Hi all. New guy here.
I'm having a problem with my set-up and I was wondering if the speakers could be causing it or if I'm the culprit.
The rig:
Acoustat Model 1's 141 Medalion (Not running original sub) Luxman MB3045's and a powered sub running off of RCA's from the second output of a Quad pre-amp.
From there it is fed by the channel out of an Onkyo receiver that I use to power lesser speakers when I don't need to have the full glory of the good stuff.
The problem:
Over a period of time one of the mono blocks develops a crunchy distortion. They were completely referbed and repaired a couple of times and yet the issue persists. I'm not sure that it's the same amp as I've changed where they live and didn't take note of which is which. It's always on the left channel so I'm wondering if the speaker could be causing the issue or if it may be my unconventional setup.
Thought I'd check here before taking the amps back to the repair shop or bothering the folks in the tube amp section.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
I'm having a problem with my set-up and I was wondering if the speakers could be causing it or if I'm the culprit.
The rig:
Acoustat Model 1's 141 Medalion (Not running original sub) Luxman MB3045's and a powered sub running off of RCA's from the second output of a Quad pre-amp.
From there it is fed by the channel out of an Onkyo receiver that I use to power lesser speakers when I don't need to have the full glory of the good stuff.
The problem:
Over a period of time one of the mono blocks develops a crunchy distortion. They were completely referbed and repaired a couple of times and yet the issue persists. I'm not sure that it's the same amp as I've changed where they live and didn't take note of which is which. It's always on the left channel so I'm wondering if the speaker could be causing the issue or if it may be my unconventional setup.
Thought I'd check here before taking the amps back to the repair shop or bothering the folks in the tube amp section.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
Yes, the speaker could be the source of the distortion, especially if overdriven, and/or you have loose tension on the diaphragm. Try swapping the speakers - if the problem follows the speaker, then you found the culprit in that speaker. If the problem remains on the same channel, then your problem is elsewhere.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to a newb. I'm very grateful to have found someone that knows about these glorious speakers.
I have hooked up a different set of speakers and the problem persists with the one amp. The Acoustats are currently powered by a solid state Marantz and they sound fine. Disappointing compared to the tubes but otherwise fine.
I guess that my question is, could there be something wrong with the speaker or interface that could be causing the amp to burn tubes?
And no, I do not drive them to the point of clipping.
I have hooked up a different set of speakers and the problem persists with the one amp. The Acoustats are currently powered by a solid state Marantz and they sound fine. Disappointing compared to the tubes but otherwise fine.
I guess that my question is, could there be something wrong with the speaker or interface that could be causing the amp to burn tubes?
And no, I do not drive them to the point of clipping.
I should mention that I had them hooked to the 8 ohm output as I am not running the sub. Am I wrong in doing that? Has car audio got me thinking wrong about home audio?
I doubt that connecting the speaker to the 8-ohm tap would cause any damage to the amplifier. However, once you get things working properly again, you may have better results using the 4-ohm tap. The MK141 interface is closer to 4 ohms than it is to 8 ohms.