REGISTRY
Wade Stewart -
"The early SS amps were all made from parts made here in the US. The components used in those amps came from American manufacturers but many of the components were in fact made oversees. The heat sinks and covers were all made here. In the later models the heat sinks and covers came from Taiwan. The PC boards were always made here. We manufactured the PCB assemblies and built and tested all amplifiers here in the US."
"All of the Soundstream amplifiers that say Handcrafted in the U.S.A. were basically designed by me. They were built here in the USA, mostly in my factory from 1981 to 1998 or in Soundstream's factory from 1999 to 2002."
"All of the Soundstream amps since then have been designed and built in Korea."
The original D60, D100, D200, CA40 and CA50 were designed by Nelson Pass. They had two problems;
1. "They were laid out with point to point wiring which meant that they were not cost effective to build and susceptible to wiring errors or failures."
2. "They all had thermal run away. A condition where the bias is set to high and over time the amps would overheat and shut down. All I did to solve this problem was to re-adjust the bias to a lower setting."
"In the II series I re-laid them out on single PC Boards, then my company began manufacturing them. I designed the MC series, Reference series, the later CA series, Granite, USA and SA series. These were designs of my own. I also designed all heat sinks, power and output connectors and RCA input jacks. I also designed the Tarantula and Davinci. I had a Pro Audio brand named Stewart Electronics. The Tarantula was based on a Pro amp that was part of Stewart World Series amplifier line - 7 amplifiers from 125 watts x 2 to 2000 watts x 2."
Legends of Car Audio - 1996 interview with Wade Stewart
Wade Stewart
6/25/1950 - 3/19/2022
Ex-Chief Designer of SoundStream award winning Home Theater and Car Audio Products from 1981-2000
"Wade is an inventor like no other. His audio related projects and products have always been ahead of their time."
