Bob Weil and R.G. Keen put a huge amount of thought into the construction of Workhorse amps. They even visited amp techs and asked them, “What do you hate about the amps you work on?” With the boatload of information gained from asking that question, they made sure to design amps that didn’t have any of the shortcomings of most amps made these days.
As you can see in the photo, all the jacks and pots are hand-wired to the circuit board. Speaking of circuit boards, those in Workhorse amps are military-spec; double-thickness boards with triple-thickness copper. We don’t use big power resistors to step down voltage like you see in other amps. Those tend to heat up so much that the solder melts and the resistor can fall right out of the amp. We use precision voltage regulators with heat-sinks instead… you’ll never have to worry about them falling out.
Do you see those horizontal metal ribs on the circuit board in the photo? Those are there to keep the circuit board absolutely stiff and un-flexible. One of the common causes of failure in many modern amps is circuit board flexing which causes solder pads and traces to break… can’t happen with a Workhorse. If anything ever does go wrong with a Workhorse (unlikely), the back of the metal chassis opens up like the hood of a car for easy and fast servicing. That means less tech hours and less money to repair. We even put fuses on all the transformer outputs, so if something goes really wrong in the amp you’ll only need to replace a 5 cent fuse… not a $250 transformer!
In case you’re wondering about the weights and dimensions of Workhorse amps, here they are:
Stallion: 67lbs. (30.4K); 27” x 21” x 12”base/11”top (69cm x 53cm x 30cm base/28cm top)
Pony: 42lbs. (19.1K);18.25” x 17” x 12”base/11” top (46cm x 43cm x 30 cm base/28 cm top) |
