Blown Tweeter & midrange fuses Magnepan 3.6r


My problem is I keep blowing the tweeter fuses at a "somewhat" moderate volume. I inititially owned the Yamaha RV-1103 Surround Receiver and blew both the tweeter fuses at somewhere around 2/3 - 3/4 volume potentiometer setting. I heard that these speakers require a lot of high current. Many people drive these with 40 wpc mono-blocks in a good size room and don't complain of blown fuses.

I purchased a Krell HEAT (Showcase) system (125 wpc @ 8 ohm, doubling to 250 wpc a (Magnepan rated) 4 ohm load. I still have the same problem. In fact I have even blown the 5amp midrange fuses. The maximum power level on the Krell digital amplifier is 100). I set the level at 40 and still blow the tweeter fuses in both channels simultaneously. I have never heard any audible cliipping during these times, however, my hearing rolls off at 14 KHZ. I have had two different KRELL HEAT (Showcase) amplifiers driving them, with same results. I have an open floor plan 20' x 15' listening area and the volume levels are no where near ear-piercing levels. I'm beginning to think I purchased defective speakers. Can you help me?
What do you think ?
dtbrigh

Showing 1 response by sgr

The problem with these speakers is that they play extremely clean with no sign of breakup. They really just start sounding good (to me) at 95db as I recall. At somewhere around that point, most amps run out of headroom, or perhaps there is a finite point to the amount of current they'll take. And then, zap goes the fuses and the tweeter (which makes little sense to me since the fuse should protect the tweeter from getting too much current whether the amp is clipping or not).
Don't get me wrong, I love the sound of these speakers and even sold them for an audio store twenty years ago, but to my mind, the 3.6s must have a flaw, since I owned the MG-IIIs for 15 years and never blew out a tweeter with the same equipment.
Magnepan was mistified and could not help me solve the problem, so I sold the speakers and bought a pair of Revel Salons.
There are times I'm tempted to try the Maggies again, (I loved the Typani 4s) but will stay away until Magnepan addresses these problems. With the high end equipment that I've owned (even biamping them) those tweets and fuses should not be a concern.
My advise is to look elsewhere for speakers as you will not get the volume you appear to like without many heartaches.