Your most spectacular speaker/component failure?

[DerekTheGreat]

Hello everybody!

Looking to start a fireside chat here. What was one of your most memorable or spectacular speaker failures? Did you send woofers flying into the room or a fire? Maybe you were at a friend's party and something went overboard? Whatever it was, I want to know!


My story: Very tame & lame, I think and in my audio "infancy" as I call it. I think I've upgraded to toddler status, but back then, everything was new to me. So I had just added another Adcom GFA-555II to my arsenal, fresh from eBay. Gave it a bit of a demo, but that was it. Also just got my 128H's back in my old L150A's after a fresh recone. One amp was pretty decent, so why not two? I bridged both amps and ran one for each 150A. It was bliss, for about six minutes. Was jamming Steve Miller's version of Mercury Blues and that's when the right channel shut down on me, just after I started to see clip lights on it. Whoa, glad nothing happened... Amp didn't turn back on, found fuses were blown because they weren't the right ones for the job. Without thinking, I replaced fuses in each amp with ones spec'd for the job, hooked everything back up and then powered up the right channel.. Lots of, "SNAP-GARBLE-GARBLE-POP-POP!" for the two seconds or so the amp was on. Which was more than enough time to pucker my bunghole, notice the clip lights went on instantly for the amp and for me to see the 128H test it's fresh surround and attempt to be free of the cabinet. Felt like an eternity and the woofer ended up needed another recone, but did still work. Oops, costly mistake.

[1audiohack]

Hi Derek;

Mine was caused by a power fault. An IHBL kind of fault.

Two Crown CE2000’s and two JBL 2123H’s died in an instant. Both driven out of the magnetic gaps and one of them stuck that way. The main boards and the output stages destroyed in both amps. The CE4000’s were unscathed. They have universal voltage switching power supplies.

I don’t recall for certain but I think two 2425’s or 2426’s lost their lives as well.

Also the printed circuit board on my air compressor had traces blown off the board.

The power company said they had no record of a fault at that time. They came out and pulled my meter, tightened all the big connections, did the same to the service transformer across the street AND THEN put a data logger on my house for three days and came back and told me all was well. Interestingly they replaced that transformer four or five months later.

Nothing to see here. Go on home.

I don’t know what the IHBL rating of a CE2000 is but it’s a big number!

Barry.

[DerekTheGreat]

Hey Barry,

Whoa, I think that's going to be hard to beat. And of course, it's easier to deny responsibility than it is to accept it..

Where were you when this happened? What did it all sound like? Seems like it would be rather gnarly.

[jbl4ever]

I have broken many things through my life with audio. Early 80’s was into Mobile Fidelity albums and one of the new releases was The Power and the Majesty 004. One side was recorded with thunderstorms and the other steam locomotives. The speakers were home built 20 cuft housing 2 LE15A’s per cabinet and connected to a pair of bridged mono John Iverson Eagle 7A’s. Each produced almost 1100watts @ 8 ohms. Not knowing the recording gain structure I had it way to high as the steam locomotive came in one side of the room and out the other it took 4 - LE15A’s with it. That was a costly mistake and the service center wondered what I had done to fry them that bad. I was one of their better customers back then and miss the owner Keith Wilson. He called me the professor in my younger years as I would always bring something to him he did not believe.

[DerekTheGreat]

Man, I'm intrigued to know what that failure sounded and looked like! I had to look that amplifier up, what a monster! Already a dual mono design to begin with. "1.4 horsepower during peak musical bursts." There's one currently on eBay...

"The Professor," That's great haha.

Keep these stories coming, hoping you guys have more to share.

Side note, how do you guys get albums to play ultra loud without feedback? I've got my turntable up on a separate plinth with those little spikes and then Zorbathane feet or whatever under it's own feet. It still goes all "whoam-whoa-wooo" like whenever I try to play one past 100 dB or so.

[grumpy]

Close the turntable lid (record can act like a diaphragm, so can the dust cover... so it might help or make things worse)
Isolate the turntable base (you have a start at it, if it all resonates at a troublesome frequency you can actually make things worse)
Use a sub-sonic filter.

So... Turn down the LF gain or attenuate/isolate/dampen the conductive vibration paths that get back to the needle/arm.
Problem can be direct vibration of the chassis or via air causing things to resonate.

... at least that's where I'd be looking.

[DerekTheGreat]

Thank you, grumpy.

I do play with the lid closed, but never tried to attenuate bass, so I'll give that a go to see if it helps.

[RMC]

I can confirm jbl4ever comment about The Power and the Majesty 004 (1978), having a copy since late 70s or early 80s. As the train approaches the recorder's location you MUST turn down the volume otherwise the feeling is as the train passes right in the house, very noisy, but what a feeling!

As i recall there was a warning about dynamics and amp gain , i cant see it now as i write this. The LP came with 2 pages of notes from the producers on yellow paper, which i also have, maybe the warning is in those notes. I've never blown a speaker with the MFL nor with Direct-to-Disc though.

Richard

[RMC]

To Derek

You might want to try one of those felt? turntable mats on top of the original one (see pics). I have one for a long time but never use it as i don't need it (not trying to sell it), since the Bellari phono pre 20 hz rumble filter does the job, as well as running the TT with balanced lines, etc, along with other things Grumpy previously mentioned.

Richard

[Robh3606]

I have never had one thanks goodness! Worst for me was moving a cabinet and not shutting the amp down first. Pulled a cable and blew a midrange. Never made that mistake again.

Rob

[turnitdown]

Having cocktails while diagnosing a Pioneer Elite receiver. I took the cover off, found and fixed the problem. While it was playing nicely, I attempted tp put the cover back on. In the process, I shorted it to death. R.I.P.

[Mr. Widget]

Having cocktails while diagnosing a Pioneer Elite receiver. I took the cover off, found and fixed the problem. While it was playing nicely, I attempted tp put the cover back on. In the process, I shorted it to death. R.I.P.

When I was in college I once brought an integrated amp back to life that had died during an "Animal House" party where someone vomited into the top of the amp.

I must have felt somehow implicated... for the life of me I can't figure out why I volunteered to clean and repair the mess.


Widget

[DerekTheGreat]

I can confirm jbl4ever comment about The Power and the Majesty 004 (1978), having a copy since late 70s or early 80s. As the train approaches the recorder's location you MUST turn down the volume otherwise the feeling is as the train passes right in the house, very noisy, but what a feeling!

As i recall there was a warning about dynamics and amp gain , i cant see it now as i write this. The LP came with 2 pages of notes from the producers on yellow paper, which i also have, maybe the warning is in those notes. I've never blown a speaker with the MFL nor with Direct-to-Disc though.

Richard

Jeez, that kind of dynamics with vinyl? That recording seems to have a following like that cartoon, Fritz the Cat.

To Derek

You might want to try one of those felt? turntable mats on top of the original one (see pics). I have one for a long time but never use it as i don't need it (not trying to sell it), since the Bellari phono pre 20 hz rumble filter does the job, as well as running the TT with balanced lines, etc, along with other things Grumpy previously mentioned.

Richard

There's an idea. I do employ the rumble filter. To be fair, I haven't tried playing a record loud like that since I've had the UREI's. Don't think I will, I'm convinced that compared to digital, playing vinyl is like throwing a blanket over your speakers.

Having cocktails while diagnosing a Pioneer Elite receiver. I took the cover off, found and fixed the problem. While it was playing nicely, I attempted tp put the cover back on. In the process, I shorted it to death. R.I.P.

When I was in college I once brought an integrated amp back to life that had died during an "Animal House" party where someone vomited into the top of the amp.

I must have felt somehow implicated... for the life of me I can't figure out why I volunteered to clean and repair the mess.


Widget

Oh wow, great stories. On the integrated amp, was it a spectacular show or did it just poop out silently? As for Animal House, great movie, and ugh. Perhaps someone gave you the proper incentive to clean and repair it? Of all places to vomit, why the tunes? Perhaps the Bay City Rollers or the Bee Gees were playing...

[maxwedge]

Blew a spider off of the cone of one of my my Sub 1500s when I was drunk. I was running my PC out in to a mixing board and wasn't getting sound from my subs. I kept turning it up and nothing came out until I pushed a button on the mixer! Sounded like a banshee! I think it was the channel mute button, LOL! I think there's a picture in the big Sub-1500 thread. Then I had a physical disaster where I dropped a heavy 2-12 cab with E-120's and shifted the magnet on one.

[Chris Brown]

Well this is an easy one for me. I was enjoying a very loud listening session with some music that had quite a bit of deep bass. I had a pair of small Yamaha NS-20T speakers on top of my JBL L150 speakers. They had been there for a long time - years, and I never recall them moving around at all. Well on this one night, due to the bass, they not only moved, one of them danced itself right off the front of my left L150 speaker. The NS-20T hit the ground, causing some minor damage to the corner of the NS-20T cabinet, and then bounced right into the passive radiator of the L150... The corner of the speaker tore a triangular hole right through the cone.

PR300 Passive Radiator:


Corner of the NS-20T where it hit the floor:


Kind of amazing that it tore through the stiff cone but didn't damage the 20+ year-old foam (last refoamed in ~2002). My heart sank. I couldn't believe that I had just let that happen, and to my favorite pair of speakers even.

Thankfully the story has a reasonably happy ending. The torn section of the cone fit back into place very well; better than I expected actually. The layers of the cone inter-locked back together almost like 3D puzzle-pieces. I didn't need to use any kind of external brace or tool to keep everything together again. I glued the torn sections back together easily.

The result is that it's definitely an eye-store, that is hard to miss every time you look at the speaker. Something I'll always wish didn't happen. But it did. I'm just glad that not only was the repair easy, but that it it didn't seem to have any effect on the speaker's performance. If anything, I think that having this type of damage occur to one of the PR300 passive radiators is less prone to cause issues than if it had happened to one of the 128H woofers. Something like a potential change in the stiffness of the cone that might have been problematic with an active woofer controlled by a voice coil are unlikely to have an impact on a passive radiator where the entire cone is being pushed on evenly from the rear by the air inside the cabinet. So I actually feel lucky in that respect, as well as the fact that I didn't even need to refoam them again, as the foam somehow remained fully intact (even the portion behind the cone).



Maybe some day I'll replace the PR300 with a non-torn version, or maybe I'll just continue using them as-is, as there are no longer any functional issues after the repair.

The runner-up and only other real notable "failure" with my JBLs has been when the spider on one of the 2214H woofers in my L100T speakers began to separate from the frame. I was able to catch this pretty early thankfully, when I noticed a bit of a strange sound from the woofer. A bit of glue and everything was back to normal. This did make me a bit paranoid however, and I now make it a point to remove my woofers just to inspect the spiders every once in a while, especially in cases where I know that I'm going to be pushing them close to their limits, to help limit the possibility of a catastrophic failure.

Segment of 2214H spider starting to separate underneath voice-coil wires: