Electrostatic Speakers Vs. Horn/component Tweeter

I have some Martin Logan ESL’s.  I guess what I’m asking is.. if they get “damaged” from over or under powering them, should I expect catastrophic failure, or slow degradation of quality?

I had some issues early on with my receiver overheating while powering them and them clipping/sounding distorted.  It’s a surround sound receiver, and while high end, not intended for stereo.  I’ve since added a subwoofer and gotten my full surround sound setup going.  I’ve set them to small size in the receiver settings, so bass gets sent to the self powered sub, and reduces the strain on the receiver to power the speakers.  Obviously, that change means the speakers don’t sound like they used to.   Eventually, I hope to get a nice 2ch amp specifically to power this pair, but I’m just wondering if the reduced qualify is because I changed them to “small” in the receiver settings, or if I’ve already potentially damaged them.

Since I’m used to damaged speakers being blown, I’m wondering if these can be partially degraded without being destroyed, or if damaged electrostatic speakers are about as clear as regular speakers when they’ve been damaged.
 

I’m currently bi-amping it off a 4520CI Denon receiver, which meets specs per MFG standards, but realistically doesn’t meet specs for the speakers.  While ML says it will work, everything else I’ve read, states it can draw as low as 1 ohm, which is far more than the Denon receiver can put out, and I’ve heard the negative results first hand.  I’d love to get a good amp to power it, but with no current job, dumping months worth of money in bills into a single amp, so I can enjoy it before the power is shut off, doesn’t seem like an advisable solution ;)

I wasn’t asking how to fix clipping issues from the wrong equipment.  I was asking how to identify whether or not the wrong equipment has actually cause damage, since I’m used to it being crystal clear when a speaker is fine and and a speaker is destroyed.  Will she electrostatic speaker fail like a standard tweeter?  Or will it not instantaneously fail, but instead, degrade in quality after time?  I’m not asking advise on how to power it.  Only want to understand how it can/will fail/what the signs are.

My receiver won’t utilize the subwoofer if the main speakers are set to stereo mode and large speakers. Setting them to small, tells the receiver to use the sub for low frequencies and thus reduces the draw from the speakers.  My receiver is biamping the speakers at 150w per channel x2 per speaker, but it’s only 8ohm stable.  It can do 6ohm above 1k frequency.  I think these speakers can pull as low as 2ohm, so it’s just too much for the receiver to handle.  This is why I need to eventually get a new amp when I can afford it.

I’m running ESL X’s on a Denon 4520CI

The receiver is a 9 channel receiver with 9x150w 8ohn channels.  Designed to do a 9.1 or 9.2 setup.  Instead of doing front left and right and front high left and right, there is an option to bi amp the left and right which is what I’ve done.  Since the speaker nominal power is something like 320w RMS (I don’t recall exactly, been a while since I looked it up), it gives the power, and it says you can run it at 8ohm, but we all know that a speaker will suck down every bit of juice it can, and if a speaker can run down to 2ohm, it will try to suck that out of your receiver, whether the receiver can handle it or not.  I don’t have the clipping issue since I added the sub, however, there has definitely been a degradation of quality.  I believe it to be because of the limitation of setting the speakers to “small” and having the receiver apply it’s own filters/crossovers as it sees fit with no ability to manually adjust those.  That said, there isn’t much I can do to avoid clipping otherwise, unless I get a nice amp that will cost thousands I don’t have atm until I can get a reliable source of income.  You work with what you’ve got!  On the bright side, I don’t have a piece of crap Arcam receiver to ruin my day with constant failures ;)

My current setup is how ML recommended I configure it until I can get a dedicated amp.  Set to large mode, there is no need for a sub.  They sound incredible and have plenty of bass.  But when turned up, my receiver overheats on heavy bass songs and starts clipping.  Since this room is used more for movies than music, I need the sub to handle the various surround modes, but an also using it to reduce the workload on the receiver until I get a dedicated 2 channel for the speakers.  Then they will be set to large again :)