BTL 18 Caught fire :(

[97SSBlazer]

I have seen it happen locally to a guy in Memphis. His BTL blew sky high and caught on fire with a kicker zx1500 on it!!!!!!!!! I have never been a fan of Fi. I think it is a lot of hype and they have NOTHING special about what they build until the new neo setups came out.

Funny part about this setup you have is it appears to have never been given much power either. I am gonna say piss poor connections on the tinsels and voice coils or obviously tinsels that become broke in the middle. The worse and worse the connection, the more heat it generated... compounding the problem of thinner and weaker tinsels which have become increasing brittle and less effective as a conductor. Eventually it breaks and then arcs big when makeing contact, momentarily of course, as the sub is still being driven by the other coil.

I have heard of tinsel problems on ascendants as well... If you play them daily and ride with your tunes jamming all the time, they are destined to fail even within reccommended enclosures and under-rms power levels

Not a thing wrong with the tinsel leads...it's the old addage of buying a car and driving it into a bridge..which is obviously the cars fault right?

The issue is this (if you want to take the time to read it):

There is nothing wrong with doing the leads like this and it only has issues and develops problems in the following situations.

There are 3 things that come into play.

1) Those coils that are ".5ohm" are not ".5ohm" in parallel, they are .35ohm dcr. The power supply cannot supply enough current on the rails to the output side stage of the amplifier so it starves itself into trying to make power that it simply cannot make. Kicks out DC voltage and things get very nasty very quickly...which continue to read and I'll explain more.

2) Korean/Chinese amps. For those who do not know the bigger the amplifiers get the more issues you are going to run into. These things are designed and built on a power supply that has a bank that is plugged into a wall on a resistor that is always constant, not a sub-woofer. In order to get efficiency up so you can get more power out of the amp and put in less and less to get efficiency up above 85% or so they ramp up the switching frequency on the power supply of the amplifier itself. This ranges from board to manufacturer..but all of the bigger amps all have the same exact issue. What happens at these frequencies is you are reaching the range of "Microwaves". The amplifier does not filter this stuff out...and you cannot hear it as it is much higher then the frequency range that human ear can detect. Signal goes from the amplifier to the terminal block...the frequency range is outside of what the terminal block is so it continues to the tinsel leads. The tinsel leads have the current and voltage going through them in the first place which already makes heat present and why the spiders are treated with flame retardant coating to prevent it from catching on fire. What happens is the amplifier's switching power supply actually 'Microwaves' the tinsel leads at the frequency in which it is switching at which happens to be very close to the resonant frequency of the size of wire and material of the tinsel leads themselves.

When you throw a piece of aluminum foil in a microwave in your house...or a CD..what happens? There is a HUGE generation of heat because on a molecular level the material itself is vibrating back and forth at that given set of frequencies...which is how a microwave warms your TV dinner up.

3) When you start to drop an amp below 1ohm more heat is being built up because the power supply side of things of the amplifier simply cannot handle the demand that the output stage is wanting to get. When you do not have a subsonic filter...or one that is set improperly...you then start to make this thing that you've just microwaved move...

Take a can of coke, pop it open and bend it back and forth a few millimeters...within it's mechanical limitations that tab will never break. Now if you start to bend it past its mechanical limitations is when you start to get into trouble. This is where the subsonic filter comes in and making sure that you are not playing full power below port tuning frequency of a sub. If you already have something that's hot from running it hard on one of the Korean amps and you start yanking the soft parts past their mechanical limitations more and more heat builds up...

You get to the point where so much heat builds up that the spiders start smoldering...they won't catch on fire until you've clipped the signal to death, vaporized all of the flame retardant spray that the spiders are soaked in and then it smokes. (square wave form, dc voltage and induction heating out of the amp because the power supply cannot handle what you are doing to it)

It's not the sub, there is absolutely nothing wrong with running those leads like they are. What's going on is an issue of the big cheap Korean amplifiers in and of themselves...and total ill-regard to what a microwave and conductive material does.

Hope this helps you understand...if you run a Crown A6000Gti you'll never have a problem...because it's an A/B amp....the other stuff that is cheap...don't run it below 1ohm or you are going to have nothing but problems because in order to get that big power cheaply and cut out on the parts that are going into the amplifier the switching frequency of the power supply must be ramped way up...in turn microwaving woofer parts.

There will be no finger pointing as I've already tested all of this stuff and know exactly what is going on. Don't design an amp on a resistor...and don't wire an amp below 1ohm, don't clip the piss out of it to get the tinsel leads so freaking hot that they glow, no bass boost etc. you'll never have a problem.

Moral of the story? Lay off the what I like to call the "stupid button". It will hurt your wallet every time...because stupidity is not covered under any warranty at all.

Regards

Agreeing with previous person that quoted you on page 2 as well, you are wrong. There is no magnetron present in an amplifier nor at the tinsel leads which is required to produce enough microwaves to create the aluminum foil/cd sparking effect you are talking about. The switching frequency of the amplifier will not create microwaves in significant amounts otherwise you would probably be dead by now.

What did likely happen is that excursion caused flexing of the tripple joint which cracked wires in the tinsel lead causing fewer connections (and therefor higher resistance) at that point.

That is EXACTLY what it looks like happened. Im not bashing Fi, this thing was a monster...

[Bumpindemlowzz]

Whats a good adjustable external subsonic filter? linky please

edit- would a Maxx-Link be able to do this? I dont have the unit with me so i dont know if its got a subsonic feature. I only use one mono amp fyi. would this benefit me?

[kirill007]

looks like my triple stacked POS

Seriously? Are you like that? Just because a few out of thousands, millions BTL's sold there a few failures you call it a POS? >< (very narrowminded..)

I have seen it happen locally to a guy in Memphis. His BTL blew sky high and caught on fire with a kicker zx1500 on it!!!!!!!!! I have never been a fan of Fi. I think it is a lot of hype and they have NOTHING special about what they build until the new neo setups came out.

Funny part about this setup you have is it appears to have never been given much power either. I am gonna say piss poor connections on the tinsels and voice coils or obviously tinsels that become broke in the middle. The worse and worse the connection, the more heat it generated... compounding the problem of thinner and weaker tinsels which have become increasing brittle and less effective as a conductor. Eventually it breaks and then arcs big when makeing contact, momentarily of course, as the sub is still being driven by the other coil.

I have heard of tinsel problems on ascendants as well... If you play them daily and ride with your tunes jamming all the time, they are destined to fail even within reccommended enclosures and under-rms power levels

(story)

Regards

Agreeing with previous person that quoted you on page 2 as well, you are wrong. There is no magnetron present in an amplifier nor at the tinsel leads which is required to produce enough microwaves to create the aluminum foil/cd sparking effect you are talking about. The switching frequency of the amplifier will not create microwaves in significant amounts otherwise you would probably be dead by now.

What did likely happen is that excursion caused flexing of the tripple joint which cracked wires in the tinsel lead causing fewer connections (and therefor higher resistance) at that point.

There is a something like a magnetron effect in a amplifier. His example maybe wasn't the best, but he's trying to explain it in laymans terms. The switching frequency with big amps does affects quite a lot.

And he doesn't say it's 1 thing causing the problem, it's the COMBINATION of all those factors. And you don't get it, it doesn't affects anything but what is connected to the amp. (IT'S NOT A MICROWAVE, but similar and in a way smaller amount)

And what you said , that could be one of the extra factors causing it to die.

DC Audio: 1 Fi: 0

:facepalm:

I have seen it happen locally to a guy in Memphis. His BTL blew sky high and caught on fire with a kicker zx1500 on it!!!!!!!!! I have never been a fan of Fi. I think it is a lot of hype and they have NOTHING special about what they build until the new neo setups came out.

Funny part about this setup you have is it appears to have never been given much power either. I am gonna say piss poor connections on the tinsels and voice coils or obviously tinsels that become broke in the middle. The worse and worse the connection, the more heat it generated... compounding the problem of thinner and weaker tinsels which have become increasing brittle and less effective as a conductor. Eventually it breaks and then arcs big when makeing contact, momentarily of course, as the sub is still being driven by the other coil.

I have heard of tinsel problems on ascendants as well... If you play them daily and ride with your tunes jamming all the time, they are destined to fail even within reccommended enclosures and under-rms power levels

(story)

Agreeing with previous person that quoted you on page 2 as well, you are wrong. There is no magnetron present in an amplifier nor at the tinsel leads which is required to produce enough microwaves to create the aluminum foil/cd sparking effect you are talking about. The switching frequency of the amplifier will not create microwaves in significant amounts otherwise you would probably be dead by now.

What did likely happen is that excursion caused flexing of the tripple joint which cracked wires in the tinsel lead causing fewer connections (and therefor higher resistance) at that point.

Spot on! I love forum members who know something and do not continuously regurgitate the same forum bullshit over and over... effectively clouding the minds of young readers and those wanting to learn.

I love them too, too bad you don't know what you are talking about.

Not saying Stevil doesn't knows what he is talking about but, not in this case.

[kirill007]

I have seen it happen locally to a guy in Memphis. His BTL blew sky high and caught on fire with a kicker zx1500 on it!!!!!!!!! I have never been a fan of Fi. I think it is a lot of hype and they have NOTHING special about what they build until the new neo setups came out.

Funny part about this setup you have is it appears to have never been given much power either. I am gonna say piss poor connections on the tinsels and voice coils or obviously tinsels that become broke in the middle. The worse and worse the connection, the more heat it generated... compounding the problem of thinner and weaker tinsels which have become increasing brittle and less effective as a conductor. Eventually it breaks and then arcs big when makeing contact, momentarily of course, as the sub is still being driven by the other coil.

I have heard of tinsel problems on ascendants as well... If you play them daily and ride with your tunes jamming all the time, they are destined to fail even within reccommended enclosures and under-rms power levels

I think what you say is Bullshit..This happened because of user error most likely.The man was running 3,3oo watts to a 2,000 watt sub, which is bound to cause problems over time.

Have you ever ran a Fi subwoofer yourself?

The BTL can handle much more then it's RMS, alot of people have proven that. And a lot of people have proven that even with underpowering it they can still blow it.

A BTL is made to daily jam, all the time. (BTL=Built To Last)

The leads are waay overbuilt for a 2000-2500W RMS sub. (quadriple leads sandwiched)

Guess why they can't cool if they move? yes.. they are sandwiched in between spiders and have not a lot of cool air to cool down.

You, sir, own a Fi sub. I would expect that out of you. Get Nick or Scott on the phone. A "fully loaded" BTL is a 3000 watt rms sub and that rockford has never ever ever ever ever delivered 3000 watts rms of non clipped signal in its life due to impedance rise and voltage supply. I will bet my house on it. Asking if I have ever ran a Fi sub... lol My Fi subs were ok. Nothing special. My Ascendant subs were the same thing. The Havoc had me hooked for a while.

Lastly, cause problems? The hunk of shit caught on fire. IS that a normal problem within the bounds of giving a sub its approximate rms power?

Corrrect, non-clipped. Guess what happened here?

It's not a hunk of shit, that really shows how mature you are...

He wasn't giving it RMS power, he was clipping it, and by clipping it also adds power.

Steve had 2 2500bd's per BTL, he was perfectly fine no problems whatsoever. He has one and blows it, what does that tell you? USER ERROR.

If fi subs are "ok" what subs do you use?

[cubs_fan0718]

You, sir, own a Fi sub. I would expect that out of you. Get Nick or Scott on the phone. A "fully loaded" BTL is a 3000 watt rms sub and that rockford has never ever ever ever ever delivered 3000 watts rms of non clipped signal in its life due to impedance rise and voltage supply. I will bet my house on it. Asking if I have ever ran a Fi sub... lol My Fi subs were ok. Nothing special. My Ascendant subs were the same thing. The Havoc had me hooked for a while.

Lastly, cause problems? The hunk of shit caught on fire. IS that a normal problem within the bounds of giving a sub its approximate rms power?

VOPA-

I guess When Rockford Marketed their bdCP amps like this guy was running to it, they were falsly advertising their product? I thought those amps were supposted to account for imp rise and all that good stuff, but according to you it never ever ever ever ever seen that power, even though most if not all of the birth sheets for those amplifiers are over 3000watts rms @1ohm. Believe what you want and spew your questionable knowledge but i thought the CP in the name of that amp meant CONSTANT POWER, I think the OP said he also had no Voltage issues what so ever.

[94retta(219)]

Is it just me or are the people trying to bash fi forgeting that this guy was running his sub at .35

On a bdcp at that

[J00bles]

happened to me 3 seperate times while using DC level 4 15s. each time, the leads came unstitched and shorted on eachother... causing some major mayhem to occur.

[ALPINE408]

DC Audio: 1 Fi: 0

your an idiot ive seen more than one dc sub that caught on fire about 4 to be exact

so whats that dc -4 fi 0?

and ive ran both subs WAY over rms never i mean never have i had a tinsel burn i reaslly dont understand how people can clip a sub like that and think its fine

just keep turning that volume knob with out thinking i guess

[ALPINE408]

You, sir, own a Fi sub. I would expect that out of you. Get Nick or Scott on the phone. A "fully loaded" BTL is a 3000 watt rms sub and that rockford has never ever ever ever ever delivered 3000 watts rms of non clipped signal in its life due to impedance rise and voltage supply. I will bet my house on it. Asking if I have ever ran a Fi sub... lol My Fi subs were ok. Nothing special. My Ascendant subs were the same thing. The Havoc had me hooked for a while.

Lastly, cause problems? The hunk of shit caught on fire. IS that a normal problem within the bounds of giving a sub its approximate rms power?

VOPA-

I guess When Rockford Marketed their bdCP amps like this guy was running to it, they were falsly advertising their product? I thought those amps were supposted to account for imp rise and all that good stuff, but according to you it never ever ever ever ever seen that power, even though most if not all of the birth sheets for those amplifiers are over 3000watts rms @1ohm. Believe what you want and spew your questionable knowledge but i thought the CP in the name of that amp meant CONSTANT POWER, I think the OP said he also had no Voltage issues what so ever.

the btl is a 2000 rms sub

[Bass2TheeFace]

I have seen it happen locally to a guy in Memphis. His BTL blew sky high and caught on fire with a kicker zx1500 on it!!!!!!!!! I have never been a fan of Fi. I think it is a lot of hype and they have NOTHING special about what they build until the new neo setups came out.

Funny part about this setup you have is it appears to have never been given much power either. I am gonna say piss poor connections on the tinsels and voice coils or obviously tinsels that become broke in the middle. The worse and worse the connection, the more heat it generated... compounding the problem of thinner and weaker tinsels which have become increasing brittle and less effective as a conductor. Eventually it breaks and then arcs big when makeing contact, momentarily of course, as the sub is still being driven by the other coil.

I have heard of tinsel problems on ascendants as well... If you play them daily and ride with your tunes jamming all the time, they are destined to fail even within reccommended enclosures and under-rms power levels

Not a thing wrong with the tinsel leads...it's the old addage of buying a car and driving it into a bridge..which is obviously the cars fault right?

The issue is this (if you want to take the time to read it):

There is nothing wrong with doing the leads like this and it only has issues and develops problems in the following situations.

There are 3 things that come into play.

1) Those coils that are ".5ohm" are not ".5ohm" in parallel, they are .35ohm dcr. The power supply cannot supply enough current on the rails to the output side stage of the amplifier so it starves itself into trying to make power that it simply cannot make. Kicks out DC voltage and things get very nasty very quickly...which continue to read and I'll explain more.

2) Korean/Chinese amps. For those who do not know the bigger the amplifiers get the more issues you are going to run into. These things are designed and built on a power supply that has a bank that is plugged into a wall on a resistor that is always constant, not a sub-woofer. In order to get efficiency up so you can get more power out of the amp and put in less and less to get efficiency up above 85% or so they ramp up the switching frequency on the power supply of the amplifier itself. This ranges from board to manufacturer..but all of the bigger amps all have the same exact issue. What happens at these frequencies is you are reaching the range of "Microwaves". The amplifier does not filter this stuff out...and you cannot hear it as it is much higher then the frequency range that human ear can detect. Signal goes from the amplifier to the terminal block...the frequency range is outside of what the terminal block is so it continues to the tinsel leads. The tinsel leads have the current and voltage going through them in the first place which already makes heat present and why the spiders are treated with flame retardant coating to prevent it from catching on fire. What happens is the amplifier's switching power supply actually 'Microwaves' the tinsel leads at the frequency in which it is switching at which happens to be very close to the resonant frequency of the size of wire and material of the tinsel leads themselves.

When you throw a piece of aluminum foil in a microwave in your house...or a CD..what happens? There is a HUGE generation of heat because on a molecular level the material itself is vibrating back and forth at that given set of frequencies...which is how a microwave warms your TV dinner up.

3) When you start to drop an amp below 1ohm more heat is being built up because the power supply side of things of the amplifier simply cannot handle the demand that the output stage is wanting to get. When you do not have a subsonic filter...or one that is set improperly...you then start to make this thing that you've just microwaved move...

Take a can of coke, pop it open and bend it back and forth a few millimeters...within it's mechanical limitations that tab will never break. Now if you start to bend it past its mechanical limitations is when you start to get into trouble. This is where the subsonic filter comes in and making sure that you are not playing full power below port tuning frequency of a sub. If you already have something that's hot from running it hard on one of the Korean amps and you start yanking the soft parts past their mechanical limitations more and more heat builds up...

You get to the point where so much heat builds up that the spiders start smoldering...they won't catch on fire until you've clipped the signal to death, vaporized all of the flame retardant spray that the spiders are soaked in and then it smokes. (square wave form, dc voltage and induction heating out of the amp because the power supply cannot handle what you are doing to it)

It's not the sub, there is absolutely nothing wrong with running those leads like they are. What's going on is an issue of the big cheap Korean amplifiers in and of themselves...and total ill-regard to what a microwave and conductive material does.

Hope this helps you understand...if you run a Crown A6000Gti you'll never have a problem...because it's an A/B amp....the other stuff that is cheap...don't run it below 1ohm or you are going to have nothing but problems because in order to get that big power cheaply and cut out on the parts that are going into the amplifier the switching frequency of the power supply must be ramped way up...in turn microwaving woofer parts.

There will be no finger pointing as I've already tested all of this stuff and know exactly what is going on. Don't design an amp on a resistor...and don't wire an amp below 1ohm, don't clip the piss out of it to get the tinsel leads so freaking hot that they glow, no bass boost etc. you'll never have a problem.

Moral of the story? Lay off the what I like to call the "stupid button". It will hurt your wallet every time...because stupidity is not covered under any warranty at all.

Regards

Agreeing with previous person that quoted you on page 2 as well, you are wrong. There is no magnetron present in an amplifier nor at the tinsel leads which is required to produce enough microwaves to create the aluminum foil/cd sparking effect you are talking about. The switching frequency of the amplifier will not create microwaves in significant amounts otherwise you would probably be dead by now.

What did likely happen is that excursion caused flexing of the tripple joint which cracked wires in the tinsel lead causing fewer connections (and therefor higher resistance) at that point.

Spot on! I love forum members who know something and do not continuously regurgitate the same forum bullshit over and over... effectively clouding the minds of young readers and those wanting to learn.

I have seen it happen locally to a guy in Memphis. His BTL blew sky high and caught on fire with a kicker zx1500 on it!!!!!!!!! I have never been a fan of Fi. I think it is a lot of hype and they have NOTHING special about what they build until the new neo setups came out.

Funny part about this setup you have is it appears to have never been given much power either. I am gonna say piss poor connections on the tinsels and voice coils or obviously tinsels that become broke in the middle. The worse and worse the connection, the more heat it generated... compounding the problem of thinner and weaker tinsels which have become increasing brittle and less effective as a conductor. Eventually it breaks and then arcs big when makeing contact, momentarily of course, as the sub is still being driven by the other coil.

I have heard of tinsel problems on ascendants as well... If you play them daily and ride with your tunes jamming all the time, they are destined to fail even within reccommended enclosures and under-rms power levels

I think what you say is Bullshit..This happened because of user error most likely.The man was running 3,3oo watts to a 2,000 watt sub, which is bound to cause problems over time.

Have you ever ran a Fi subwoofer yourself?

You, sir, own a Fi sub. I would expect that out of you. Get Nick or Scott on the phone. A "fully loaded" BTL is a 3000 watt rms sub and that rockford has never ever ever ever ever delivered 3000 watts rms of non clipped signal in its life due to impedance rise and voltage supply. I will bet my house on it. Asking if I have ever ran a Fi sub... lol My Fi subs were ok. Nothing special. My Ascendant subs were the same thing. The Havoc had me hooked for a while.

Lastly, cause problems? The hunk of shit caught on fire. IS that a normal problem within the bounds of giving a sub its approximate rms power?

This is true, but i went with Fi because it is a quality product made by a great company .. I have seen alot of subwoofers perform and Fi takes the win when it comes to SQ and amount of Abuse the woofers can take. It can take 3,000 watts if it is clean. If Fi subwoofers are not the best what subwoofers are????

No it is not.