Smoke came out of PA amp

[Caleb Chia]

I was at a gig today, and wow, the PA was set up so badly I have to share it.
It was a small gig with a powered mixer and snake, should have been very simple but they were having heaps of issues and finally smoke came out of the amp and it stopped working.

I had a look and he was running the speaker line through the xlr lines on the snake back to the front of house speakers!
Not only this but both speakers were on one side of the amp and the other channel was not being used at all.

So I'm not sure whether the snake line got so hot it melted and shorted out or whether the speaker signals fed back into the input and it oscillated into thermal runaway.
Very sad.

We had to play through some tiny little amps, not very good.

*sorry realized wrong section but don't know how to move post*

 

[JonSnell Electronic]

That is why we have Sound Men! To avoid this sort of thing happening.

 

[Enzo]

Yep, and when some volunteer from a local church wants advice on whether he has a "bad capacitator", I recommend he actually pay someone from a local band or sound company to come check out his system.

 

[Mooly]

*sorry realized wrong section but don't know how to move post*

Done

 

[conanski]

It was a small gig with a powered mixer and snake,

That's all I need to read to know what probably went wrong, 22ga signal wire doesn't handle much current before melting so I'd say they shorted out the snake which then blew the amp. Never underestimate an idiots ingenuity at destroying what should be an idiot proof setup.