Fuse for SEAS Millennium T25 CF002-06 Tweeter.

Eldartford, you are way too easy. You're a better man than I! There's no way that I would not have an issue with Seas were I in your shoes. Were we to see this issue with the Frieds, Seas would have heard about it. And, if the problem continued, our tweeters would be Vifas, ScanSpeaks, or Dynaudios.

I have never seen a tweeter above the junk level that "needed" a fuse. Let's just say I am more of a purist (and a lot younger), and refuse to compromise the performance of a tweeter I am paying this kind of money for. On the other hand, if you are intent on running these experiments, you might consider the fuse for your testing, and then removing it once the speaker is sited in the system and then sees only music.

After discussing the matter with my dear friend last night, who just happens to be the foremost loudspeaker repairman in the world, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary regarding the volume of these drivers he sees. In fact, he wasn't even that familiar with this tweeter.

Bud put fuses on all of the Frieds after a customer sent a pair in with fried tweeters. It was because he hated doing warranty work, and realized that some people were apt to abuse the speaker by feeding it insufficient power. Still, in my opinion, his cost in fuses exceeded the warranty work that would have come in. When we would discuss this, he eventually admitted that the warranty work prior to the fuse days was not even worth worrying about.

Opalchip, your issue with the Spicas was that you were not feeding them enough power. The Adcom was underpowered (believe it or not!), and the continued frying of the tweeters voice coil ala the clipped musical wave took its unfortunate toll. Too high power will be seen in the midranges and woofers, too low power is seen in the tweeters. But, I can never fault someone for playing their speakers too loud - unless I'm trying to sleep.

I'd say the Spica TC-50 tweeter (Audax) takes the prize for easiest blow. At least the way I used to drive them at those wild 1980's parties with that Adcom GFA! I used to go through Spica voice coils the way I go through Ben and Jerry's ice cream now. They'd always blow on the wire lead-in before it entered the actual coil, and I was always tempted to try just reconnecting them with a dab of solder. John Bau was kind enough to sell replacement pairs at cost. I used to keep a personal "inventory" so I wouldn't have to wait for them to arrive by mail from New Mexico. In fact, I'm still keeping a couple, just in case I pull the TC's out of the storage room someday.

Trelja...Yes I do think these tweeters are more delicate than most, but what I did to them was far beyond normal use. I suppose the lightweight coil enhances HF response. I have no complaint with SEAS, except perhaps that they should have recommended fusing.

Eldartford, at this point, if I had experienced what you did in buying these tweeters, I'd be dealing with Seas as opposed to Madisound.

It sounds like your experience heretofore has been the same as mine, so there may be something to this particular tweeter. At this point, were I to need to resort to things like fuses, I would be investigating tweeters from Vifa, ScanSpeak, Dynaudio, Focal(getting out of OEM, but there are a glut of them in the market, and supposedly will still supply autosound), Triangle, etc.

Personally, I was never high on Seas tweeters, for sonic reasons, but I have a lot experience with their midranges and woofers. Have nothing but the highest praise for them. The Millenium tweeter was the first line that I was actually interested in, though we opted for Vifa and ScanSpeak Ring Radiators - perhaps it was a fortunate thing...

Trelja...By the way, Madisound is out of stock on replacement voice coils. I wonder why :-(

Trelja...I have NEVER blown any tweeter, except these. The mishap did not occur with normal listening to music, but rather during some testing and experimentation that I screwed up. My fault all the way.

As to sound quality, I can detect no difference with the fuse in. This is hardly surprising since the fuse is a few tenths of an ohm and the crossover includes a tweeter padding resistor of 2 ohms.

"Blowing out" tweeters is indicative of something VERY wrong.

The experiences that I have had with Seas leave me highly suspect that the problem is the design of the driver. Eldartford, you must be really running some crazy signal into these tweeters to have experienced this more than once, let alone once. With all of the crazy things I have witnessed in my life, and believe me, there have been a lot of them, I've maybe blown out one tweeter.

The one that takes the cake is where a pair of speakers ran the tweeters flat out for over five years (and I've personally routinely listened to them at over 100 dB, often at over 115 dB). When my buddy finally realized his blunder, he didn't even want to tell me what he did. Let's just say the speakers are a whole lot smoother sounding now...

Of course, a fuse will protect a tweeter, but at a sonic price (ESPECIALLY with this level of driver) that I'd NEVER pay knowing what a decent tweeter can take.