Arcing speaker wires?
Thread Starter
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 6,420
Likes: 5
From: "This is not a psychotic episode, but a cleansing moment of clarity."
Arcing speaker wires?
Had something really weird happen that I never expected. I'm running a 1000 watt bridged mono amp into a 10" sub. I noticed that the 30 amp fuses on the amp had blown today, so I replaced them. The amp powered up, but as soon as I turned up the volume a bit, the fuses blew again. Perplexed, I took the sub out of the enclosure and discovered some melted plastic a few inches down the run of the wire (I was using clear insulated zip cord, where apparently, the positive and negative wires had arced, causing the short. I never knew such a thing was possible! I cut the cord past the offending short, put on some new spade connectors and separated the wires so there would be no more of that nonsense. Has this happened to anyone else on here?
Tech Contributor
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 7,035
Likes: 134
From: North Augusta, SC
You may want to ohm the sub to make sure the coil isn't shorted. I've seen plenty of melted wires at work, most were due to a short downstream. However, if you have the wires near their current limit, then any defect in them could have caused the same thing.
Thread Starter
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 6,420
Likes: 5
From: "This is not a psychotic episode, but a cleansing moment of clarity."
Le Mans Master
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 5,116
Likes: 5
From: Livonia MI
Actually, you still have a problem, as sound's like you have a dual voice coil subwoofer and only utilizing half it's potential output and power rating. A dual voice coil arrangement is usually meant to accept a stereo amp output, and sum it at that point. You could parallel the two coils together, but would be a 2 ohm load to your already bridged amp, making it see more like a 1 ohm load internally. Also curious about your speaker cable, as I recall running some remote speaker cable for my dad's home system, and a speaker later quit. Traced it out to a factory speaker wire splice molded right into the PVC jacket. Even had a piece of solid wire buried in it. Imagine that.
Thread Starter
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 6,420
Likes: 5
From: "This is not a psychotic episode, but a cleansing moment of clarity."
Actually, you still have a problem, as sound's like you have a dual voice coil subwoofer and only utilizing half it's potential output and power rating. A dual voice coil arrangement is usually meant to accept a stereo amp output, and sum it at that point. You could parallel the two coils together, but would be a 2 ohm load to your already bridged amp, making it see more like a 1 ohm load internally. Also curious about your speaker cable, as I recall running some remote speaker cable for my dad's home system, and a speaker later quit. Traced it out to a factory speaker wire splice molded right into the PVC jacket. Even had a piece of solid wire buried in it. Imagine that.
Le Mans Master
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 5,116
Likes: 5
From: Livonia MI
You're not the only one who's never heard of a factory buried cable splice, as freaked me out when I discovered it. This was year's ago in my dad's house, and remember pulling the wiring myself. It was a spool from one of the major electronc's retailer's, but if it happened once, who know's.
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Thread Starter
Le Mans Master
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 6,420
Likes: 5
From: "This is not a psychotic episode, but a cleansing moment of clarity."
Well, whatever the case, I've separated the wires out now, so I doubt it will happen again. In the meantime, I'm getting such massive, clean bass now that it feels like it's creating micro climates inside my car! 
