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Ampeg 610 Issues

X

xkalenx

Mar 4, 2008
75
2
#1
Played a show a couple weeks ago with my band and noticed my cab lighting up - I know about the fuse-light business, but I really don’t feel that I was pushing the cabinet that hard. Then today while we were jamming I pulled the grill cloth off and noticed that the top left speaker was working way harder than the rest (I had to replace that speaker years ago).
I’m running a sansamp bddi into an svt-3pro into the 610, but as I said, I don’t feel I’m pushing the cab as the head’s output is 450 watts and the cab is rated for 600.
Is it normal for the one speaker to be pounding while the others are not? Should I not be able to turn this thing up and get some decent power? I’m pretty clueless when it comes to this business so any input would be great.
 
#4
xkalenx said:
Played a show a couple weeks ago with my band and noticed my cab lighting up - I know about the fuse-light business, but I really don’t feel that I was pushing the cabinet that hard. Then today while we were jamming I pulled the grill cloth off and noticed that the top left speaker was working way harder than the rest (I had to replace that speaker years ago).
I’m running a sansamp bddi into an svt-3pro into the 610, but as I said, I don’t feel I’m pushing the cab as the head’s output is 450 watts and the cab is rated for 600.
Is it normal for the one speaker to be pounding while the others are not? Should I not be able to turn this thing up and get some decent power? I’m pretty clueless when it comes to this business so any input would be great.
Click to expand...
Is the replacement speaker a different impedance from the rest?
 
#5
Old Garage-Bander said:
Is the replacement speaker a different impedance from the rest?
Click to expand...

I’d look at this first. I just became an owner of a 610hlf (literally today, I’ll pay the owner for it here shortly...:D). But I’ve researched the cabinet and learned that the driver are 24-ohm drivers wired in parallel to make for a 4-ohm load.

What that techspeak means is that it’s really easy to not realize that and pop an 8-ohm speaker in there. That incorrect speaker will catch a lot of the load and make the amp see a lower nominal impedance. In the case of the Ampeg SVT 3 Pro, it’s looking at a lower impedance than it was designed to safely handle, which will be detrimental to its life.

Double-check that replacement speaker

If that’s not the problem, then the replacement speaker might be wired out of polarity with the other speakers, as suggested earlier. Past that, I’m out of ideas for now.

Good luck.
 
#6
Everyone is going to tell you that all speakers take the signal evenly at the same time. I had a couple of 610s over the years and every single one had problems with the upper left speaker when playing at volume. Finally one day I was in my local Ampeg dealership when the rep came in when I just so happened to be there to order another speaker. I asked him what was up with it. Before I told him he asked "is it the top left one?". He said it was a known issue and common in the 610 and that for some reason that speaker got the signal first and hardest and always had more displacement than the rest. He comped me the speaker.
And..... now everyone will tell me he was wrong and that can't happen.
 
Last edited:
#8
beans-on-toast said:
In the current Ampeg 610 HLF cabinets, the speakers are six ohm and wired series-parallel. Pairs in series (6+6=12 ohms), three pairs in parallel (12 || 12 || 12 = 4 ohms). As illustrated here: Ampeg 610 cab wiring help
Click to expand...

Oops! I got some bad intel, then. Gonna edit the previous post on this.

I understand the concepts and results of series/parallel wiring.
 
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#9
xkalenx said:
Played a show a couple weeks ago with my band and noticed my cab lighting up - I know about the fuse-light business, but I really don’t feel that I was pushing the cabinet that hard. Then today while we were jamming I pulled the grill cloth off and noticed that the top left speaker was working way harder than the rest (I had to replace that speaker years ago).
I’m running a sansamp bddi into an svt-3pro into the 610, but as I said, I don’t feel I’m pushing the cab as the head’s output is 450 watts and the cab is rated for 600.
Is it normal for the one speaker to be pounding while the others are not? Should I not be able to turn this thing up and get some decent power? I’m pretty clueless when it comes to this business so any input would be great.
Click to expand...
You are probably running your amp at quite a bit more than it's rated power, the 450 watt rating refers to the clean output.
In order to light up the tweeter bulb fuse you would need to introduce quite a lot of harmonic distortion from some source, either the preamp gain stage and or power amp or be running some sort of distortion pedal when this occurs.
Unless your replacement driver is the wrong impedance and causing the power amp stage to oscillate and distort badly the bulb fuse will not be lighting other than, by the passive high pass filter mistaking the broad top of the lower frequency square wave as a number of higher frequency peaks.
Thus transferring the lower frequency signal that should not arrive at the tweeter via the crossover to the tweeter.
The rule of thumb that will save you mucho dollars is never run a bass rig dirty louder than you can play it clean.:-)X
 
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