Has anyone experienced a system blow up?

[DonH50]

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. <elided>

Fulton?

 

[esldude]

Fulton?

Nope Fourier.

http://www.one-electron.com/Fourier.html

 

[esldude]

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.

I still remember Maggie 3.3R's. Ribbon tweeter (oooh do be careful with that ribbon). When I sold them, Magnepan supplied these little steel strips you were supposed to carefully attach to the slot over the ribbons. Being steel the magnets stuck tightly. Do be so careful not to just plop them on the slot with a disastrous bang. The reason was to protect the ribbon from air currents as you slid it into the box it fit in. And you were cautioned to put it in slowly so as not to upset things.

Never had speakers half as picky as those about positioning. Sounded great in the right position. Not good at all elsewhere. Took weeks to find that position. I nearly gave up on them. Oddly, the VTL amps I had at the time played them very well. Still they should be paired with good SS amps in my opinion.

 

[jadis]

Just recalled I had a 'minor' blowup, my Jadis JA200 amp in the mid 90s blew its fuses on the power supply twice in a few years and on its last occasion of tantrum, blew some caps into space (grills were off) and it landed on my carpeted floor to my scare of who knows what could have happened had I been out of the room having dinner. The tech man who is an expert with these amps kept procrastinating on this instance and after 3 months of waiting due to his no-show, I sold them and got an ARC VS110. The ARC even made my floor in the middle of the room neater with 1 chassis instead of 4!

 

[Cyclotronguy]

Having ushered a couple of products through the UL / CE / CSA testing process I can attest that part of the testing protocol is some very creative fault scenarios. For he sake of the testing, a fire that does not promptly and politely self extinguish inside the device would be fatal flaw and fail.

Cyclotronguy

 

[valkyrie]

PS Audio HCA-2, Class D amp. Playing a CD with lots of bass through a set of Schweikert speakers when suddenly there was smoke, sparks, and a small fire on the main board. Cooked a nest of discrete transistors on some "stand offs" on one half of the main board. Fuse (or relay?) never blew. It was exciting - free visuals.

Ended up in the trash - it wasn't worth its price originally and certainly had NO reason to repair the thing. Had a large toroid transformer. Nice case work. Defective circuit.

 

[c1ferrari]

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.

Geez

 

[c1ferrari]

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.

Post 16's saga was aggravating/dismaying...this approaches terrifying

 

[JackD201]

I guess kids poking tweeters don't count

I've had B+ fuses on tube amps blow. White light like lightning. Freaked me out enough to move back to Solid State amps on my main system. Still love tube amps for systems I don't push hard. That's as bad as it ever got. No resistors were taken out by the way, the fuses did their jobs.

 

[andromedaaudio]

I once have destroyed a ls tweeter when i drove it too hard for its use and the other diamond cone while swapping preamp cables with the poweramp on, which it couldnt handle whatever happened ? , and yes those cost high $$$ one more reason not to use it in the future model, a loudspeaker should be able to take some abuse besides that i never had a ls unit break during play



DSC_0420 by andromeda61, on Flickr

 

[jadis]

Talking about destruction, how bout the saying curiosity killed the cat?

I have always bought tubes from very reliable sources overseas since the 90s and I never owned a tube tester since I believed my sources were better trained and equipped in testing tubes. In the mid 2000s, a neighbor bought a tube tester and in my curiosity to find our the state of health of my tubes, I asked to loan it for a few hours. While testing them, I took out my prized Telefunken ECC82 on my line stage and tested it, found it to be still in its strong stage, and when I tried to put it back, trying to feel the pins into the socket in the darkness of the rack shelf, I saw a spark in the tube socket area, and I thought immediately that I had fried the tube. Apparently, there was still some voltage left after I shut off the preamp and twisting the tube to insert the pins into the socket shorted it. A very painful experience for me for it was all about curiosity and nothing else. I now wait for 5 minutes at least after preamp shut down before reinserting a tube.

 

[Atmasphere]

I once have destroyed a ls tweeter when i drove it too hard for its use and the other diamond cone while swapping preamp cables with the poweramp on, which it couldnt handle whatever happened ? , and yes those cost high $$$ one more reason not to use it in the future model, a loudspeaker should be able to take some abuse besides that i never had a ls unit break during play

Actually tweeters usually don't handle a lot of power (2-5 watts is common), and in this case changing an interconnect cable while everything is on is a recipe for tweeter destruction. I would not blame this on the speaker manufacturer in any way- take it as a lesson learned as this was operator error.

 

[andromedaaudio]

Sure it was my failure in some sense , but they are fragile those ultra thin /stiff synthetic diamond diagphrams

 

[JackD201]

Talking about destruction, how bout the saying curiosity killed the cat?

I have always bought tubes from very reliable sources overseas since the 90s and I never owned a tube tester since I believed my sources were better trained and equipped in testing tubes. In the mid 2000s, a neighbor bought a tube tester and in my curiosity to find our the state of health of my tubes, I asked to loan it for a few hours. While testing them, I took out my prized Telefunken ECC82 on my line stage and tested it, found it to be still in its strong stage, and when I tried to put it back, trying to feel the pins into the socket in the darkness of the rack shelf, I saw a spark in the tube socket area, and I thought immediately that I had fried the tube. Apparently, there was still some voltage left after I shut off the preamp and twisting the tube to insert the pins into the socket shorted it. A very painful experience for me for it was all about curiosity and nothing else. I now wait for 5 minutes at least after preamp shut down before reinserting a tube.

Phew, I'm glad no cat was actually killed!

 

[edorr]

My record:

Graaf 200 OTL tube amp - Big fireworks.
Class A amp - Some board burned out - Fireworks again
Eidolon Visions - Midrange drivers left and right blew up at the exact same time, playing pink floyd too loud. Talk about driver matching!

 

[jadis]

Phew, I'm glad no cat was actually killed!

Yeah Jack. I have no cat around here or it would have looked like this:



In deference to cat lovers around here.

 

[marty]

2 examples.
In the first, in the 80's, I used to hang out at a wonderful dealer in Philly called Chestnut Hill audio. Jack Rubinson, the owner, and I became friends so he let me dabble and listen to equipment at will. Once , and I forget the speaker, I hooked up the speaker that had to be driven by 2 separate amps- one for the bass, the other for the mids/tweeter. Both were hooked up to the intrinsic crossover separately. Well, it turned out I reversed polarity of one of the amps and when we threw the switch on the bass amp (a Krell) there were fireworks galore. (I obviously shorted the main rails by somehow tying the positive terminals of each amp to one another through the crossover) I blew the crossover and the amp and had to pay for the repairs with profuse apologies to Jack of course. Somehow, he let me remain a valued customer and friend.

The second example was far more innocent. Some years ago, in my Dallas home, I ordered brand new ARC610 amps. I turned them on in genuine excited anticipation, eager to hear these wonderful beasts. The first one blew immediately. While that one was being shipped back to MN for repair, I decided to listen to the other amp in mono for the interim. The second amp blew after a week. And that folks, was the very last time I bought an ARC piece of power amplification. Lesson learned.

 

[Mobiusman]

Years ago I was running a GAS Ampzilla to power some Tympani 3a's and twin MK Bottom End subwoofers through a M&K crossover. The Ampzilla blew, passed DC and turned both sets of coils on the MK woofs into a solid copper ingots.

 

[marty]

I'll say it again....of all the examples cited, apparently none have occurred on a Radio Shack product. Ah, the beauty of high end gear and the questionable sanity of the folks that buy them!

 

[Atmasphere]

I used to work at Radio Shack in the service department- that is how I put myself through college for the first two years. I've seen them come in just melted. Quite often though, the customer had knotted the speaker cables together with frays everywhere. That's one problem I rarely see in high end...