Question:
Just thought I would share this story and get some thought on why it happened. I am no audio expert. Into our 3rd set last night we playing a Black Sabbath Medley when a bar patron started waving their hand at us to stop. We looked to the right and saw one of our Carvin mains pumping smoke out of it. We saw it glowing orange from a fire inside through the air hole in the front and had to use a fire extinguisher to put it out. This morning I took the crossover out and its melted in one area. The speaker wires and speakers look ok besides having extinguisher dust all over them. I am not sure if we overpowered it or if it was defective electronics. I thought for sure there would be some kind of protection in the amp or speaker to shut it off before starting on fire! We were running a new Carvin DCM1500 amp bridged full power into two Carvin 600 watt TR1503s. This was a configuration they recommend. The equipment is less than 6 months old. We have been running this configuration at practice and at several gigs so far with no problems. The amp and speaker cables were fine and we were able to run the rest of the show on one main. So what do you guys think? Did we overpower it or is Carvin just crap? I am going to call Carvin tomorrow.

Answer: Q: Into our 3rd set last night we playing a Black Sabbath Medley when a bar patron started waving their hand at us to stop. We looked to the right and saw one of our Carvin mains pumping smoke out of it. We saw it glowing orange from a fire inside through the air hole in the front and had to use a fire extinguisher to put it out. This morning I took the crossover out and its melted in one area.

A: It sounds to me like some potting compound or adhesive overheated and caught fire. That's pretty unusual, and I'm sure Carvin would want to know about it. Did you try the speakers in the cabinet to see if they still worked? And did you try the power amp with a good speaker to be sure that it still worked OK? I would suspect that it was the woofer voice coil that got hottest and had a large enough surface are to radiate the heat to whatever was flammable. The cabinet definitely deserves an autopsy.