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Fried speakers - SVT 4 pro w/ SVT810e

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ph0ngwh0ng

Mar 3, 2012
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#1
Hi!

I went through the stickies for this but haven't quite found an answer to my problem.

You see, I seem to have blown 7 out of 8 speakers of my cab.

I have an Ampeg SVT 4 Pro head mono-bridged in an Ampeg SVT810e cab. Impedance is matched (4 ohm to 4 ohm). Wattage is another question.

Ampeg SVT4 Pro:
1600 Watts Mono-Bridged @ 4 Ohms (1200 Watts Continuous)
Ampeg SVT810e:
RMS POWER HANDLING Combined/Mono Mode: 800 watts 8x10
PEAK POWER HANDLING Combined/Mono Mode: 1600 watts 8x10

I tend to play at high volumes (limiter led on the head flashes 1 or 2 times per song) for 2-3 hours with 3 or 4 10 to 15 minutes interruptions. I play with a guitar plugged in a BOSS GT-10 which is using the effects loop via the 4 cable method.

I am now shopping for a replacement, but I just don't want it all to blow up again in 2-3 months. Am i doing something terribly, terribly wrong?

Thanks!
 
#2
ph0ngwh0ng said:
Am i doing something terribly, terribly wrong?
Click to expand...
You must be. A Fridge is displacement limited to about 400 watts in the lows, more than that will cause very high distortion. That means you had 400 watts of headroom between when things sounded bad and drivers began to fry. And that's assuming that the Fridge can only handle 800 watts thermal; in reality 1200 watts is more like it, as Ampeg rates it very conservatively. Eminence rates the driver at 150w.

IMO the volume required to kill a Fridge would be unimaginably loud. You can easily drive a 10,000 seat venue with a Fridge, because the only person of that 10,000 who needs to hear it is you. The PA takes care of everyone else. With no PA at all I'd say up to 300 seats. Got more than 300 seats? Get into the PA.
 
#4
Are you eq'ing for deep lows? If so you are pushing the wrong cab. By "guitar" you do mean BASS guitar right? Have the amp checked for DC off-set at the output, with the limiter flashing you should be almost deaf by now. If the bias is off or if you have a bad output device with excessive DC off-set, you will blow just about any speaker cab.
 
#7
Only reason I can think of for running that rig that hard is for the distortion. Is it the broken, crackly tone you like when pushing your rig past the limit? Perhaps a distortion pedal or other effects would give you that broken dirty sound without frying your drivers.
 
#8
Splore said:
Only reason I can think of for running that rig that hard is for the distortion. Is it the broken, crackly tone you like when pushing your rig past the limit? Perhaps a distortion pedal or other effects would give you that broken dirty sound without frying your drivers.
Click to expand...

A 2Pro, sure. 4Pro, not so much. SS power section = sounds bad overdriven :p
 
#10
All of the above.....

A couple other things.....

1)
how did you blow 7 of 8? usually after 2 or 3 "go" it starts to sound so bad that you KNOW something is up..... didn't you hear anything odd?

If you did not notice, then what about the "bad" ones is bad? Probably they are not "open", or you would have noticed the sound "going away"...... Do... do they rattle, do they now have "rubs", what?

2)
if you have the lows up, you can beat the 810E voice coils to death on the magnets with a 4PRO... but you usually hear what sounds like a pistol shot every time they hit..... Unless you missed that, I assume that wasn't what happened....

3)
depending on your playing and fingering technique, you can put through a good bit of low frequency that you cannot hear, especially with an 810E. Did you see the cones moving a long way? probably not, usually you have otehr things to look at, and unless the light is right you don't see it anyhow.....

The questions are all related to determining if this is a "mechanical" failure, or a "thermal" one.....

If the speakers have "rubs" when carefully moved by hand, or "rattle" when played, the voice coils may have shifted and/or loosened due to heat....

if they seem to be 'stuck", or don't move forward but do move back, they may have been battered on the magnet.... also "mechanical" if the cones are damaged, dust caps are popped, etc.....
 
#11
This thread is long dead. But just so anyone who does a search for "Can I play guitar in a bass cab" knows:

JUST BUY A GUITAR CAB DAMMIT, OR YOU'LL FRY THE DAMN SPEAKERS!!!

Basically, bass speakers are cooled by vacuum. When the speaker moves in and out, air is pumped in and out of the speaker. Playing guitar through a bass cab (even if the speakers are 10") will not allow the speakers to cool down, due to the smaller amplitude of movement required for reproducing guitar sound, thus frying the speakers in the long term.

Believe someone who blew an Ampeg fridge out.
 
#12
ph0ngwh0ng said:
This thread is long dead. But just so anyone who does a search for "Can I play guitar in a bass cab" knows:

JUST BUY A GUITAR CAB DAMMIT, OR YOU'LL FRY THE DAMN SPEAKERS!!!

Basically, bass speakers are cooled by vacuum. When the speaker moves in and out, air is pumped in and out of the speaker. Playing guitar through a bass cab (even if the speakers are 10") will not allow the speakers to cool down, due to the smaller amplitude of movement required for reproducing guitar sound, thus frying the speakers in the long term.

Believe someone who blew an Ampeg fridge out.
Click to expand...

No.

You blew the speakers because you were putting too much power through them. End of story. That 810 is lucky if it can truly handle 1,000w of power.
 
#15
In a sense, yes, I agree, I was playing too loud, but I couldn't have known it by ear, since the speakers didn't distort the way they would have with a bass plugged in it. Fact is Eminence Legend B810 are not build to handle a guitar signal (just compare the specs with Legend speakers built for guitar). To output the same dB level as for a bass, I had to use more wattage, which the svt4 pro head was just too happy to deliver.
 
#16
You have that exactly backwards. Guitar amps are always lower wattage than bass amps because you DON'T need as much wattage to get them as loud as bass. The lower the frequency, the more wattage it takes to amplify at a level of a higher frequency.
 
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