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Product review: Zed Audio “Minilith”


Manufacturer: Zed Audio Corporation. Simi Valley Callifornia

Cost appx 250$

Type: Class D mono (subwoofer) amplifier rated 600W X 1 at 1 ohm mono (two can be “strapped for 1200W X1 at 2 ohms).

Pictures can be found here: http://www.zedaudio.com/Photographs/Minilith-pics.htm

I will preface this review by saying that I am now ONLY patronizing American manufacturers. I’ve been disappointted time and time again with shoddy third world made products and I am in the market for top quality great sounding equipment that will last for decades.

If you’ve never heard of Zed Audio. Do some googleing. They’ve been at the cutting edge of high performance car amplifiers for over 20 years. It’s the company that made many of the names you hear about today famous. Unfortunately, all of the companies for whom they used to manufacture have outsourced their manufacturing and the quality of the new stuff is questionable. I have purchased a few old school Zed amps this summer, and really like them all, but decided to go all out for the new stuff for it’s look, performance, and reliability.

Let me start with saying that Zed Audio has probably the best customer service out there. Stephen has answered my emails day and night (and I mean some rediculous times of day and night!), and when he’s at the factory answers the phone and is incredibly knowledgable and helpful. He had tons of great advice and even made a couple custom items for my install.

I had some issues with UPS damaging one of the amps in shipping, and Stephen was super helpful in helping me resolve the issue and get me a replacement.

I also had some troubleshooting issues and again, Stephen took a LOT of time out of his day to help me out over the phone, and even gave me his personal phone number in case he was out of the office after I did various tests. When the owner of the company gives you his personal contact info to help you that’s what I call WAAAAY above and beyond the call of duty! As I suspected, we actually got the the bottom of things pretty fast, and pestering him at home wasn’t needed, but the fact that he offered speaks volumes of the level of support you can expect.

On to the amps themselves. Big and solid. Some folks don’t like the mounting feet. Personally, I think they give it the “modern and industrial” look that they were going for, and the fact that they cover up the mounting screws for a nice clean look. I wasn’t 100% on the look of his new amps by the pics on the website, but they really look beautiful in person.

The inputs are all very solid and simple, and the crossover and eq are very high quality and amazingly versatile. The amp has on-board low pass, high pass, and adjustable EQ boost/cut built in. In laymans terms, it is as flexible as anything on the market in the mono amp category, and the quality of the controlls is very high.

These amps deliver the goods. I’m running 2 pairs of 2 strapped to a pair of TC-Sounds TC-2000 15″ subs each pair of amps seeing a 2 ohm load. I did a bit of testing different variations while waiting for the replacement for the damaged one, and they really did quite well in pairs or on their own. Even strapping a pair to 4 ohms was delivering a fine amount of power.

These amps do not like to run under 1 ohm! If you plan to strap two no lower then 2 ohms. This is very important. Make sure your speakers are accurately rated!

If you want to do serious DB drag and need 10,000 watts to .5 ohms, there’s better options out there, but if you’re looking for a great flexible amp for moderate to high power daily music listening this is a good pick.

They run very cool and efficiently (the cones of my woofers get hot before these amps do!) which was my main issue for replacing the A/B amps with only slight difference in sound over the class A/B’s, so they definitely get me where I want to be. They do over rated power at ANY input voltage due to regulated power supply, so real world situations, one of these will probably do as well as most of the stuff you’ll find rated 1000W.

Overall, I’d give them a 95 out of 100. Don’t get me wrong, these are great amps. Probably some of the best value for the money, but the fuse holder was pretty cheezy (for liability issues, they were limited by what is avaiable in the market), and they’re not forgiving at very low impedence.

Give Zed amps a try and I promise you’ll have a great American made product. High build quality, sound quality, and true under-rated power, and the best customer support in the industry hands down. As with the Zed amps of the past, you can bet you’ll see these on eBay 15 years after he stops making them selling used for as much as they did new.

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