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Reviews For: Ameritron ALS-1300

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

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Review Summary For : Ameritron ALS-1300
Reviews: 63MSRP: 2,899
Description:
HF No tune Amplifier, 1200 watt solid state w/switching PS
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.ameritron.com/Product.php?productid=ALS-1300
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00634.1
W8NWN Rating: 2017-03-22
ALS-1300 RETURNED Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Returned form Ameritron and now working as advertised. They had it for 3 weeks.

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Earlier 1-star review posted by W8NWN on 2017-03-11

Had it for a week, it failed and HRO would not send me another one...Now its at Ameritron waiting on finals.........??????so sad.


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Earlier 5-star review posted by W8NWN on 2014-11-06

This is my second review and the amp is still going strong! Just sits there and perks away. No problems.
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Earlier 5-star review posted by W8NWN on 2014-01-10

My first impression after turn on was shocking. Nothing happened! It just turned quietly on and sat there! Great! After all the negative reviews about the power supply, I was surprised. I took a chance on a good American company and won. Why?...... because I nearly “clicked” on a Japanese competitor only 2 days before the announcement that Tokyo Hy-Power had taken out bankruptcy. A close call.
The ice blue meters of the 1300 and the apparent quality of the piece was very impressive.
(A bunch of ham were talking about Ameritron the other day and they said “Ameritron’s theories and electronics are sound. The only thing they are lacking is “quality control”.) Maybe they have improved on this aspect and will hopefully continue.
I will give another review after I have had a chance to use this amp a while. Until then……………….it’s a 5.
N2PD Rating: 2016-04-14
Excellent Support Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This review is a bit premature because I only just got the amp on line, but I wanted to relate my experience with Ameritron. I purchased the ALS-1300 from HRO (their service is always great) and set it up for testing. Well, the amp never got past the dummy load test. It died and showed no voltage on HV2. I called Ameritron and spoke with Mike in tech support. He shipped me a new unit that very day and included a prepaid return label to ship the defective unit back. Now that is first class tech support! The new unit arrived in a few days and is working beautifully. I will leave a more in-depth review of its functionality after I have more experience with it. The fact that the original unit was defective doesn't concern me. It was the after the fact support that I feel needs applauding. Thanks Mike!!
KO2LA Rating: 2016-03-17
As advertised Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Owned about one year. Works as it should with no problems. I run it on 120v and have seen 1500w if driven with 100w. Ameritron was helpful telling me how to switch the xformer taps for 120v operation. All that's required is moving four wires(no soldering) and installing higher amperage fuses. I'm told my signal is clean. Would not hesitate to buy another.
VE7DPD Rating: 2016-02-03
Blowing FETs Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have owned my ALS1300 for almost 2 years. During this period, I have been quite happy with it's performance. However during the K1N DX'ing, I blew one of the final FETS, which shorted. I didn't know what I did, but Ameritron was very good at getting me the part. Another Ham friend, who has the same amp has had a power supply failure in the past and suggested I was driving it too hard. Ok, I turned the power down to 80%. Durning the VP8STI DX'ing, I blew another FET, but this time I realized what I did. I changed bands with everything tuned on 30M RTTY and switched to 40M and removed my AT2K tuner out of circuit. When I returned to 30M, I keyed up without the tuner in circuit and the VSWR Led and the PA Led came on and the power supply shut down. So, Higher VSWR and Hi Power don't mix with this amp. The VSWR circuit does not react fast enough to shut down the amp. So beware! Make sure your loaded into a good load before transmitting. Just a word of caution! :-)
KE4KMG Rating: 2015-01-29
Great Amp Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Owned since 2012 and love it, great for DXing or ragchewing. Power output is great on all bands. Have not had any problems. I would recommend it to anyone!
YB1FWO Rating: 2015-01-04
Poor linear Time Owned: N.A.
I bought ameritron als 1300x , and used it first on ARRL 10 contest,. After about 1 hour (only hunting), the band indicator lamp dead,.. Since it was have just started usimg it and just less than a week since I bought it, I returned to the seller (ameritron agent in indonesia), after they fixed it .. Than I try again,.. It worked,. But soon as I transmit on 10 M while the band switch still at 15 M,.. The amp become totally dead,.. In my opinion, it should activate autoprotect instead of totally dead... , mis band is always happened while we work contest, and my other amp (HL 550 FX) only goes protect and after restarted, work normally again.
Now the amp still at the agent and seem they cant find how to repair it... So sad,..
I really regret to buy this one

De YB1FWO

KW4CQ Rating: 2014-11-17
Mine is the ALS-1306 model Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The external band decoder is now built into the 1306 thereby eliminating the need to purchase the external RCS unit. Works flawlessly with my Yaesu FTDX-5000. It's like having a 1200 watt no-tune transceiver. The amplifier now comes with the optional 10m band coil kit factory installed and the big plus is now having up to 1200 watts available on the 6m band for DXing. The fan noise is hardly noticeable and the amp runs absolutely cool on CW and SSB at a full 1200 watts output. Using nothing more that a dipole this amp helped me nail FT4TA in some horrendous DX pile-ups. A small footprint desktop design and nicely built inside and out. I love this amp. A real keeper.
W6LMJ Rating: 2014-09-02
Great amplifier, but... Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
After 40 years with Heath Kit amplifiers I decided it was time to move to a solid-state amp. I had used an SB-200 and a SB-220. I was very pleased with both. But I am now interested in remote operations and so a solid-state amp was on my short list of things to have. This past Christmas the family came together to provide one. I choose the ALS-1300. Even with all the negative comments, I felt comfortable with the notion of fixing it as needed. The first few months I had the amp I discovered little nit node problems in my antennas system. Things the SB-220 would work through caused the ALS-1300 to fault out. After chasing several intermittent connectors and one bad piece of coax all seemed well. Thats what happens when you have a station for 20 years in one place. Stuff gets old and problems greep in. This past month I added the ARI-500 to the mix in order to have automatic band switching. The ARI-500 seemed dead on arrival. Nothing powered up. I switched rigs, from a IC-756P2 to an IC-746P thinking that might be the problem. Still nothing worked. So I called HRO and they suggested returning it. I got a second one and the same problem as the first, dead on arrival. With this one I also received a cable for the IC-7000 and so tried it with that rig. No joy. So I called Ameritron and luckily got through on the first ring. The nice lady connected me to a technician who walked through trouble-shooting the problem. He was surprised I had tried three different rigs and we agreed the common component was the ALS-1300. Using the pig-tail J45 to pull voyage from the A/B J45 connectors on the back of the amp we determined, given there was no voltage, that that was where the problem lay. It was at that point that the technician shared that sometimes the ribbon cable becomes disconnected from the two A/B J45 sockets and that I should look inside the amp to see if that was the problem. I had a MOD10MK kit to install for 10 meters, and so quickly and happily pulled the amp off the stack of stuff and opened it up. Sure enough the ribbon cable was undone. I reseated it and stuck a piece of white packing foam in behind it to put a little pressure on it to hold it in place. I then installed the 10 meter kit, moving the jumper as instructed. That was very simple. I put the amp cover back on and re-cabled the amp. Perfect the remote band switch now works and I am again very pleased with its function and performance. But, Ameritron should have placed a small piece of foam behind the ribbon cable and saved the cost of the returned ARI-500 and the several hours I spent fiddling with and thinking about a problem they could have easily prevented from occurring in the first place with a nearly no-cost 3 second fix.
AB2IR Rating: 2014-05-30
so far great Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Replaced my heathkit sb 2kw amp, decided a simple auto tune unit will save my old age bacon. Was hoping for just 200 watt range on min. level, but this unit kicks out about 300-350 watts to start. Only complaints: my power switch, it arcks if pushed slow. Believe switch is defective, but works. Have not bothered to call about switch yet. And trying to remove RJ cable from remote jack on rear, tough, release pin just does not clear for some reason. Remote control head is just ok for me, stopped using it because of cable mounting position and where to place it on my desk. Amp is next to radio anyway. Ameritron seemed to have fixed the dc power supply issue, no real problems at all.
N8VB Rating: 2014-05-20
So far so good Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I purchased the ALS-1300 at the end of March 2014 from DX Engineering. I also ordered the 12/10 meter kit. The amp would go into protection immediately on 40 meters operating into a dummy load, the other bands all worked fine. I contacted Ameritron Service and they wanted me to send the amp in for an exchange. They said turn around time was 2+ weeks. Before sending it in, I took a look around inside the amp and found that there was a resistor in the LPF input bridge circuit that was considerably different in value than what was shown on the schematic in the manual. I changed this resistor to the value called for in the manual and it then worked fine on 40 meters. Since then the amp has been working well. I can easily get 1200+ watts out on all bands with a maximum of 55 watts of drive. On the air, I keep it at 1000 watts for a much cleaner signal.

The amplifier seems to be well built inside other than the resistor problem mentioned above. The amplifier enclosure is longer than the separate power supply enclosure which is a bit odd looking when they are sitting side by side on the desk.

I took one point off in the review for the problem out of the box on 40 meters. Obviously the amp was not thoroughly tested at Ameritron before leaving or they would have caught the 40 meter problem. This leaves the customer to be the quality control department and also the service department (if you don't want to wait for the weeks of turn around time and shipping charges). I am glad I was able to fix the problem, otherwise I would be much less happy with the purchase.

I also took one point off because the enclosure is very flimsy and it required Ameritron to put in a multitude of screws to hold it together securely. It is very painful if/when you have to get inside the amp (as in when you have to install the 12/10 meter LPF kit). Like most of the MFJ stuff, the front and rear panels are also somewhat flimsy. I wish Ameritron would have used a slightly thicker sheet metal for the enclosure.

I had to decide between the AL-82 and the ALS-1300 when I wanted a new amp. I am almost sorry I did not go for the AL-82 (2 x 3-500Z). The initial problem with the ALS-1300 has made me wonder about the reliability of this amp. The instant on and no tuning is great, but I still have to use an external tuner with my ladder line fed antenna, so I am not sure I save any time on the no tuning part since I still have to twiddle the knobs on my manual tuner. I know I could purchase a legal limit auto tuner, but that adds considerably to the overall cost in getting an amp.