My Samson S1000 overheated for the first time - Why?? (1 Viewer)

[Bob Lee]

My 2 1/2 month old S1000 (connect to a CS-Ultra) overheated for the first time tonight while I was watching The Patriot. Midway through a battle scene the protection LED lit up, and when I turned down the volume I heard the fan inside the Samson blowing much louder than normal (also a first). I was watching the movie at a "normal" volume, perhaps 4 db's lower than reference and certainly lower than I've watched other full length movies. The amp also has plenty of ventilation front and back, and no other component sits on top of it.

There have been some changes made to my setup over the past two days, and here's a recap on what those changes were:

- I just installed a Monster HTS5000 PowerCenter, and the S1000 is plugged into one of its "high current" outlets. Previously the S1000 was plugged into a lower end Monster unit, one that just looks like a big power strip.

- The S1000 is now on a switched outlet, i.e. it gets powered on automatically when I turn on my receiver. Previously it was always on 7x24.

- Today was perhaps the warmest day of the year so far, so the temperature in my house is about 73 degrees, not really hot but maybe 5 degrees warmer than normal.

Do any of these changes explain why my S1000 overheated? Should I go back to leaving it on 7x24 so that the fans are always cooling it off? Is there something about the HTS5000 and/or the high current outlet that might be contributing to this problem? Thanks everyone for your help here.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Did you check to see if the fan was really blowing a lot of air? I'm wondering if perhaps you have a bad fan, and the reason you heard it was that the bearings are going. If you're using a single sub, try switching it to the other channel and see if it still has a problem. Also, you're not bridging it are you? That could cause a problem since they don't recommend that into a 4ohm load. Check the switch on the back of the amp and make sure its in the proper mode, it should be in stereo for a single sub.

If there's nothing wrong on the amp end, check your speaker wire. Perhaps something is wrong there and its causing it to draw too much current.

 

[Bob Lee]

Keith,

The fan was blowing a ton of hot air. I did switch to the other channel and played the pod race scene from TPM at a very high level. Fortunately the amp didn't heat up at all. But what's weird is that I switched back to the first channel, replayed the pod race scene, and this time the first channel stayed nice and cool as well! I'm wondering if perhaps I did have some sort of wiring issue as you suggest, and that switching my Ultra back and forth between channels somehow fixed the problem. Hopefully this is a one time occurrence that will never return - I'm crossing my fingers. Oh, the amp is set to stereo mode.

 

[ling_w]

Get one of those recording thermometer and place it by the fan's exhaust. See if it is a gradual buildup of temperature or only on the boomy scenes. If it ever shuts off again, then see the temperature where it shut off, this would serve as a reference point where the amp croaks so that when you play other boomy movies, you could see the exhaust temp characteristics.