[Thomas_Berg]

last night, my brother and i were playing a rather loud and bass heavy classical passage when we noticed two red lights coming from about the center of my Vandersteen 2ce's. we immediately turned the volume down (i'm guessing we were hitting about 102dB peaks in my medium-sized room), but noticed that all the bass was gone from the mix. i've never had anything like this happen to the speakers, regardless of playback volume, and i've always taken good care of them. i've since turned off the amp and left the speakers idle for about 24 hours. should we be concerned?

for reference, the amp is a Classe CA-150.

[JessPrice]

I don't know much about thoose amps, but it sounds like the amp got overheated and it needed to cool off. My amp in the trunk of my car has to cool off sometimes in the Texas heat and it switches off. Sometimes it is already too hot in the trunk when I start my car and it won't even begin to power the sub.

[Thomas_Berg]

please reread my post. the lights come from the center of the speakers (behind the cloth screen). as far as i know the amp has never overheated, it's AB.

[JessPrice]

Oh, I guess I should read more carefully, in this case, I have absolutely no idea

[Jaime B]

Thomas:

Was it the left or the right speaker? Did the light turn green afterward? Just kidding!

You don't explain if you turned the system back on and if it is still missing the bass frequencies.
If it does, you probably blew one of the woofers, or (unlikely) both. The red light is puzzling, however, I've seen the 2Ce "naked" - without the cloth - and I can't imagine how that light emission might have happened. Irrelevant, what matters here is to retest the speakers with music, one channel at a time and see which is missing the low end frequencies. I've blown tweeters on my Thiels, and two woofers on my Athena's S3s. Sh!t happens.

JaimeB

[Thomas_Berg]

Immediately afterward there was no bass response, but powering things up tonight it seemed fine. I too was unaware that the Vandy's sport LEDs, but I can't deny what I saw. (They lit up on both speakers.) I'll call Richard Monday to get his take on the matter.

[Kevin C Brown]

Yeah, call the company. I've talked to them (him) in the past, and they've been very helpful.

[Tony Genovese]

It does appear that the 2Ce's have thermal protection (for overload). Typically, these are tied to an LED to let you know when it's kicked in. That seems to be what happened to you