Christmas Amp

I never expected the inside of an amplifier to festive, but the amp I just finished seems to give off that vibe.  I can say that I'm happy to get it working.  For what seems like a month, it has been kicking my butt.  Nothing like letting a little smoke out of some components to let you know you have screwed up.  But at least it's colorful.  When you first turn it on, it has yellow neon for about 30 seconds, then red and green LEDs lighting up the green and blue boards.

This amp is the most expensive, least efficient, and most dangerous I have done so far.  For least efficient, it puts out 25 watts of useful power but uses 180 watts just sitting there with no music playing.  That means the thing is like a space heater with heat rolling off the top all of the time its on. 

Regarding dangerous, there are 350 Volts running around inside this thing.  Part of the extra time taken to trouble shoot this baby are because I was waiting for the volts to go down.  350 Volts will kill you.

Its too early to say whether its worth the effort.  I certainly hope it sounds good.  At least its mostly finished and I can turn back to working on motorcycles.