Members Gravity Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 last night, my Bass Player's rig began emmiting a burning odor. The amp was not hot but it made flabby farty sounds when low notes were played. It's a bi-amp set-up (built in x-over) combo amp, 600 watts. One amp runs a pair of 8's and a horn, the other amp runs the 15. It seemed like the notes coming out of the 15 sounded the worst. Apparently, this amp has 4 volumes (1 master gain, 1 master Volume, and a volume for each of the two built in amps). We discovered that the low range amp was dimed (must have been bumped when moved.) So, I reasoned that the power-amp itself was not damaged simce it was still functioning, but that maybe the voice coil on the woofer got smoked? What do you guys with more experience think? We decided that next time at band practice, we'd plug the low range amp into another 15 to see if it still sounded flabby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mudbass Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 Sounds like he hosed the 15. If he got the voice coil hot enough to start stinking it's possibly warped all to hell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Scodiddly Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 Likely a burned voice coil - if the smell came out of the speaker cabinet then definitely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 Yup, see it with amazing regularity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kennykeys Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 Aw shucks, no smoke or flames? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Gravity Posted April 30, 2005 Author Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 Originally posted by Kennykeys Aw shucks, no smoke or flames? Nah .... no Pyro with this one. Thanx for the responses fellas! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members The Real MC Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 Yes voice coils will emit a burning smell when hot. Some power amps can pass DC (audio is AC) - it doesn't take much DC voltage to fry a speaker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members J. Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 It's a bittersweet smell, almost like melting/burning plastic but not quite. I took these old, low power-handling speakers out of an ancient, broken down organ cabinet and hooked them up to an yamaha bass head that probably did a good 200 watts. I played through the things until the buzzing stopped and a whisp of smoke came rising up. I also did the same to one of those little mic stand monitors with two 5" speakers in them. Ah, to be young again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Scodiddly Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 Last summer I got a tour of the Telex building in Minneapolis where they do EV's R&D now. At one point I smelt that familiar smell... "oh yeah, here's the room where we stress-test speakers". A small room with a few hanging 15" drivers and white noise that must have been pretty loud on the other side of the thick glass in the door. I could actually see the cones moving in and out from the low frequency components in the noise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members J. Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 ElectroVoice's research and development is done in Minneapolis? Why didn't I know this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Never_Grew_Up Posted April 30, 2005 Members Share Posted April 30, 2005 I describe the smell as 'burning crayons'.I was doing sound for some friends at a frat party about 100 years ago and borrowed a buddy's CS800 to drive a pair of perkins bins. (That's how long ago this was...) Anyway the CS800 was even older and when I turned it for the sound check on I got DC out 1 channel and just the faintest wisp of smoke came out the top ports of the left cabinet. The closer I got to the cabinet, the stronger the burning crayon smell got. Oh well... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members moody Posted May 1, 2005 Members Share Posted May 1, 2005 Been there, don't that. Second gig with my current cover band - got through 20 minutes and then started getting massive amounts of smoke out of my speaker cabinet. Luckly for our first two gigs we actually supported other bands (haven't done that since) so there was another bass rig there to borrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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