Patman's Plate Amp Box Construction Resource Page

The PAB (Plate Amp Box) Construction page.

Sunosub I Sunosub II Sunosub III SBS

This is a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) project. I hope to give you insight in the overall construction process of the PAB (Plate Amp Box) that I built all by myself over the course of weeks from May 25, 2002 to May 28, 2002.

Design


I'm using the Parts Express 250W plate amp model 300-794 that is widely used to power DIY subwoofers for many bass enthusiasts. It's a very versatile amp that offers many ways to tailor its power output bass boost rumble filter if you like to fiddle with amp behavior simply be either changing 2 resistor values (R26 and R27) or in conjuction with 2 more capacitor positions C14 and C15 where caps are swapped for resistors. Sometimes Parts Express offers this plate amp for $99 plus shipping (which is what I paid for it), but it's still a bargain at $135 plus shipping. The model that Parts Express is currently shipping has the bass boost removed.

Rudy (Viperoni) was nice enough to document one of the possible mods on the amp here, and a speaker/electronics guru named John K documents a few mods here. Please remember that you mod your plate amp at the risk of voiding any and all warranties, so be careful and understand what you are doing if you decide to mod your plate amp. Currently, I've left the amp in the "No Bass Boost" condition, but I've modded another similar amp (the MCM counterpart of the 300-794 plate amp) with very little trouble.

Just to recap the design specs for this effort:

Tools

I was able to use the power tools from my previous Sunosub efforts, as well as non-power tools:

Tool costs: roughly $125 - but I had all of these tools from my previous construction efforts, so dividing among 3 sunosubs, box sub, center channel speaker, 2 sets of speakers, my tool costs were about $30/subwoofer project (including tax).

Materials

As a bare minimum you'll need the following in raw materials:
Material costs - roughly $125 (these prices listed are estimates from my sieve-like memory)

Panels (quantity and dimensions):
3/4" MDF panels:


But it might be a better idea to make the box 13"x13"x5" for everything to fit better:

Personal Protection

As a bare minimum you'll need the following in personal protection - wear them while using power tools:

Hint: For faster navigation, when you click on your first picture link, don't close that 2nd window, but resize this window and position it so you can see both windows concurrently. I've designed it so that you can leave that 2nd (photo) window open, and you can click to your heart's content in this first window, and the images will only show up in that 2nd other window. This should also speed up your visit here. If you want separate windows, then right click of the photo links and select the "open in new window" option.

Day 1: May 25, 2002

I bought the scrap MDF, and took it over to the workshop of my friend, Jeff, who helps me cut the MDF into the correct panel dimensions that I drew up on a piece of paper.

Day 2: May 26, 2002

Day 3: May 27, 2002

Day 4: May 28, 2002

Not quite done yet with uploading the pix...

Comments on the plate amp


Here's some of my comments in regards to how the PAB performs in my Home Theater setup:

The power for the sub does well with both music and HT. I haven't stressed it out yet on the super-bassy DVDs, but that will be forthcoming soon.

This is what the PAB looks like hidden from sight in my HT setup:

I hope you've enjoyed looking at how I created my plate amp box! I did it because it was a relatively inexpensive project, around $125 since I made the box out of scrap MDF, and the paint was from leftover paint from other projects, but I did spend money on the machine screws, the t-nuts, and the banana plug terminal connectors. I had all of the tools I needed.

So how many have visited this webpage since 5-28-2002?

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