Members onelife Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 Last weekend my normally three-piece band was augmented with two horn players and a keyboard player. The guy doing the PA asked me to bring my monitors - Yamaha MSR100 powered speakers with 8" LF drivers. I just brought them in, dropped them off and got on with setting up to play guitar. I did not realize that one of the speakers was being used as a keyboard monitor. The MSR100s do a fine job of vocals and sometimes we put a little guitar thru them just to spread it around the stage so my amp does not need to be turned up as loud. They are not powerful enough nor do they have the full response required for a keyboard monitor. As the evening wore on, I was hearing some nasty distortion from the other side of the stage and when it was all over, I could smell the dreaded electronic burning odor and was informed that it was coming from my monitor. The next day I tested the speaker and had no output from the LF driver and it still had the burning smell. I suspected the driver and since I have two of these and they are modular it was easy to verify by swapping the driver. In the process, it came back to life but with a snapping sound on some of the lower frequencies. I thought that perhaps the voice coil had been physically damaged from pushing it too hard with the full range of the keyboard signal. Upon further examination, I discovered that the small wires connecting the voice coil to the terminals on the driver frame looked like they had been burned as if by an electrical arc. I had not examined these very closely during the earlier testing phase and I do not actually know if they had touched or were touching at any time. I separated the wires and made sure they would not touch in the future and when I put the driver back in the cabinet and turned everything back on it seemed to be working flawlessly. I ran the system for a couple of hours and even pushed some extra bass thru it for a while and there were no problems at all - no unusual distortion or snapping sounds or anything. So here's my question... Is it possible that during the extreme movements of the voice coil as the LF driver was trying to reproduce the low keyboard sounds that the wires shorted together on occasion, producing the distortion and snapping sounds along with the 'electronic' odor? Is it possible that because most Yamaha stuff is bullet proof that the MSR100 has survived the ordeal and will continue to be a reliable monitor speaker? Should I go through the difficult chore of removing the passive crossover from the cabinet in order to more closely examine it for damage? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 Likely that there is substantial damage to the VC and spider from overexcursion. The fact that the lead-in wires were damaged is a good indicator. You are also very lucky that the amplifier driving it did not fail as well. You were driving a shorted load and the snapping you were hearing was either intermittent connmections or the amp's protective VI limiter cutting the drive back momentarily. Protection is good but far from foolproof. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 335BoB Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 Lesson learned I hope. I have "inferior" monitors and state emphatically that they are ONLY for vocals anytime they come out of the house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bugzie Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 Todays keyboards are dangerous. The range they can cover is absolutely amazing and can do damage real quick. Consider it a lesson learned not only in what the box can do but also being aware of what signal is being sent to what piece of equiptment. Most musicians have absolutely no idea of what should be used for what. If it appears to work they use it, and I'm not just saying it when it comes to others equiptment. They do it to their own as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 i run my keyboard monitoring rig through a gentle HPF starting at around 100hz. i get any ultra LF from the foh subs. if you need more than around 100 watts of keyboard monitor then someone is too loud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members jgthatsme Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 i run my keyboard monitoring rig through a gentle HPF starting at around 100hz. i get any ultra LF from the foh subs.if you need more than around 100 watts of keyboard monitor then someone is too loud. HAH...my keyboard players uses a Yorkville KB200 (200 watt) keyboard amp AND a Yamaha MSR400 as an extension. He is friggin' WAY too loud. The red clip light flickers occasionally during our dinner music sets. Once we kick into dance music mode, the clip light glows brighter than Rudolph's nose on Christmas Eve, yet in 10+ years, it has never failed. His hearing is shot from doing big shows back in the day. It's always a battle. I keep asking him to use IEMs or phones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted November 6, 2010 Author Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 Likely that there is substantial damage to the VC and spluder from overexcursion. The fact that the lead-in wires were damaged is a good indicator. You are also very lucky that the amplifier driving it did not fail as well. You were driving a shorted load and the snapping you were hearing was either intermittent connmections or the amp's protective VI limiter cutting the drive back momentarily. Protection is good but far from foolproof. Thank you for the information. Is there some way to test the voice coil for damage short of removing it from the frame? Perhaps I could run a sine wave at several different frequencies through both speakers and compare the quality of the reproduction. What is a spluder? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 SPLUDER is an agedhorse term for SPIDER. he has all kinds of colorful spellisms. i think i will start an agedhorse to english database. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abzurd Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 If you swapped drivers and know it's the speaker and not the amp, does it really matter what's wrong with it? I'd just source a new driver or get it reconed and be done with it. Guessing, being a low powered 8" speaker that it's not worth the recone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 SPLUDER is an agedhorse term for SPIDER. he has all kinds of colorful spellisms. i think i will start an agedhorse to english database. Ugh, that's what I get for typing fast in the dark DURING a set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted November 6, 2010 Members Share Posted November 6, 2010 Thank you for the information.Is there some way to test the voice coil for damage short of removing it from the frame? Perhaps I could run a sine wave at several different frequencies through both speakers and compare the quality of the reproduction.What is a spluder? No, there's generally no pratical way to tell. This is what makes buying used speakers risky. spluder is a horrible typo... SPIDER!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted November 7, 2010 Author Members Share Posted November 7, 2010 If you swapped drivers and know it's the speaker and not the amp, does it really matter what's wrong with it? I'd just source a new driver or get it reconed and be done with it. Guessing, being a low powered 8" speaker that it's not worth the recone. It's a Yamaha driver - I believe they make their own - and it is a serious 8" unit. My question is really weather it could have survived the assault now that it seems to be working okay. I'm a bit concerned that it may stop working at a time when it is really needed. These monitors are quite impressive for their size and I see it as a complete system - amplifier, crossover and drivers in a tuned cabinet. I don't know if it would work as well with a different driver than the original and I have yet to price the replacement vs. recone. I'd have to ship it out for the recone so that is a factor as well. Thanks for the advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted November 7, 2010 Members Share Posted November 7, 2010 It's a nice driver but is probably cheaper to replace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members prosigna Posted November 7, 2010 Members Share Posted November 7, 2010 What's a drigver? Do those have spluders? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted November 7, 2010 Members Share Posted November 7, 2010 What's a drigver? Do those have spluders? and they have fust daps too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted November 7, 2010 Author Members Share Posted November 7, 2010 and they have fust daps too I'll bet you have lots of different Lexicon gear in your effects rack. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted November 7, 2010 Members Share Posted November 7, 2010 That would be Fexicon gear in my errects lack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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