Also how do they stand against the Lab Gruppen FP6400's ?

fp14000 is another beast.

@ceharden
I was Thinking That would be The Outcome 

I Would love to get an FP14000 However Its out of my league money wise and as im just starting out (Learning From A Great Mentor #CSG) i wanna take my steps slowly rather then jumping in but thanks for your opinion i appreciate it!

i also use XE2500 for HF duties on my 3 way tops and for stage monitors, only minus is i have an XE4000 which has a problem with an internal temp sensor, have contacted PKN to see i can re-calibrate this my self or if i need to send it back

is my new website that i am still building (any criticism is welcome on the sites quality )

the address will take you to the page of the speakers that the amp will be running i was thinking of putting 1 channel for top/mid & 1 channel for bass

Hi could you PM me the price please

Thanks William

same with my lab 1600's they were far better but the pkn took care of bass/sub really well . 

There is 1uf surface mount capacitor on the circuit board right next to a hole in the circuit board where the wires go to the temp sensor. Slight stresses on the board can cause the capacitor to fracture. 

We replaced them with a small tantalum bead capacitor (instead of surface mount) and they work fine.

It take about 30 seconds to replace the capacitor, and about 30-40 mins to disassemble and reasssemble the amp as there are so many damn screws.

good amps with out a doubt, but in this day and age the lack of on board dsp / digital inputs makes it very old fashioned.

 

I'm aware of two 'common' issues.

 

1. The 1uF capacitor on the temp sensor circuit. Fails due to mechanical stress on PCB. I'm told this has been/will be resolved on all future amplifiers as they are aware of the problem.

 

2. Soft start resistors. Not sure if this was a batch issue, but we had a number of amplifiers with failed soft start resistors. Replace with recommended alternative and problem solved.

 

Apart from the above 2 issues, which are in reality very simple fixes,  and can be done by anyone with reasonable soldering skills, I can only recall one faulty PKN amplifier which has had to go back to Hungary for repair - I believe it may have been a faulty user nore than a faulty amplifier though.

All the rest are fine beside some that had that temperature sensor capacitor replaced.

The temp sensor capacitor they are aware of, so Im sure this will get engineered out if it hasnt already been.

They are not willing to send me the schematics for the PSU. 

They dont understand that customers very often dont want to send the amp 1500km away to be serviced and wait 3 months to get it back.

I think this ties in with the time distribution switched from Church Sound to us, we've fixed several of these in the UK over the last few years.

I take it all PKN amps being sold in the UK now are guaranteed to be free of these known defects?

I bet that wasn't cheap either.. 

I have no intentions of making carriers rich. 

I think you were unlucky, and got caught between distributors.

Any PKN we supply we would endeavour to carry out basic repairs like this in the UK.

Within the first year it would be at no charge to the customer, and in the second year with extended warranty, we would still do the repair work for free, the only cost to the customer would be to return the amp to us, which is around £10 depending on what courier you use. We would cover return delivery charge. 

We have only ever had to return 2 amplifiers to hungary which we havent been able to repair in the UK.

Thats fair enough, I can understand your point of view, and I'm acutely aware that one bad experience is enough to lose a customer permanently, so I'm not going to try to change your mind.

I dont know the exact details of what did or didnt happen previously, but the gap for the changeover was only a few months, basically long enough for us to take a look and decide if this was appropriate for us or not. It does seem that this was a case of bad luck on timing.

I do agree however that they should probably have made a little more effort to try to help you, but hopefully this is an issue that wont happen again. Certainly this isnt something Ive experienced, they have on the whole been quite helpful with the issues we did have, even going as far as to take photos of the boards and mark the capacitor on the board that needed replacing.

The shipping cost back to Hungary though, is an issue. Where they are trying to keep the amplifiers competitively priced I would imagine they cant afford to absorb the shipping costs, and this does tend to make any warranty issue that cant be sorted in the UK, something of a problem.

Should you get any more issues in the future, we are more than happy to help.

but thanks everyone for your input it is highly appreciated

Thanks Again

U.Viktor wrote: I have uploaded the picture what I obtained from the PKN guys : So it is a 0.1EUR surface-mounted component( 1uF 25V X7R) underneath the amplifier side, and we have replaced it by a small "legged-type" of cap in 10 minutes then the problem has gone. It is still difficult to imagine for me what need to do with the amp to break this component!

If you look where the capacitor is located, it is between 2 holes on the PCB, that short section of PCB will be more prone to mechanical stresses and vibrations than any other part of the PCB.

You are correct in that GOOD racks, with rear support rails, and ideally shock-mounted racks between the inner sleeve and outer sleeve are the best solution - but not everyone can afford the expense (although I agree usually worth it in the long run)

If you travel a lot, the vibration from a diesel engine will find its way to every component, and if that part of the PCB can vibrate too much, there is a chance of failure.

Ive not had this happen to ANY other component on a PKN board, so my conclusion is that it must be the location of this component - right next to  two wires which can vibrate...

small hi jack, i have an XE4000 with this problem, i am overseas at present so would like to send to you for this mod early next year. the amp was stored for about a year and i thought i would use it and next thing the temp is jumping all over the place, 

From memory, on the XE range the temperature displayed will jump up and down randomly. It'll be happily showing 20 degrees, and then suddenly jump up and show 50- 70 degrees.

On the XD series, I believe the temperature warning light comes on, even though the unit isn't warm.

cravings wrote: ok. i've never noticed the temp light on any of my XD amps. in winter, they do cycle through a high speed fan routine a few times before they power on.. but they've always done that and i figured it's by design.

I'm sure you are fine then.

Most Class D amplifiers are tending to use similar power ratings to PKN, which is a pulse power rating. This power rating works well for live music where there are high dynamics, as the PKN amplifier can delivery the very high demand for short peaks of power, and it does this without clipping and distorting. The Pulse rating of the XD6000 is 3650W into 4 ohms, in reality what you can use of this will be a little lower.

For a comparative example, the XD4000 was put under 'test' - it's 'rated' power is 2100W per channel, and in tests around 1900W was measured.

http://www.abeltronics.co.uk/amptesting.php?z=PKN_Controls_XD4000

I would expect the XD6000 to be similar.

Never heard about an XD10000, if you mean XE10000, i prefeer for personal choice to stay without DSP.

FFA1000 is rated at 3000W into 4 ohms, and the PKN XD6000 is rated at 3650W into 4 ohms.

If you were happy with the FFA, then I expect you will be happy with the PKN.

Best option is to try to arrange a demo with someone in your area.

i do however like a lot of headroom...and it is an expensive habit

Because they are like rocking horse poo.

but we cant get hold of XE10000 or XD10000

More powerfull amos like the XD/XE10000 are for having the headroom and not to worry of losing the dynamics. Not to push every last watt to the speaker.

sorry to be pedantic but headroom is the difference between the average level and the max output of the system. there is no need to put an average of 1700W into a speaker just because it is rated at 1700W and no need to have amps twice the rating of the speakers - if you have plenty of speakers and amps you can still operate with plenty of headroom in the system.

So you're saying this little 15" + 1" powered speaker with a 2" voice coil on the 15 made from cheese wont actually give me 800W of thumping bass? damn... gonna have to rethink my master plan....

No........ go for it... You could call it....wait I have it....erm......um..... Skytec!

The few issues i have had, including a temp issue they where very good about fixing .

Some of my XE6000 are now coming on 10 years and still going strong! Great amps.

Unfortunately i am too far away right now to be able to dig the picture of the location and cap value.

Have you had a play with temperature calibration? Do PKN have any instructions?

If you go to temp calibration menu and when it says "enter password" press both jog wheels in then up and down on both sides...

At the moment I'm driving my 4 BMS 18S430V2 and 15S330 (with 4554) on two I-tech 4000's.

Per Itech one channel sub, and one mid/high. Now I have no headroom what so all on the subs, and I just need some more power. Ofcourse I could switch one 4000 with a 6000 or maybe even a 8000, but before I make this decision I would like to look at some other options.

-Lab gruppen PLM10000Q (instead of two Itech 4000) yes I know this is not a big step in power, but it has a very nice DSP, and I could use it in bridge with another amp if it needs to go loud.

-2X PKN XE6000 with Xilica XP3060

There are so much options and nice stuff 

One problem with the I-tech is still reliability, the current ones I have, have been serviced and are now up to spec. Probably something that's not the case with all I-techs.

That is a very stupid comparison. It might be 7 times cheaper, if it can not do subs as good as the other amp, then whats the point of being cheap?

Two XE6000 will still sound weaker because they dont do subs very well.

Cant speak of the XE10000 because you are the only one that has actually seen it in real life.

For the rest of us, it does not exist. 

I switched from Macrotech 9000i to PKN XE6000, and I found the PKN blew the crown out of the water, hands down no contest. 

I have been running my XE6000s for years and they have never failed to impress. 

I even recently did a AB comparison with a Powersoft K10, including measurements (not calibrated but the same for both).  

In this test while I could detect a slight audible difference between the two amps, I measured no difference in frequency response. To my ears the PKN sounded cleaner, but the slightly rougher sound of the K10 lent it self well to Bass driven music. imo, however this difference was very small.

My results maybe because I don't drive my amps to clip and leave them there all night. Typically I aim to have plenty of head room in my amps and system, maybe the PKNs do start to sag on sub-bass when driven to max for prolonged period? But is this really how you guys choose to run your systems?

Yes, we have gone trough this topic million times before. PKN is cleaner, more precise, and all that.

Which is exactly why you can hear others "sounding" louder. I even talked with Peter if they can run the limiters a little less conservative and let a bit of distortion pass trough.

It will add to the heaviness of the subs. 

I think that no other D class amp can sound on tops as the XE6000 does on my line array. I simply love it. 

But for subs i chose other amps.