PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic PA Suggestions That Do BIAB Justice?

Many of the speakers we get in for repair or even warranty replacement aren't blown by the music content.

They get blown by people making foolish mistakes.

**The guy who can't hear it at all, so proceeds to turn Volumes up ALL THE WAY and then proceeds to start checking cables. Finds the misconnected or nonconnected cable and shoves it into the jack. BOOOWOOOOOM! There is absolutely no need to turn volumes up all the way. Especially when troubleshooting a no sound situation.

**A LOT of drivers get blown due to underpowered amplifiers. Far too many do not understand this situation. "This speaker is rated for 400W and I was only running a 150W Power Amp!" -- A recipe for Clipping, which means more ON TIME, which translates to more heating of the Voice Coil and can lead to Voice Coil failure. it is up to the user to be able to hear Clipping in the audio and not try to send a boy to do a man's job here, if you only have that 150W available, don't try to make it perform as if it was 400W.

**Bad Connections. The guy who has a bad cable and continues to use it because if you bend it a certain way it starts to work. Good way to get into a situation where you pop a speaker when that cable cuts out, in the heat of performance he turns the output up because it isn't as loud as it was before -- and then that cable gets moved or vibrated back into a working state. If a speaker cable, it can also SHORT inside, which may blow the outputs of the Power Amp.

**Active speakers outdoors in the hot summer sun. This one comes around every summer here near the ocean. Dark speaker cabinet, a physics prof's "black box" as far as being able to absorb more of Old Sol's radiations, stuck up on a pole for an hour or two before even being operated. Internal temperatures soar from the absorbed heat. Most of those active speakers do not contain fans to cool the power supply and power amplifier inside them, they depend on the action of the working woofer cone to move air in and out of the cabinet. Just sitting there idling in the hot sun can cause internal temperature to soar way above the design constraint. And then its their turn onstage and they kick it off, asking the overheated components to suddenly crank it out. Transistor junctions fail due to the heat.

Just as with so many things that I try to point out in my posts, the care and feeding of your music equipment is just another topic where Knowledge is Power.


--Mac

Good information Mac! Thanks!

One problem with a solo act is that you end up doing some very important things that may not be your forte. Even if I can play the instruments, sing the songs, buy the gear, learn the software, record my trax, mix them , work the crowd etc etc... I can still screw it all up if I make a brain dead move out of ignorance and undermine my own gear

One more reason why you add such value to the forum.

"It needs a special rig to move it, or 2 strong people."
Or 4 old people
I have moved these beasts up and down stairs, up and over piano bars.
More than I would like to remember in the 60's and 70's. But as a sax player
it was always my favorite when there was a great B3 player on a gig.

I looked at cheaper model wives, in the end, after one experience with one, I went for the up market, musician with an education and experience in a wide variety of activities, who's father had boats and motors and cabins and no son in law to share them with. :-). I could have got another one from a pub, but hung out at concerts instead.

Then, thinking about my experience with low end stuff, I got a Bose.

But the expensive wife was worried about the expense of the thing, but then realized I get out of the house...yada.

Not much anymore, she has to carry it.