Kappa 9. Parasound HCA-3500 WILL NOT power them

Find a pair of Lazarus hybrid amps, 50 wpc in stereo or 200 watts as monoblocks. They are designed to be able to drive anything but a dead short and are unconditionally stable. They are one of a few amps that can drive Apogee Scintillas well, for example.

You probly already know this, but thier is a current limiting switch on the back of you speakers just to the right of the crossover. It's under a black plastic cap, with this switch put to the normal position that parasound should never have any trouble. It is a very durable amp. Even switched to extended it should be able to handle most music. I had a pair of kappa 9's years ago and found that I had to biamp them to get the sound out of them that they are capible of. I has one Bryston 4Bst on them first and had your problems but found positioning was very important, I played with them for a few nights to get them to sound powerful and smooth. Then i bought a second 4Bst and ran then in extended mode and they where incredible. I found they should be for best sound 10-15 feet apart, the distance between the speakers and the primary listing area should be slightly greater than the distance between the speakers. To obtain the lower coloration and excellent stereo imaging position them at least 2-3 feet from walls and corners, if the bass is a bit light under these conditions, move the speakers slightly closer to one of these boundaries. Moving the the seating position by as little as 6-12 inches forward or back can result in a large diff in bass energy. positiong is very important on these speakers, if not positiond wright they won't have any bass and sound bright and harsh.
I sold the kappa's and now have Infinity 1b's. the brystons could not handle any amounts of volume so I now have Krell and Conrad Jhonson mono blocks. I also spent many nights playing with positioning again, but once you find that sweet spot they are incredible speakers.

Darin

I have a couple questions for you. Are the mids soft and pliable? Can you see through them to the magnet behind them? If the answer is no to either question, I wonder if the coil has been frozen in place and basically a shorted driver. If so you know the results of that. Try pulling the mids out, remove the four allen screws and pull one lead from each. Try running them again to see if the amp is still having problems driving them. I have run my 9's on a yamaha receiver without any problems, so I do not know why you would run into the problems you are having unless a coil is shorted. Give a try and report back.

As a response to Darinkperih, I do not know if all the kappa 9's have the switch that you refered to. I believe only the last year model known as the (9a)had this feature. When I have run my speakers with an old Yamaha receiver, I use the switch. When I run them through my Adcom Mono's, I do not. They sound and look like new. There is a little too much hype about this amp killing thing. I have run these at extreme volumes without destroying either amp or speaker. I have thermal shutdown amps and I have blowen one mid dome which was easily replacable at the time.

I'm not quite sure why you were trying different amps, there is a major problem with the speakers. By ignoring that and trying other amps you are simply screwing up other things besides the speakers.

Chances are the speakers came to you with a problem, Kappas were an interesting period in Infinity design and depvelopment.