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Reviews For: SGC SG-500 Smart Power Cube

Category: Amplifiers: RF Power - HF & HF+6M

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Review Summary For : SGC SG-500 Smart Power Cube
Reviews: 35MSRP: 1395.00
Description:
Amplifier: One KW - Model SG-500 SmartPowerCube
Product is not in production
More Info: https://www.sgcworld.com/ampProductPage.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00354.2
K3PZ Rating: 2002-07-17
Great Amp - Great Company! Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
This is one super little amplifier! It really does't get any easier than this. 600+ watts out, automatic band switching, reliablity backed up by a super company that has a first rate service organization. If you are looking for a no-nonsense, compact, solid state amplifier, you can't go wrong with the SG-500. This is the 4th SGC product that I have bought (auto couplers also)and I am a very satisifed customer!

Paul
K3PZ
Myrtle Beach, SC
VE2HPC Rating: 2002-06-30
Highly recommended ! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I recently bought a used SGC SG 500 Power Cube for use at home in a fixed application. What a pleasant surprise! The unit worked the first time and changed my operating experience for the better. I can only use a G5RV antenna at this location and did not have the best of performance against the big guns around. With the SG 500, this has changed. Once I place it on line, "I can work them if I can hear them" The unit compensate for the lack of a proper tower and beam antenna and I get great reports. As far as technical back up go, I went to the SGC Web site and downloaded the operating manual and I was in bussiness within a few minutes. I am using a Marine battery as a power supply and it performs well in providing the 50 amps input current required for SSB operation. 500 watts each and every time with the flick of a switch. If you have a limited antenna system, this unit will compensate for it. It is important to note that an antenna tuner is not required and therefore, an additional saving. You can select a frequency and transmit. No fuss. The unit is just about fool proof as it is fully protected for all parameters. SGC has a very good Microprocessor Controlled Linear Amplifier in the SG 500 and the name says it all. "Smart Power Cube"
NX7U Rating: 2000-09-24
Top-Notch mobile Amp Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Recently installed in my mobile station. Small size and no fan (so quiet!), plus idiot-proof protection (voltage droop, overcurrent/current imbalance, vswr, thermal) mean it is pretty much install-and-forget. I get 600W easily on all bands, dropping to 450W or so on 10m (Bird 43) with about 35W of drive from my FT-100.
Think BIG for your auto electrical system...my 130A Motorcraft alternator can barely keep up with this thing. I have perceptible light-dimming when the amp is keyed, with only a 5' run of 4AWG directly to the battery.
One caveat to buyers, especially those buying used, is that this thing comes in at least 3 unmarked flavors--that is, mine is different from both the previous reviews. I have manual switches on the front panel for auto/manual selection of PTT and Filter Bank, as well as a 7-terminal control input for manually selecting the output filter. Short the terminal and filter is selected. It was pretty simple to rig up a TTL-interface between my FT-100 and the SG-500, now I have fully automatic bandswitching. But as noted, the docs are not 100%...mine tells of a remote power on-off header that doesn't exist (and for mobile I wish it really did), and originally I wired my interface off the picture on the back, to find later that my unit had switched the terminal positions for PTT and ALC! Come on SGC, ever heard of VERSION NUMBERS?
One other minor detail, the ALC is positive, I haven't seen a + ALC radio in some time. Easy to get around (and ALC is bolting the barn after the horse anyway) but still...
In any event, for big mobile sigs can't deny that this guy is tops. If your rig has band-data output (and almost all of them do anymore) it's worry-free QRO.
http://www.primenet.com/~nx7u/mobile/mobile_home.html
W8ZR Rating: 2000-02-22
Generally pleased, but switching and control circu Time Owned: unknown months.
I recently acquired a late-model SG-500 (with the auto/manual switches on the outside), and have used it with my Kachina transceiver. In most respects it is a great amplifier, putting out 500-600 watts with the the matching SGC PS-50 power supply. The amp is quiet (no fan), and the computer control is very sophisticated. It's a real workhorse.
My main quibbles with the amp pertain to the control circuitry. In the "auto" mode, the amp detects rf drive and automatically selects the appropriate filter bank and engages the T/R relay. In the manual T/R mode, the amp activates the T/R relay when the PTT line is closed, but still senses and switches automatically (using other relays) the appropriate filter bank. This "semi-automatic" feature introduces a delay in bringing the amp on-line, since the filter bank isn't selected until the operator actually begins speaking. The switching threshold seems to be several watts of drive, which seems to clip the first few syllables of speech (until the amp and filter come on-line) and results in annoying relay-clicking. A better (and, I think, easily implemented) solution would be for the software to "remember" the previously used filter selection and keep it engaged until the amp detects a different drive frequency. It is possible to "lock in" a filter selection, but only by grounding the manual filter select line, which is inconvenient.
My only other quibble with the amp is the instruction manual, which doesn't reflect updated design changes in the circuitry, and which is so poorly duplicated that some of the part numbers on the circuit diagrams are illegible. On the plus side, the company is very quick to respond to inquiries and very helpful. The amp is made to very high commercial standards of worksmanship and quality.
The PS-50 AC power supply is an interesting design, by the way. It consists of four separate unregulated supplies (with separate transformers, rectifiers, and filter banks) wired in parallel, in one compact enclosure, and controlled by one power switch.The unregulated design allows very high peak currents to be drawn from the capacitor banks, and the low output impedance provides an adequate "stiffness" to the regulation. It works great, and I'm surprised other manufacturers don't steal the concept. There's simply no need for a highly regulated 12V supply for most ham gear, and the dynamic reserve of the unregulated design is a real plus.The SG-500 is expensive, but you get what you pay for. If the company would upgrade the software, it would be a real winner.
K4IQ Rating: 1999-10-11
Excellent build quality, conservative design Time Owned: unknown months.
I bought one of these in late 1995, so I got a fairly early model. I used it for HF mobile, and occasional back-up for the big amp. As a mobile unit, pluses include nice output power (700 or so) with a running alternator, very smooth, relay-optional, keying (I had an IC-706, so the rf actuated keying was nice), while minuses were limited to the over-sensitive SWR protection (which would shut down for even a momentary SWR spike like going under an overpass on the highway) and sensitivity to setting the drive power between about 30 and 70 watts: sometimes it's hard to find just the right setting that will reliably key the TX relay, but not so much that it goes into the "attenuator" mode, which cuts power out in half. All in all, it was a great mobile amp.
Now, I'm planning to use it in the station as a second radio amp. There is a switch inside on a circuit board (moved to outside in more recent models) that let's you select manual keyed relay. The rig still performs frequency sniffing, SWR OK, and other functions automatically. I hope I can make this work nicely with either the 1000MP or 870, but so far, both seem to show a slight leading edge transient on CW which tends to bring the attenuator in when the output is set to close to max. This seems to be the key problem with this amp - it's computer control works so quickly that it is not forgiving enough. Maybe I can smooth out the tcvr keying with a menu item...

Anyway, I'd recommend the amp. And, by the way, it can be powered by the Astron RS-70M, which has a little wheel pot on the underside of the left hand circuit board enabling output voltage to crank up to around 14V, and getting 600-700 out easily. No duty cycle problems with it yet, we'll see after contest season.