Owner's Manual
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To reach our goals we first developed a new forced air cooling system in a chassis with
internal heat sink fins and fans to blow the heat off the chassis. Fans blow on to the fins
to move air down the chassis, and the side vents down the side create turbulence that
sends hot air out and cold air in along the whole length of the amp.
This got us half way there. Then we found a new space-age material, to insulate the
output transistors, that can pull heat off devices much faster than the standard insulators.
So now we could transfer the heat from the devices to the chassis faster then pull the
heat off the chassis faster.
The result: We now had an amplifier that you can crank up to full volume and play that
way all day long. And, with a few upgrades in circuitry that we made, you also get:
• High Pass, Low Pass, and Band Pass crossovers
• x10 Range Switch for accurate crossover frequency selection
• Variable Sub Sonic filter using the band pass
• Variable Bass Boost
• Variable Gain
• Auxiliary RCA Output
• Available Dash Remote
In most amplifiers all these preamp controls give you more versatility but they also rob
you of signal quality. But in the Zapco Z-Series SP amps, even with crossovers and bass
boost you get over 103dB signal to noise ratio, less than 0.1% THD, and greater than 60dB
channel separation. And the SP amps get a 10% power gain from increased thermal
efficiency that reduces the "de-rating" of the output devices.
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A new standard in Sound Quality
Congratulations, on the purchase of your new Zapco Z-Series SP amplifier.
We believe you now have the finest sound available in a car sound amplifier, and we think
you should know a little bit about what makes this amp unique in a world of so many
so-so products.
The birth of the Zapco SP amplifiers
In 2012 Zapco introduced the new Z-Series of SQ amps. These amps were not conceived
so much by our engineers, as by input from audiophiles and car sound fanatics around
the world. Starting about 2004, at Zapco training seminars in Asia and in the EU, we
began running into audiophiles who were changing certain internal components in our
amplifiers to achieve what they felt was better quality sound.
With that in our minds, we developed the Z-Series amps with less measuring and more
listening. For the Z-Series of Zapco amplifiers, we experimented with internal components
and new circuits to see if we could take our amps to the next level of sound quality by
investing in different internal components and circuit designs.
The resulting Z-series and eventually the Z-series LX amps were the results of this
unique development method. These amps have been virtually unbeatable on the Car
Sound Competition circuit.
But amplifiers designed solely for sound quality run warm, and on "the street", cruising
the boulevard, or at the park with the doors open and the system cranked full on, these
amps could be driven into protection.
How do we get Z-Series sound in an amplifier for full-on, full-time cranking? We couldn't!
It wouldn't work without a much bigger chassis or a sacrifice in sound quality. So we
had to find a new way to build the amps.
And we did! The Z-150.2 SP and Z-400.2 SP stereo amps, Z-150.4 SP 4-Channel amp and
the 6-Channel Z-150.6 SP are the Zapco SP, or Super Power, amplifiers.