The death of an amplifier

Okay Nate, I will answer your question. If you do not kill the amp by shorting the speaker leads, running too-low impedances,(or pressure washing it), and it is left to its own demise, the capacitors will generally be the first thing to break down. Electrolytics typically are the first to go. Usually in the power supply section. Also generally, the hotter an amp runs, the faster it will cause the passive components to fail. We are talking about SS amps here, so I am not talking tube life or anything. Of course, any part could fail at any time, so there are no guarantees. But, the things I mentioned would be typical. The other common failure item is the on/off switch.

Nate, no they are really not preventable, but keeping the heat low will help. You can quite often tell if a cap is going bad by some sonic indications, but it is possible that a cap won't fail first. It may be a resistor, or output transistor or anything. Since you don't really know what item will be first to fail, for sure, you can't do too much to prevent it, other than good general care, and using the amp within its design parameters(not pushing overly low impedances especially). After that, it's just the luck of the draw.