DrWho Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 haha, yesterday afternoon i was building a speaker for a school project and i was experimenting with alternative ways to produce sound. well i finally got it all built and then decided to try and build another more conventional speaker (with a voice coil and all that good stuff...). well, i was doing all of my expermentation on an old tuntable/tape player thing from the 70's that puts out 20w or so...anyways, i decided why not hook up this cool speaker to my dad's Sony STR-AV1000 (that puts out 250w per channel into 4ohms)...so i plug in this speaker thing and press the power button to my amp (yes i had the volume all the way down and i knew i was prob less than 4ohms so i was gonna do a quick check so as not to burn the amps). well upon pressing the power button, the entire chassis built up an electrical charge and gave me an exciting shock (sending me back a few feet) and then sparks continued to fly everywhere and the smoke was thick enough to make me cough for an hour. so i unplug my "conventional" speaker (hehe, i knew it wasn't the cause, but no need to let the parents even think it was...), and then unplug everything and let my dad know the thing fried. ok here's the best part, that nite...my dad gets home right before i leave to go to my night class (where i would be showing off my speaker), and he asks me real quick like, "so, what are your suggestions on a new reciever?" haha, so im like go denon or HK (mentioned a few model numbers). when i got home from school, i was greeted with a brand new denon 1803 anyways, all that to say...i finally converted my dad off the sony tangent! now all i got left is to get him to get rid of his crappy bose4.2 speakers im tempted to 'accidently' blow them with the new reciever, but i'll need a creative excuse (besides my hand slipped on the volume knob...if indeed those ineffecient pieces of crap are capable of being blown) anyways, just one baby step closer to audio bliss...now all we need is some klipsch at home and then i'll be satisfied for a little while and then find something else to upgrade (like the PS2 dvd player) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasN00b Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 just play tennis with the bose or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted February 20, 2003 Author Share Posted February 20, 2003 it's not that easy though...im not trying to bash bose or anything, cause honestly they don't sound that bad...but they don't compare at all to some of the other stuff out there. at the moment, there's currently a pair of marantz 940's (old speaker from like the 70's) that my dad claims he can't hear the difference between them and the bose! and i would hold these speakers up against my friend's RF-3's! anyways, gotta take baby steps with the old man...at least he lets me stay at home while i finish up school if i played tennis with his bose, he's play it with the 940's! (and these things weigh 80lbs each) lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenratboy Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 If I blew up my dad's system, I would get a *** kicking Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike stehr Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 What kind of speaker did you make that would smoke a audio video receiver/amp? Most modern day stuff has protection circuits for shorts and thermal overload. I'd like to know how you got past the protection circuits, and destroyed the Sony. Are you measuring this home-brew speaker or whatever you got going? It must have some low impedance, like a direct short. What did your dad think when he saw that Sony AV amp/receiver burnt to a crisp? I hope you don't build a amp, that could be scary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcolm Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Best way to learn is by failure, if you can afford it. Hoped you learned something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted February 20, 2003 Author Share Posted February 20, 2003 ok first off, im not that stupid (or i'd like to think not)...there were no direct shorts...the speaker i was testing was just like any other speaker, just built outta normal household stuff (which meant the wire was a bit thicker, and thus less resistance and all that good stuff). but it still worked on the old butt 20w amp...anyways, i don't think it was the amps that blew because the volume knob was turned all the way down and it hadn't enough time to juice up (because it blew up when i pressed the power button)...the mere fact that the chassis was charged leads me to believe something inside came lose, and the short circuit through the chassis is what caused the sparks and smoke. i took the lid off to peak inside, and noticed a couple of them small black cylinder things had exploded. and just for the record, once i build a speaker that puts out something more than 20db, im gonna start building my own amps! but like that other guy said, u learn through failure...im on my 6th attempt with the speaker concept, and im already at 20db! 54 more speakers to go and i should have 200db, right? (and who cares about sound quality when the "best" in the house is bose?) lol so ya, where might i find transistors or watever it's called that makes solid state amps work? or where do i get the parts to build one? i think for my first try, im not gonna work with stuff plugged into the wall though i've been hit by 240v circuits before, but this one was worse for some reason...wouldn't wanna experience that again (unless it meant new equipment) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike stehr Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 That's cool. I respect the fact that you like to tinker. I never heard of anyone building home-brew speaker drivers before, sounds interesting. Those black cylinder thingies are called capacitors. They explode when they get more voltage than they are rated for.(Or shorted.) Were they the larger capacitors in the amp? Who knows why that thing let go, I wish I was there. It would have been quite a sight. You can source about any Transistor you want off the net. If you want to build a SS amp, and your just getting into the hobby, I'd go for a kit of some sort. There a plenty of SS kits and schematics on the net to either build a kit or scratchbuild from a schematic. It's safe and sane practice to work on a amp unplugged, but you have been zapped by 240 volts, you know the risks. When that amp went, you may have been hit with a lower voltage. Sometimes getting zapped with a lower voltage can be more painfull than higher voltages. (Not really sure of this, but it's not a good thing nonetheless.) I would research a little bit about the basics of electronics. It's good to know what the difference is between a capacitor and a transistor and what they do, blah blah blah. Especially if you want to embark on the DIY trail. A kit would be fun way learn to about these sort of things, plus you have instructions and a schematic to fall back on in case of confusion. (Not to mention assistance from the supplier of the kit.) I always wanted to do a AKSA quickset amp. A guy named Hugh Dean sells them from Australia, 55 and 100 watt versions. But then I purchased a pair of Klipsch, which pretty much put me into tube amplifiers. The low watt, low distortion that tubes dictate match well with high efficiency loudspeakers. Have fun and don't smoke yourself! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted February 20, 2003 Author Share Posted February 20, 2003 wats the fun in getting a kit and learning from some1 else!? nah, i would love to get my hands on a kit (provided it wasn't bloody expensive), but have no idea where to find any and i've done quite a bit of research on electronics, or would like to think i have a firm grasp on it...capacitor is that cool thing that builds up charge on a surface (it's kinda like a battery in that it dispels energy quickly but takes a while to charge)...transistor is a cool thing that the line signal kinda like opens and closes the gate that lets a stronger signal through (that like powers the speaker)... anyways, i have a deep passion for this stuff just cause it's so cool...and when you build your own stuff, it's awesome because u can instantly see the effects and tinker with it and all that cool stuff. (and it dont' matter when u break it cause u can just build another one, that will prob be better anyway) so ya, kits...where? u got me hooked already, don't leave me hanging Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike stehr Posted February 21, 2003 Share Posted February 21, 2003 Oops! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike stehr Posted February 21, 2003 Share Posted February 21, 2003 http://www.t-linespeakers.org/linx/amplinks.html#DIY Scroll through and check the links out. It's a start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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