Montarbo 1002

Montarbo 1002

Montarbo is a well known Italian company manufacturing quality pro-audio products. The Montarbo 1002 power amplifier was introduced sometime in late 1985. This was their flagship, a high powered 600W into 4Ω monster targeted for concerts and live bands.

She had an incredible seven pairs of power transistors for the output section. That’s a total of 14 TO-3 transistors.

Fig 1 – Montarbo 1002 Amplifier Schematic

Fig 1 is the circuit of the Montarbo 1002 amplifier. She boast a mirror image typology. To avoid the complications of a discrete differential input, an op-amp is used instead. She drives T1 and T2 with collector loads of 2K2 (Red line). They in turn drive the VAS. A Darlington, comprising of T8 (a Pre-driver) and T10 (a Main driver) provides the necessary power to drive seven pairs of power transistors at full power. Negative feedback (Pink line) is about 30dB.

Summary

Although Montarbo is little known in USA, that is not the case in Europe and Asia. One of the hallmark of Montarbo loudspeakers is they only use the world famous BBC woofers.