Has anyone experienced a system blow up?

[bonzo75]

Anyone, Anyone, Bueler?


Does anyone fear their system might blow up if they leave it playing when they are not in the house, and it might blow up? Has it ever, and by blow up, I don't mean a component shorted, I mean there was a fire.

 

[DonH50]

No fire, at least outside the components, but I have had power glitches take out amps and speakers. Not recently, and not since adding UPS units to the low-level stuff. One thing I have been meaning to do is to move my trigger repeater box to a non-UPS outlet to delay amp turn-on in the event of a power glitch. Unless something goes seriously wrong your components' protection circuits (which may be just a fuse) should prevent destroying the house. That said, and unlike many who prefer to leave equipment on all the time to avoid warm-up time, I am very leery of leaving equipment on when I am gone.

 

[esldude]

Left a large SS amp on when away once by mistake. Some power surges in my area on the electrical lines due to thunderstorms. Blew up two caps in the amp. That caused other things in the amp to toast themselves. But no blown breakers, and no fire.

Another time a lightning strike in my yard fried a tuner, power amp and tape deck. The storm came up in a hurry without my expecting it. Listening to music the first I knew of it was the lightning/followed by the boom that hit a tree in my yard. There were also blown fuses which prevented a possible fire. When I later fired up the system some of the caps started emitting smoke again so I cut everything off.

So other than lightning related incidents nothing.

 

[amirm]

I used to repair audio gear and saw plenty of equipment charring itself to pieces but don't ever recall it extending to the case itself. It was always the guts of it that had burned to a crisp. It could happen but given the metal construction and such, the chances are low.

 

[bonzo75]

Two valve amps self imoliated ,there were many other issues, with that particular brand,despite frequent pleas to the manufacturer.
Keith.

Did they blow up damaging just themselves or did it catch fire, destroy other components, etc

 

[Peter Breuninger]

One of our reviewers installed an electronic enhancement product that accompanied a cable product... his Krell amplifier and preamplifier burst on fire! Flames, smoke and odor. The pre was a complete loss, the power amp was repaired and sold by the repair shop.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

Last year I was re-cabling the MBL-Krell KMA 400 system, I had the cases of the speakers cables touching each other at the amp (unknowingly). I turned the amp on and sparks and smoke started flying... I quickly shut the amp down and had visions of driving it 3 hours to the expert Krell repair shop for a complete rebuild.

I looked at the cables and the cases had fused together. I had to snap them apart. For kicks I re-wired the amps and with a finger on the on-off switch I turned the amp on. It worked fine.. all was well.

Ends up, it was a full short and I arc welded the cable casing. Google "Krell KMA 400" and you'll see why.

 

[bonzo75]

One of our reviewers installed an electronic enhancement product that accompanied a cable product... his Krell amplifier and preamplifier burst on fire! Flames, smoke and odor. The pre was a complete loss, the power amp was repaired and sold by the repair shop.

Thats weird - so something got done to the cables that sent the current in such a way that it caused the Krell to blow. Do you know if this was immediately after he put it in or if it was playing fine for a while and then went boom.

Keith, fyi, cables make a difference, and they do burn in.

 

[treitz3]

Keith, fyi, cables make a difference, and they do "burn in".

Tom

 

[ack]

Tuner, phono, DAC, transport, preamp are all on all the time. Don't fear anything serious will happen while I am gone, I trust they will just blow up and shut down - and only one thing has blown up in my 35 years in this hobby and it was my doing, an Akai receiver's tantalum cap that I placed in parallel with the PS electrolytics to cheaply increase capacitance; I can tell you, a burnt tantalum smells REALLY bad. I was a kid back then, so all was forgotten; worse experience was actually trying to open a TV screen, when the entire thing blew up into pieces with a loud bang, in my face; not a scratch, and alive to tell the story! The notion of a "vacuum" had not apparently registered with me yet...LOL... you see, I had to see what these "canons" looked like, and I did confirm they do fire

 

[DEV]

My CAT Sig JL3 mono blocks - one mono block. I thought it took out my speaker too but thank goodness didn't - loud bang, loud pop, sparks and lots of smoke so bad my hardwire smoke alarm system went off. My son and wife were sleeping "I had got up fairly early to let them warm up - 5am" at the time and came running due to the loud noises. By that time I was already up to shutting the system down - so much smoke and electrical smell and phone ringing all at the same time because our fire alarm system is paired up with our security so that wasn't nice. I found out it was due to a run away tube which took out a board and other stuff - no shut down fuse protection.

 

[Tom B.]

Never had any problems up in the audio room, but I have had a few pieces of gear let loose in the workshop. The power supply for my PP 304TL project went up in a spectacular ball of flames, mushroom cloud and all.

I do recall a friend's power conditioner not working, and when we opened the lid we found many of the components had unsoldered themselves and were lying at the bottom of the chassis, but the damage did not extend beyond the chassis itself.

Tom

 

[DonH50]

Re. cables causing amp problems: the two most significant things I have seen are either a shorted cable, or one that had such lousy impedance characteristics (high capacitance or inductance, sometimes in combination with a particular speaker) that the amplifier went unstable and oscillated (usually rail-to-rail at some supersonic frequency).

 

[Joe Galbraith]

I used to have Magnepan 3.6 loudspeakers and drove them with Wolcott P220 mono amps. Every time I powered them up, I would cross my fingers hoping they wouldn't detonate. Many times they would take out their fuses, and those of the Maggies with that momentary current in rush. On two occasions, they would detonate resulting in fried caps, resistors, and tube sockets. This necessitated a trip to Wolcott (which was one man - a very elderly Henry Wolcott) and a several month wait for repair accompanied by an enormous bill. After the second melt down, I cut my losses and moved on. Which is unfortunate as these amps could really make the Magnepans sing (when they worked well - which was not very often).

 

[andromedaaudio]

Not yet !

 

[Atmasphere]

Years ago when Fourier went out of business, we accepted a pair from a customer with the idea that we would see if the amps could be repaired, since they were OTLs.

While the amp was on the bench, one of the filter capacitors blew itself off of the circuit board and embedded itself in the ceiling tile. I am so glad I was not peering over the amp when that happened! As it was, my ears were ringing from the explosion for a good 15 minutes.

Turns out that the amp employed an unknown filter cap made in India (Bindu was the brand name). The caps were questionable enough, but the power supply in the amp was running them a good 40 volts over their maximum rating!! Explosions were a phenomena with this model.

We detirmined that is was unethical to attempt a simple repair on the amp as it could not be warrantied.

 

[microstrip]

Years ago when Fourier went out of business, we accepted a pair from a customer with the idea that we would see if the amps could be repaired, since they were OTLs.

While the amp was on the bench, one of the filter capacitors blew itself off of the circuit board and embedded itself in the ceiling tile. I am so glad I was not peering over the amp when that happened! As it was, my ears were ringing from the explosion for a good 15 minutes.

Turns out that the amp employed an unknown filter cap made in India (Bindu was the brand name). The caps were questionable enough, but the power supply in the amp was running them a good 40 volts over their maximum rating!! Explosions were a phenomena with this model.

We determined that is was unethical to attempt a simple repair on the amp as it could not be warrantied.

Fourier explosions were well known - a pity, as it sounded good until it exploded. The built quality of some models, either mechanical or electrical was indeed very low. An old pair was changing hands regularly in local used equipment audio forum section.

 

[jadis]

Around 1985, when I still in the infancy of the hobby, an elder hobbyist sold me a Mattes integrated amp that 'wow'ed' me into buying it on the spot. On the third day, one channel conked out, no sound. I brought the unit back to him and he had his son fix it. I didn't understand anything about the innards then of an amp and he told me it was merely a transistor that broke, and now replaced. For a fee. Plus I had to drive 2 hours to his place. A week after that, I was deeply enjoying a record on my JBL 4311 monitors (with my eyes closed) when again, one channel went mute. When I opened my eyes, I saw smoke coming out of the amp's top plate. Good thing it had lots of tiny holes. Boy, it was smoking. And the power was still on. I frantically run to shut down the power of everything, with my room smelling really bad. I brought the amp back to the seller and he said he had to charge me again for the repair fees. I refused and sold it to a guy years after who knew how to fix these things. I have to say it was the worst experience I had in my audio life. And oh, the second time, the amp took out one channel of my speakers too.

 

[Ronm1]

Never had a blowup but did have a fall down

 

[DSkip]

Never had a blowup but did have a fall down

That was the death of my Maggies. Hit one just right when I was looking at something and it fell flat on its face, causing a rush of air to bust through the mylar. Luckily they were just SMGa's, but aggravating nonetheless.