new Dodge truck he had just bought. The truck is long gone but the amp is still working today!


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## Buickmike (Aug 10, 2012)

Thanks all. Every once in awhile I see Cobalts out there dirt cheap and I'm thinking that they are probably a decent deal. I think getting an HCCA 225 (digital reference) is on my list now. I'd love to drive one hard and experiment with it.


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## Derek420 (Nov 10, 2020)

I have an Orion Hcca 225 digital refrence amp in nice shape ready to go people would run 4 15s and 18s on a 225 mine is a series 2 most peeps fav these amps can go to 1/2 to 1/4 ohm and they are so small they pound an extra battery and 0g power they can handle 16v I want to use it so bad but I got so many beast amps but my Treos aren't making me happy enough so I decided to sell or trade it I prefer trade it for 2 good old spl subs. Let me know if your interested. I can provide more pics that one is dark and don't show it's beauty


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