ar 2ax woofer, cooked voice coil

[Guest grassulo]

My 80's onkyo amp got the bright idea to short one side of It's integrated amp "brick" IC and cook one of my 2ax's woofer voice coils. Smoke, REALLY bad smell, loud buzzing & crackling, it was pretty dramatic, but now I need a new woofer! I bought two 10's at radio shack because they were having a sale, these are their higher end ones, magnets as big around as my head, heavy mothers, but they sound awful, due to the thick heavy paper of the AR woofers, acted like it's own crossover, filtering out highs. So should I stay with the two poly coned monsters I picked up at radio shack, which fit the frames perfectly, and modify the crossover to match them, recone the cooked AR woofer, or spend the $80 at layne audio and just buy a whole new one? What have you done in the past when you've fried coils in 2ax's, and I know some of you must have, they really werent designed to handle as much power as some of us put through them! I switched back to my 21 watt 70s nikko amp, which I probably shouldnt have tried to replace with a cheap 50 watt onkyo reciever, so I know it wont do any harm, 21 watts is what their rated at, atleast from what I can remember the spec sheet for them saying.

-Garret

[ar_pro]

Unfortunately, about the only thing that the Radio Shack driver has in common with the original AR woofer is frame size - it's just not an appropriate replacement.

Have you considered eBay as a source for replacement parts? AR drivers turn up frequently.

It might also be time to consider fusing your speakers...that might have saved your blown woofer.

[Guest dogmeninreno]

>My 80's onkyo amp got the bright idea to short one side of

>It's integrated amp "brick" IC and cook one of my 2ax's woofer

>voice coils. Smoke, REALLY bad smell, loud buzzing &

>crackling, it was pretty dramatic, but now I need a new

>woofer! I bought two 10's at radio shack because they were

>having a sale, these are their higher end ones, magnets as big

>around as my head, heavy mothers, but they sound awful, due to

>the thick heavy paper of the AR woofers, acted like it's own

>crossover, filtering out highs. So should I stay with the two

>poly coned monsters I picked up at radio shack, which fit the

>frames perfectly, and modify the crossover to match them,

>recone the cooked AR woofer, or spend the $80 at layne audio

>and just buy a whole new one? What have you done in the past

>when you've fried coils in 2ax's, and I know some of you must

>have, they really werent designed to handle as much power as

>some of us put through them! I switched back to my 21 watt 70s

>nikko amp, which I probably shouldnt have tried to replace

>with a cheap 50 watt onkyo reciever, so I know it wont do any

>harm, 21 watts is what their rated at, atleast from what I can

>remember the spec sheet for them saying.

>

>-Garret

Garret, I have a refoamed AR2ax woofer that I will sell you if you are interested. If this were my choice, I would recone or watch eBay as suggested. Dale

[Guest dogmeninreno]

Here is a link to some 2ax woofers on eBay. There are some more up also. Try a search for "ar 2ax woofers" http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5701562873&rd=1

Dale

[Guest dogmeninreno]

Here is a link to a single woofer. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...5701593235&rd=1

Dale

[tysontom]

>My 80's onkyo amp got the bright idea to short one side of

>It's integrated amp "brick" IC and cook one of my 2ax's woofer

>voice coils. Smoke, REALLY bad smell, loud buzzing &

>crackling, it was pretty dramatic, but now I need a new

>woofer! What have you done in the past

>when you've fried coils in 2ax's, and I know some of you must

>have, they really werent designed to handle as much power as

>some of us put through them! I switched back to my 21 watt 70s

>nikko amp, which I probably shouldnt have tried to replace

>with a cheap 50 watt onkyo reciever, so I know it wont do any

>harm, 21 watts is what their rated at, atleast from what I can

>remember the spec sheet for them saying.

>

>-Garret

Garret, what you are most likely describing is a classic case of amplifier failure that sends the full-power dc rail voltage directly into the AR-2ax voice coil. It may have been just gross amplifier distortion and over-driving. Few loudspeakers can take it for more than a few seconds without at least burning the insulation off the voice-coil wires. In may cases, such failure will warp the voice-coil former and "freeze" the woofer in place; in other instances the voice coil may actually catch on fire. Since the speaker is sealed, usually such a fire will burn itself out inside the cabinet, but you never know. Also, by this time the amplifier has pretty much self-destructed and blown a powerline fuse or something of that sort.

This type failure has nothing whatsoever to do with the power-handling capability of the AR-2ax. The AR-2ax can easily handle short-term peaks of 150-200 watts clean power without stress. However, the speaker needs a *minimum* of 20 watts/ch. This is the minimum, not "rated power." It is possible that the relatively low-sensitivity load that the 2ax presented to the Onkyo receiver caused it to seriously overload for some reason, and ultimately to fail.

The safest thing to do when in doubt is to fuse any speaker. Many amplifiers have either coupling capacitors, auto-transformers or fuses in the output; most others have simply nothing to block dc in the output, and these are the ones in which you must provide fusing for the speaker if you are to protect against catastropic failure such as you described. In the case of the AR-2ax, a Buss Fusetron dual-element FNM-6/10 is the appropriate fuse to protect against most thermal problems for all drivers, but will not protect against every situation. The 6/10 should protect against an amplifier passing large-current dc to the woofer.

--Tom Tyson

[ninohernes]

>My 80's onkyo amp got the bright idea to short one side of

>It's integrated amp "brick" IC and cook one of my 2ax's woofer

>voice coils. Smoke, REALLY bad smell, loud buzzing &

>crackling, it was pretty dramatic, but now I need a new

>woofer! I bought two 10's at radio shack because they were

>having a sale, these are their higher end ones, magnets as big

>around as my head, heavy mothers, but they sound awful, due to

>the thick heavy paper of the AR woofers, acted like it's own

>crossover, filtering out highs. So should I stay with the two

>poly coned monsters I picked up at radio shack, which fit the

>frames perfectly, and modify the crossover to match them,

>recone the cooked AR woofer, or spend the $80 at layne audio

>and just buy a whole new one? What have you done in the past

>when you've fried coils in 2ax's, and I know some of you must

>have, they really werent designed to handle as much power as

>some of us put through them! I switched back to my 21 watt 70s

>nikko amp, which I probably shouldnt have tried to replace

>with a cheap 50 watt onkyo reciever, so I know it wont do any

>harm, 21 watts is what their rated at, atleast from what I can

>remember the spec sheet for them saying.

>

>-Garret

As Tom said, the AR's can handle a lot of power. I use my AR-2's with an Adcom amp that is 125 watts per channel. You really need a powerfull amp, that is capable of driving difficult loads with low distortion, if you dont do this, you end up with catasrtophic falure, like you described.