Blown Monitor 7

DaveL

I have a pair of monitor 7s, and, stupidly, I have blown both in quick succession. I'm running them off an old, but pretty powerful Harmon Kardon amp (heavy, hot) after putting turntables through a crappy mixer. I figure that since the amp is being turned way up to compensate for the deadening effect of the mixer (like, halfway), the speakers are just getting a current overload. Correct?

I'm debating whether to just replace the drivers, but I dunno.

joelll

There's a lot going on here.

First, did you blow fuses or current-limiters in the crossovers, or did you actually blow the drivers? Did you lose woofers, tweeters or both? Was there any visible damage to the drivers?

HK's tend to run hot in my experience, but if you've managed to drive the amp to clipping and just let it go, then you might have managed to blow drivers if there were no fuses or polyswitch protectors (the kind that self-reset). Are you able to check with a different amp?

I don't know which models of Monitor 7 had what style of fusing. Is the model number of the speaker on the back? or perhaps can you describe what the tweeter looks like?

A mixing board that's putting out a bad (or badly attenuated) signal could certainly get you turning the amp far up. I'd suggest (if you can't afford a pro amp and speakers) that you at least try a better mixer. I'm pretty happy with Behringer and Mackie products at the cheaper end of the spectrum.