Reddy Killawatt and the Stereo Destroyers

[1audiohack]

On Sunday July 12 2009 2PM while listening to my home main audio system at well below 100dB it popped hell for loud and all the amp fault lights came on. I powered it down as fast as possible. Then I could hear my air compressor in the garage give four or five locked rotor growls and quit by the time I got to it.

My stereo is on its own 40 amp 220V circuit with a Furman ASD120 power sequencer with a 20A circuit breaker on each switched outlet and a MOV on each from line to neutral. Not one tripped breaker or burned MOV.

The stereo is 5 way dual mono with a Sony ES1000 preamp feeding a left and right DBX 260. Each 260 drives a Crown CE1000 driving the 2404's and the 2426/2344's.
A CE2000 drives the 2123's and E130's.
A CE4000 bridged drives a GTI1800

The 1000's survived, everything connected to them did not.

The 2000's are dead, other than one 2123 that had the voice coil pushed out of the gap ( that I got back in and its fine!!! What are the odds? ) those drivers lived.

The 4000's and 1800's are fine, as are the 260's and preamp. The Sony will power off when ever it see's anything it does not like power wise and you must interrupt its power and restart it or it wont come back on. It did not power it's self down on this event.

The compressor is an industrial unit with an "if then board" for faults like out of oil or the air filter fell off and a triac instead of a mechanical relay on the motor. It is sensative to high frequency. If I forget and leave the work ground wire to the TIG welder neatly coiled under the TIG and step on the pedal to weld, when the high frequency generator starts to initiate the arc the compressor will freak out as the triac cycles very rapidly and beats on the motor.

In all of this, this is the only clue as to what might have rode in and wrecked all my stuff. The compressor is undamaged.

You have to try to find something so I have pulled and checked the connections on the outlet in the room, the wires on the breaker, the mains to the buss bars, tripped the breaker manually ( not frozen or welded ) and set up my Fluke to record the voltage difference between safety ground and neutral for a 24 hour period with a max reading of 3.7V wich I thought was plenty low.

The transformer for my house is right across the street from me, is underground wired in by a single 15KV wire and out to us. No one else on my block experienced an event. Seriously what the hell?!?

The power company is coming this week to "prove" the connections from the transformer to the house. I bet they are OK however.

We have talked about whole house protection systems for spikes and surges but I am not sure either of those types of faults occurred.

Any educated ideas? Im all out.

Oh by the way, if anyone is really searching for the "Brown Note", here is a hint, it may not be a note, its probably an impulse.

[louped garouv]

that sucks...

hoep y'all can figure it out....

[Hoerninger]

"War of the Worlds" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_%28radio%29), attack by the Martians.
(The Mercury Theatre Online (http://www.mercurytheatre.info/) With downloadable MP3 of the 1938 broadcast.)

Sorry, I do not know the answer.
___________
Peter ;)

[Cyclotronguy]

Soooo............. where in the valley do you live?

My guess and this is only a guess is that if something like a major property went offline that the PF compensation that's dealing with the leading power factor as a result of all the non incandescent lamps on that property would cause some real fits.

This of course presumes that you are on the same taps as say something the size of "Texas Station" or larger.

Cyclotronguy

[JeffW]

Electromagnetic pulse from a nearby nuclear test? :D

j/k, that's a serious bummer on the smoked gear.

[1audiohack]

Wow Jeff I haven't seen Reddy since I was a kid, but that is exactly what I had in mind.

Hi Cyclotronguy, I live out in the North West end of the valley. Between Texas and SantaFe Staition. Funny you would say that.

I have a friend that has worked in the sun for Nevada Power for 28 years, I called him of course. He looked in and said they had not recorded an "event" during that time of that day.

I am all back together a with spare parts, I just want to know what happened, and not have it happen again

[jcrobso]

From reading you description it sounds like a lighting strike. You didn't say anything about the weather so I assume it was a normal day. Really strange!

[JeffW]

Wow Jeff I haven't seen Reddy since I was a kid, but that is exactly what I had in mind.


My mom retired from Southwestern Public Service (our regional electricity provider), so there's been Reddy Kilowatt stuff around their house for years.

[toddalin]

Major OUCH!

We had a surge and it shut down my projector unit. Would power back up fine..., but no light from a bulb that only had 700 hours on it. :(

Was able to locate a new bulb on the 'net (at only ~$250 vs MSRP of ~$450) and had it shipped out priority and installed it. Projector is now ~6 years old an no longer produced so the bulbs are getting very scarce.

The power company did it again and the new bulb went out at just 66 hours. Again, the projector powered up, fine, but no light from the bulb. :banghead:

I noted that some of my other gear also went down and one of my other pieces had to be physically unplugged and replugged to get it back on-line. Then it occurred to me to actually unplug/replug the projector and retry it.

I did and the bulb came back on!:bouncy:

Luckily, I didn't throw out the 700 hour bulb so it probably also would have worked if I just unplugged/replugged the projector. Oh well, always nice to have a spare.

[jcrobso]

Major OUCH!

We had a surge and it shut down my projector unit. Would power back up fine..., but no light from a bulb that only had 700 hours on it. :(

Was able to locate a new bulb on the 'net (at only ~$250 vs MSRP of ~$450) and had it shipped out priority and installed it. Projector is now ~6 years old an no longer produced so the bulbs are getting very scarce.

The power company did it again and the new bulb went out at just 66 hours. Again, the projector powered up, fine, but no light from the bulb. :banghead:

I noted that some of my other gear also went down and one of my other pieces had to be physically unplugged and replugged to get it back on-line. Then it occurred to me to actually unplug/replug the projector and retry it.

I did and the bulb came back on!:bouncy:

Luckily, I didn't throw out the 700 hour bulb so it probably also would have worked if I just unplugged/replugged the projector. Oh well, always nice to have a spare.

Yes, some projectors have to be completely removed from power, also they have to cool off before you can power them up again.

[midlife]

Only time I ever lost equipment due to electrical problems was 30+ years ago due to a lightning strike at or near a pole mounted service transformer. It was a Sansui TU 919, it made a muffled pop and a little smoke trickled out the top. :(

[JBL 4645]

You failed to mention what music source you where listening to and what of the possibility of high dynamic harmful peak slammed the amps into clip? But I see you have the dbx 260 loudspeaker management crossover system unless you poorly balanced the units because there role is to prevent dynamic peaks from damaging the sound system.

Its possible that you have electronic Gremlins in your wiring the fault attacked the amp from bypassing the dbx 260.

Yeah its downer when it happens.:banghead:

[toddalin]

Yes, some projectors have to be completely removed from power, also they have to cool off before you can power them up again.

Yes, a Hitachi SX-5600W LCOS.

[1audiohack]

Hey Ashley;

CD DVD is the only source, like you, ( I think ) no outside media sources on this system.

I doubt anything on the signal side would blow the tops open on the capacitors on the supply side of things anyway.

Hey Jeff, if it was an EMP from the test site, I will take one for the team with a smile.

As a side note, you can sign up for an all day tour of the site and it is pretty cool. Some of the subsidences from the underground tests are so large they drive you down into them in tour busses! It is pretty cool to stand on the edge of the Sudan Crater and try to fathom that all that earth was removed in a fraction of a second. To give scale, it takes 40 -45 minutes to hike out from the bottom. Now that is a boomer!

You watch all those crazy Mercury movies with awe, but what a shock to go stand under, on , and around and put your hands on all that stuff and try to imagine the forces that caused what you almost cannot believe you are seeing with your own eyes. If they sold lottery tickets for the chance to push the button out there I would be selling body parts for the chance!

The CE2000's go to the shop tommorrow morning. Hopefully some clues willl come from the required repairs.

[Cyclotronguy]

Im ruling out lightening strike, don't think there are above ground utilities out in that part of the Las Vegas Valley............ and we don't have events at Frenchman Flat or anywhere on the NTS these days......sigh! So I think we can rule out EMP.

Man, I remember when North Jones ended in the Desert. It's a mystery to me what happened.... but I still bet it was a Power Factor issue. As large number of lamps come on-line the utility has to shed correction.

My regards to all the folks at Mercury!

Cyclotronguy

[jcrobso]

Yes, a Hitachi SX-5600W LCOS.

One power glitch and it takes about 20 min or so for it to recover.

[toddalin]

One power glitch and it takes about 20 min or so for it to recover.

No, I've found that it just needs to be unplugged and replugged.

[Doctor_Electron]

"We have talked about whole house protection systems for spikes and surges but I am not sure either of those types of faults occurred.

Any educated ideas? Im all out."

Sorry, I've never seemed to have figured out the "Quote/Reply" functions, so...

All I can tell you, after 40+ yrs. in the elec. careers, you are entering a subject area (power quality/not quality, protection, monitoring, analysis et al) which is so vast, and complex, and varied that only plenty of learning, research, and great intuition can start to explain a great deal of it all.

I will not relate any horror stories I've seen or heard about, it gets very long and wearing. BUT there WERE indeed some real doozies.

I hope that my suggestion as a resource of Electrical Construction & Maintenance Magazine, a professional electrical trade publication, will be of help.

Link: http://ecmweb.com/

There are available there many years' archived information.

Particularly interesting to me has been their Forensic Investigation columns, which I know will help you understand some of the finer points of determing causality when property damage, injury and even death results from [ often unseen and elusive ] causes of failure in electrical systems.

Best of luck, please keep us up on anything you do find out.

R.P. ("Dr E")

[1audiohack]

With everything connected to "The Grid" I am amazed we have the power quality we do and I for one am greatful for it!

Thank you for the link, I love that kind of reading!

I will keep you up.

Barry.