Why did my amp just crash and burn ?

Bummer. What amp do you have? Was it playing while you adjusted the speaker wires? Tube amps can't be played with no speaker wires connected. A friend's Classes transistor amp has died while hooking speaker wires with amp on and nothing playing. You might have also touched the spade to chasis and caused a short. Check all the fuses. Some amps have speaker fuses and also power supply fuses.

I once had static electricity take out a hybrid tube preamp. Decided to plug it back into the system the next morning, before shipping it off for repair. The protection circuit reset and the preamp was fine.

1. Totally unhook your amp from the system and AC wall socket.

2. Check all fuses with amp unplugged from wall. 

3. Hook amp back up. Make sure the spades aren't touching anything but the proper connecter. In a bare wire hook up (no spade) 1 bare wire strand could touch the chasis and cause protection circuitry to trip.

Good luck,

aldnorab 

Glad you got the amp working again. If an amp has to be opened up to replace B+ fuses be careful. Even with amp unplugged and off, the power supply capacitors can still store dangerous energy. Most power amps drain this energy. Saw a friend loose part of a screwdriver tip when it shorted a giant capacitor. It is also bad to rapidly cycle amps on off on. 

Weirdest thing I encountered was a friend tripping over a speaker wire. As expected it blew the amp fuse. It also blew the fuse in the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable. Took a while to find that.

Thanks,

aldnorab