Phoenix Gold Phorum

Well Cec you may want to check that amp. LOL it probably still works.

Why in the name of fuck I didnt check the woofer is beyond me, I guess I thought that the amp had gone out because it was older.

Anyway today I went to rewire the sub so that it wasnt at 2ohm mono and when I removed the woofer I noticed a few things.

A bad smell.
The padding had melted and gone hard seriously reducing the box volume.
The dust dome had melted and inverted.
One set of braids were cooked, black and broken.
One coil was dead (the other works when I soldered the braid back but shes history).

So now I need a new sub.

Prognosis? heat, way too much heat.

I love the sound of sealed boxes but fuck me they have their drawbacks

I've been running a pair ancient XS124 woofers sealed of an M100 for a while now and no major heat problems with the drivers.

I have running 3 xs124 12" sealed since about 1998 and no problems before that I had 2 orion XTR 12" sealed no problems before that I had 4 MTX blue thunder 12" sealed and no problems ever. What I am saying is that a sealed box didn't kill your sub likely you overpowered it or were sending it a clipped signal cause your gain wasn't set properly and you listened to it turned up to much without hearing it distorting..

Andy,
You amp is probably blown and when it went it took your speaker with it. A blown set of voice coils is nothing new to a bad amp situation.
That 200ZX did not have enough music power to do the damage your talking about, now it did have enough DC power to do all that you spoke of, but DC output is not music power.

So to recap I think your amp went south first, and then your speaker went tumbling behind.

If I could show you how many times my repair work has been hooked back up to toasted speakers you would laugh. It got so bad over the last few years that I start making people do a reconnect before leaving the shop.

You have fallen victim to the largest oversight that any stereo owner is most likely to see. Welcome to the human race my friend, yours is not a nrew situation to my world.
I am sorry to hear you need a new speaker. I have been running a sealed box set of woofers for 5 years now < same woofer by the way> Its not the box my friend, its the failure mode of the amp that crisped your woofer....Sorry buddy, but it does happen.

The first time I ever saw this was with a Series VII Zeus many years ago. It came back for the third time I demanded to see the speakers.. Well They were WELDED at the voice coils to the magnet structure. Well no wonder it kept blowing out the first stage of the power supply. The cones would not move at all when pressed, Yes Sir WELDED at the voice coil....And the owner was not even aware there was a problem.... Of course it was all my fault that he bought them used at the flea market blown like they were


Merry Christmas Andy, I hope you find a deal on a new sub my friend.....C

Been running a JLw7 Sealed, and a TI12D Elite sealed...no issues...both ran for at least two years.....

I used 2 10" JBL Power series back in the day when my ZX500 was brand new! Both were in a small sealed chamber and never any issues. Good clean sound. . .until I wrecked the car

TBH I think the reason that what happened happened was the circumstances.

I know you all say that you run sealed and you've had no issues but I didn't explain what would cause the fryin' tonight..

When the sub went it was after 11 hours of hard listening.

I have my system set so that things have a max output (around 3/4 of the head unit). Well I had the system running hard for 11 hours all the way back from Maryland.

I don't really blame the woofer, hell, I would have another one tomorrow..

So the fun has continued.

I have about 5 days before I again head to maryland on my big journey home. So I wanted to get a woofer locally (IE not the net cos it wouldnt have arrived in time) and I dont want to spend very much being that I am having to be uber careful with cash and the fact my mate has 2 punch stage 3 tens for me when I get back to NJ, I just literally wanted something for the ride home.

So I went to walmart bright and early, got a lightning audio bolt 10 for $35. Nothing special, rated @ 150wrms.

Wired up that amp (fucking hell cecil that thing is fucking ridiculous ) and had to turn the gains almost all the way down. It sounded good, but the smell of coil and cone glue gave me reasons for concern

Washed and detailed the car (lovely day here in Ohio !) and took it out to get some coffee.. Mid way through my chores I smelled a funny smell, the woofer cut out and I went to the trunk where smoke was pouring from the box.

Yip, another one cooked, amp is perfectly fine....

So that is going to take me about an hour to fucking get back out and take back, I am glad I got something local..

It kinda leaves me @ odds of what to do though tbh....


Oh, respec to that amp, fuck me that thing is absolutely charging with power. Dangerous even !

I knew I should have got that stroker

Clipped signal = burnt sub


USE a DMM and measure for DCV on your amp outputs.

Sealed boxes don't wreck subs its something your doing.

gridracer wrote:Sealed boxes don't wreck subs its something your doing.

Sort of.....

It wasn't actually me doing it it was my active line driver.

Firstly let me run something by.. When you open a lightning audio subwoofer they're sealed in one of those annoying finger slicing plastic things.

First thing you note when you open them (with an exact-o ) is a terrible smell of wet glue..

Not good glue (thick superglue that uses activator like cerwin vega use.. the shit that dries like concrete...) but the crap stuff that smells nice, Evo Stick.

When I toyed with the sub on the way back to walmart I noticed it wouldnt move inward,but would move outward. Turns out the glue holding the cone to the coil had melted, thats what made the smoke.

I thought I could hear the sub whoomp as I turned off the amp..

Anyway. I took it back and exchanged it for one of those pioneer ones (150 rms 600 max) Ive heard theyre ok, it was $45.

But when I ran over what Cecil had been saying in his post up there ^ about DC voltage all of a sudden it hit me.

My parametric has a (get this) 8 volt line driver. And I remember him saying that older amps (and non competition grade amps) would not like this. I really reakon it was that, voltage over watts (because I swear I was really gentle on the lightning sub).

So I disconnected the RCAS from that and ran them to the sub out on the back of the $ony head unit.

Everythign seems fine, I have the amp @ less than half gain with the bass boost knob all the way off and the sub out on the head unit @ -7db, 2 notches up the sweep) and it sounds lovely.

Hopefully this will cure my overheating issue, which is what has been killing the subs.

VW337 wrote:Clipped signal = burnt sub


USE a DMM and measure for DCV on your amp outputs.

It wasnt the sub (well, coil) that was burnt Errin it was the glue holding the sub to the coil..

Which was caused by excessive heat which hopefully was caused by excessive voltage from the pre signal.

Thing is I didnt even need to use the active to control the sub, I only wanted it to remvove any bass actively from the MPS signal. So its no loss.

8v is fucking ridonkulous anyways.

Zomb1fied wrote:.. When you open a lightning audio subwoofer..

If any Phorum Phreaks witness me doing such, a round right between my peepers, please....

So you were driving 8 volts into the front end of an M100, had the gains @ 75% and wondered why a WallyWorld sub said fuck you??

HoseHead wrote:

Zomb1fied wrote:.. When you open a lightning audio subwoofer..

If any Phorum Phreaks witness me doing such, a round right between my peepers, please....

So you were driving 8 volts into the front end of an M100, had the gains @ 75% and wondered why a WallyWorld sub said fuck you??

lmao nah it wasnt a M100 it was a Mark Anthony 800MK2.

Lovely amp

As for the sub? it'shit and I know it, but all I wanted was some sound for a near on 14 hour drive. There was no time to mail order one from a website as I am leaving on Jan 2nd. So its a stop gap.. When I get back to NJ I have 2 punch woofers awaiting for free so I am going to take the woofer back I have now (the pioneer) and get a credit, then Ill go food shopping

I just cant face that drive with no bass

Andy , Please be careful using a line driver neither the ZX or the Mark Anthony amp need this sort of drive level.

You should have all your amp gains set at their minimums and you should never need to raise them.
At their minimum set point it will take only 2 volts to drive your amp to full power output ( UNCLIPPED), and depending on how you set your line driver you Could be sending the amp up to 8 volts of signal and driving the amp deeply into clipping.
Clipped music is a square wave with fundamentals that are out of the subs range of playback so you can't actually hear all that heat your sending the sub.
Yes I said HEAT, thats what the sub will do with all that clipped info, it goes straight to heat because the sub can't do anything with that out of playback band information. It just all goes to heat.

I see lots of people running line drivers, and when they do they often overlook the fact that most amps only need 2 volts to go to full "Unclipped" output.
A line driver is quite a useful device if used properly it serves many great purposes, BUT if mis adjusted it spells doom for speakers and amplifiers.

On another note I am glad you liked your Christmas Amp. And as I posted before it will out do that 200zx at 8 ohms mono. The lowest you should even consider running it is 4 ohms mono, NO more than that. It has 12 outputs like the RSD line uses, and your ZX only had 4, so I know what I sent you will be louder than what you had. Mark Anthony is no longer in business they survived about 6 months in the business.
There was never anything really wrong with their amp line, except the people buying them all ran them out of their rated load range.< less than 4 ohms mono>

Plus when installing a new sub the new sub will be tight and not broken in so it will take gobes of power to make it move after anywhere from 20 to 40 hours of play it will play louder as the elastomer's have relaxed and the speaker efficiency has risen to it normal levels. Like shoes, subs need break in time, and car engines the first 500 miles is very important, and so with subs also...


Please enjoy the amp, and Thank you for allowing me to Santa in your time of need. The amp should carry you into the new year without issue on its part, and on to your new directions early this year that you have facing you.

Happy New Year Andy.......C

Yeah I get it now C. Of course driving the 18 did no damage, but a ten with a coil half the size? dang !

Anyway, it's now chugging along very happily. The gain is practically at zero and I am feeding it minimal signal from the HU, no smell of even warm glue after four hours

What really made me happy was the amplifier.

After alot of digging it turns out that Mark Anthony amplifiers were made by none other than.... Cerwin Vega. They were set to be an audiophile series and they were made in the same location as USamps.

I knew that amp body looked fecking familiar !

The sound is amazing, I'm really very happy with it thanks so much again !

What did upset me a little was finding out after washing my car that I did alot more damage to it than I thought when reversing into my room mate.. All of the delock bondo has cracked where the bumper flexed so I now have to do that aswell as paint the hood vents again (FFS I mustve wanted my head examined using non heat proof paint )

Still, all repairs are minor and should not take more than three days. Not like I'm very busy

Well, the pioneer only has to make it to NJ. Then it's punch powah FTW

Oh, it's running @ 4ohm mono, so 2ohms per side

Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't the ZX amps set up for 8 volts input? I would be more worried about the MPS2240, which expects 2 volts at minimum gain...

I'm not sure it was the voltage that killed your stuff, but I can almost guarantee that something was clipping in your signal path. Be it the headunit, your EQing, your linedriver, the amp... something was clipping and it ended up taking out the amp and subwoofer at the same time.

Please Pandy, take the time with a voltmeter and set all of your gains properly. This includes the gains in your linedriver and other sources as well. Disable all EQ/bass boosting while you're at it (you should only ever SUBTRACT, not ADD, because adding causes clipping and distortion).

stipud wrote:Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't the ZX amps set up for 8 volts input? I would be more worried about the MPS2240, which expects 2 volts at minimum gain...

I'm not sure it was the voltage that killed your stuff, but I can almost guarantee that something was clipping in your signal path. Be it the headunit, your EQing, your linedriver, the amp... something was clipping and it ended up taking out the amp and subwoofer at the same time.

Please Pandy, take the time with a voltmeter and set all of your gains properly. This includes the gains in your linedriver and other sources as well. Disable all EQ/bass boosting while you're at it (you should only ever SUBTRACT, not ADD, because adding causes clipping and distortion).

I am sure it was the voltage.

Try to remember that the FX-45 *only* puts out 8v LD into the sub out, not the rest.

That would explain why I have had those very delicate Clif mids (3.5s and 6.5s) AND the Point Reference all happily ticking away @ less than 1ohm for nearly a year with no brown outs.

When I initially bought the Fusion I did so to use it strictly as a active XO/EQ (it does both, it really is loaded with a plethora load of features) and XO'ing the sub was far from my mind ('cos let's face it any decent amp can do that blindfolded these days).

I figured I would use the sub out because it was there.. I was using the DVD player as a HU @ the time and it has a very low output..

Then I got the Sony, but that kind of pre out didnt matter because I was using an 18 with a 3.5" coil wrapped with wire akin to 110v solid core main cable

10's on the other hand use wire half the thickness.. so they couldnt take the heat, so to speak..

Last night I had a full tank of petrol for the first time since I got here to OH and decided to go out for a long ass drive. I was hard but not harsh on the sub and it was fine on the HU's sub out. Not one single smell of even warm glue, nothing

So it's fixed the problem.

the moral of the story:

No matter how we word it (heard or not) the cause of the damaged sub is improperly set gains. Which result in a clipped signal (aka square wave) which can be read by a DMM as DC voltage. Pump enough crap signal into any speaker and you'll cook it if the amp doesn't cook first.

Oh indeed hehe

VW337 wrote:the moral of the story:

No matter how we word it (heard or not) the cause of the damaged sub is improperly set gains. Which result in a clipped signal (aka square wave) which can be read by a DMM as DC voltage. Pump enough crap signal into any speaker and you'll cook it if the amp doesn't cook first.

We have been over this one before. A DMM will not read a square wave as DC voltage. That is impossible. A square wave is still AC voltage, and will still have a DC offset of zero, unless the DC reference of the amplifier is out of place (above or below zero).

I suppose if you played a 1Hz signal, you would see the DC voltage on a DMM flip back and forth from – to +, but that would still tell you very little, as an AC signal would do exactly the same in this case.