Surge protector


This morning we had a power surge.  First one I ever experienced.  It knocked out the sub woofer components of my GoldenEar Triton one speakers. In my ignorance I had them plugged into the wall rather than a surge protector. Soooo it blew the amplifiers in the sub woofers. It’s going to be a costly proposition: $500 for the amplifiers plus God knows how much the dealer is going to charge for coming to my house. (He’s very reluctant to do it, wants me to lug the 80 lbs speakers to the store.   
Meanwhile, I’m having to listen to bass-less  speakers for the foreseeable future.
So, the moral of the story is plug everything into a surge protector.

128x128rvpiano

Surge protectors are a waste of money. Invest in a whole house surge protector like the Seimens FS140 and be done with it. 

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I have some GE Triton 1's. Sounds like it might be a blown fuse.  Isn't that what the fuse is for?  The fuse is a little hard to get at.  Instead of being able to access it from the outside, you have to unscrew the amp plate.  I can't remember if you have to pull down the sock.  The folks at Golden Ear have always been really helpful to me.  I would talk to them about your problem.  Might be an easy fix.

Isn’t that what the fuse is for?

@12blistn

Checking the fuses is a great first step, but they aren’t really for protecting against incoming voltage surges. They are for protecting from shorts inside the gear. A damaging surge voltage may be 400V or higher but never exceed a few microamps, therefore no breaker or fuse tripping.  For the same reasons the NEC now requires homes be surge protected in addition to the required breakers.

A power surge is often high voltage but relatively low total power and current. Takes a sustained current flow for that fuse to heat up and trip but it only takes microamps and milliseconds to burn out a semiconductor. Sometimes the static electricity you generate walking across a carpet can be enough, and would be if semiconductors were out of their protective enclosure.

When I was in manufacturing we’d even bring in humidifiers in addition to static straps to prevent chips from dying from static discharge during assembly and test. To put this in proportion, it takes about 15 milliamps to interfere with your hearts beating, but that tiny bit of high voltage current can wreak havoc on a lot of electronics.

@12blistn 

I phoned a GoldenEar technician right after the outage. His first response was that it was blown amps.  I wish it were otherwise.