Guitar Center Monitor craziness

M

MikeyB59

Power User
So I got to thinking about replacing my original issue Mackie 824 monitors. They're not bad, but I know they hype the low end and the mixes don't translate as well as I'd like. I was thinking about Focal, Adam, Dynaudio and Event Opals. I wasn't ready to pull the trigger on anything, but for fun I went to Guitar Center used online which has been one of my favorite places to buy gear. It was a particular favorite just post-recession when the fine print on their coupons didn't preclude use on used gear, so you could often take another 15-20% off a great deal. Another great thing about them has been their shipping charges which are tiny compared to most.

You never know what GC will have used on a given day. I got a Japanese Ibanez George Benson in perfect shape for $1200, a Fender Deluxe Reverb II under $500, a Yamaha AES1500 (a bit hacked with P90 replacement PUs, but an awesome guitar) for $450, and on and on. Today I entered in Adam in the search engine. The top thing on the listing was an Adam A7x with a picture that looked perfect for $19.99. Yes, you read that right, $19.99. I just called, asked the guy if there was anything wrong with them. He said, "no" and I bought them. $70 to my door. I don't know what the catch is. If they don't work, I can take them to my local GC and they'll either fix them free or give me my $ back including shipping. If they do, MAJOR SCORE!!! I'll be shocked if they're fine and work, but it was certainly worth rolling the dice on a $1400 pair of monitors.

Here's hoping I get the monitors for the price of a basic overdrive pedal. It could be the beginning of a very Merry Christmas.
 
Man, that'll be the deal of the decade. Hope that works for you. I've been looking for the same speaker. Just not quite ready to pony up the $1400 bucks 'til I get squared up with Santa Claus.
 
Absofreakinglutely insane!!! I hope they work out for you.


I'm a high gain djent djent meedley meedely meedely type player...

Sent from my iPod.
 
Well, often if it looks too good to be true, it is. I was in one of my fav used music gear stores last night when I got a call from a guy at GC. He said, "well I just wanted to let you know that the reason the monitors were so cheap is that they're Musician's Friend returns and one of them has a busted woofer and the other a busted tweeter." Hmmm, that's not what the first guys said, but it's GC, so the left hand rarely knows what the right is doing. He said the amps work fine and that it's just the speakers that are shot. If that's true, I still have all the pieces for one functional speaker and another that needs some love.

So, I'm going to call around today and see if I can get a repair estimate. It still seemed totally worth checking out since I can always return them. It won't be the ridiculous deal I thought, but it still might be a great deal. If I can get it repaired for $400, it's still a pair of A7x's under $500 which is great. It does worry me that someone could blow the speakers like that. I've had my Mackie 824s over a decade and never had an issue. I don't blast them often as they're deafening as near-fields.

So, the jury is now out as to what kind of deal this is. I'll update the saga for those hanging by the edge of their computer chairs when I know more. Until then I get to rock out at a fun gig tonight with my Axe. Lucky me;-)
 
The GC in Reno, NV had a demo "pair" but one monitor was missing and the other had the cones poked in. They wanted the full price ($1,400 for the pair) and said they'd call when the missing one turned up.
 
I found that repairs should be about 5-600. Still seems worth it and my Christmas bonus was bigger than usual. 550-700 still seems cheap for a freshly checked out set of monitors, so it's not the deal I thought, but still worth it and affordable
 
If you have all the parts for one working monitor, I'd try to repair it myself and if that works out, get a brand new second speaker.
It can't be rocket science if you just have to swap out the "large parts" - eventually you just need a screw driver and not even a soldering iron...

If it doesn't work out and you can't return it, you've spent 20 bucks and two hours on a non-working DIY project.
Which is probably worth the risk...
 
Well, GC lied. Turns out the speakers are fine. It's the amps that are bad. On one, the tweeter amp and the other, the woofer amp. I'm still trying to find out how much to replace the amps. Have an email out to Adam. Called one of their repair centers and they didn't know the answer, only that the entire unit gets replaced. He said there are only 4 "parts" available, 2 speakers, the amp/back panel and a control module on the inside of speaker.

An interesting side note. Apparently the Adam warranty guarantees the speakers for 5 years except for "extreme abuse" or some such term. In practice, he (Austin TX service center guy) said he's never seen Adam honor the warranty on a speaker. That's not comforting. When they design the speakers, the box, the amps and all the electronics, they have control of all the components and it should be almost impossible to destroy the speakers under anything like normal use if they designed that system properly.

Repair guy said he sees lots of speaker systems nowadays where the amps put out more power than the speakers can handle. Hmmm?
 
MikeyB59 said:
Repair guy said he sees lots of speaker systems nowadays where the amps put out more power than the speakers can handle. Hmmm?
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing the saga - our local GC has a number of studio monitors on clearance, and it's been tempting at times....

Usually, the philosophy behind oversizing the amps is that clipping caused by the amp being under-sized is a lot harder on the speaker than passing a transient through cleanly that the speaker then responds to in a non-linear way (since it's being overdriven). At least, that's my understanding of the situation.
 
Steck said:
Thanks for sharing the saga - our local GC has a number of studio monitors on clearance, and it's been tempting at times....

Usually, the philosophy behind oversizing the amps is that clipping caused by the amp being under-sized is a lot harder on the speaker than passing a transient through cleanly that the speaker then responds to in a non-linear way (since it's being overdriven). At least, that's my understanding of the situation.
Click to expand...
I agree. Furthermore - at least as regards guitar amps - the actual energy put out at a given time is almost aways by far lower than the "nominal" amp power. We made an experiment with Lorenzo Gianneschi of Dragoon Speakers. This guy, a very famous Italian guitar player, played a 100 watt amp at quite a loud volume, while Gianneschi measured the amp output. Most of the time, despite the high sound pressure, the amp was performing at 2-3-5 watt. It rarely touched 20 watt.
Consider that, in order for an amp to really output its maximum power, you should put all its controls fully clockwise gain & master included), and maximize the input as well. That's why it's usually OK to use loudspeaker the maximum load of which is lower than the nominal poweramp output.
 
It's not the "rated" power that kills your speakers or sends your amp into clip. It's the voltage peaks caused by transients in today music.
The rule of thumb - for PA speakers anyway, and that's how I'd treat the Adams - is to power the speaker with 1.5 to 2.25* the RMS/Continuous/Program power of your speaker. Due to the nature of high frequency sound and how we hear it, a tweeter requires far less power to produce its frequency range than does a sub-woofer. A typical 1" Horn on a PA speaker might be rated at 90w RMS (and need an amp that produces a peak output of between 135w and 203w). Seldom does that HF driver need peak output, but putting a 150w amp on it will provide for clean peaks/transients and [generally] not BLOW your speaker.

One much misunderstood problem is under-powering speakers. If you power that !" tweeter with a 50w amp and an 85w transient arrives, that amp cannot produce that voltage/wattage, will go into clipping and can effectively turn your speaker coils into an electric griddle that will melt the coil wax, and when the amp resumes normal mode pop that diaphragm right thru the speaker cone. It's much safer to use an amp that has more power than the speaker needs - as long as it's not producing x times the PEAK speaker wattage. IOW - putting 2400w into a 100w speaker is not going to make that speaker live very long.

One other misconception is that the knobs on a Solid State power amp are volume controls. They are NOT !~
They are INPUT ATTENUATORS.. meaning they control the input level voltage [from source] required to drive that amp to its rated output level. For example - if the amp can produce 500w on each channel (L/R) at 8-ohms. It is able to produce 500w with the level control barely up/on, as it can with it "wide open". It just takes LESS input signal level to make that happen with it wide open.
 
s0c9 said:
It's not the "rated" power that kills your speakers or sends your amp into clip. It's the voltage peaks caused by transients in today music.
The rule of thumb - for PA speakers anyway, and that's how I'd treat the Adams - is to power the speaker with 1.5 to 2.25* the RMS/Continuous/Program power of your speaker. Due to the nature of high frequency sound and how we hear it, a tweeter requires far less power to produce its frequency range than does a sub-woofer. A typical 1" Horn on a PA speaker might be rated at 90w RMS (and need an amp that produces a peak output of between 135w and 203w). Seldom does that HF driver need peak output, but putting a 150w amp on it will provide for clean peaks/transients and [generally] not BLOW your speaker.

One much misunderstood problem is under-powering speakers. If you power that !" tweeter with a 50w amp and an 85w transient arrives, that amp cannot produce that voltage/wattage, will go into clipping and can effectively turn your speaker coils into an electric griddle that will melt the coil wax, and when the amp resumes normal mode pop that diaphragm right thru the speaker cone. It's much safer to use an amp that has more power than the speaker needs - as long as it's not producing x times the PEAK speaker wattage. IOW - putting 2400w into a 100w speaker is not going to make that speaker live very long.

One other misconception is that the knobs on a Solid State power amp are volume controls. They are NOT !~
They are INPUT ATTENUATORS.. meaning they control the input level voltage [from source] required to drive that amp to its rated output level. For example - if the amp can produce 500w on each channel (L/R) at 8-ohms. It is able to produce 500w with the level control barely up/on, as it can with it "wide open". It just takes LESS input signal level to make that happen with it wide open.
Click to expand...
Very true
 
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