Cheater amps are because they do run down to .5 ohm, and back when 'competition' was huge in the late 80's early 90's, ratings for power class was deemed at 4 ohm. So most had a conserative 4 ohm rating, then railed up the input voltage (16+) and running down to a lower impedance.Hence, cheater amp was named.

 

Yup! What a great time it was to be into car audio. Most of my gear is of that era. I remember there was a Soundstream amp that put out 25x2 and when ohmed down it put out like a 1000 watts, with it's unregulated power supply. My friend Bill had an alternator built just for that amp. LOL.

 

amen,those were the days!

 

that was before my time, but it's definitely still cool to see the surfboard amps they had back then that were rated for 50 watts or so, but capable of 20x's the output.

 

the surfboards were awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

yup, like the Kicker XS100, rated at 4 ohm did 50x2, now at .25 ohm, would do 1500+...and that was alot in the late 90's!

Now competition orgs compete at clamped power, evens the playing field.

 

I had a 2100 , &4 225 back in 97. Was badass had three xtr dvc in the rear seat of my ranger stepside. We ould make rain drops dance on the roof. Hit so hard could hear it almost a mile away. Any chance your up for selling one of those 225.