^ Pioneer's white amps of a couple of years ago were scary. Overall though I feel Pioneer has made decent amps over the year. They're made by robots too.

Punch amps have been 'robot assembled' since the 'hd' line (eg Punch 45hd) before the BBQs. Remember in the day the BBQs were 'dsm' amps for 'direct surface mount'. That's automated assembly and most amps, all decks, etc are made that way.

 

Also this whole "their in chain stores so quality sucks now" argument has been proven false all the time. In fact going into large chain stores improves reliability. Rockford simply can't afford to have a 10% failure rate when making a million amps, like they could if they were making a thousand. Also the amps have to be better designed in the first place to keep inexperienced installers from blowing them up.