Anybody blow a ceramic woofer with an OTL amp?


I would appreciate anybody's experience with transients (such as a tube blowing) in an OTL amp that results in breaking the ceramic driver in a Kharma 3.2. I just had this happen to me - a driver tube blew, terrible noise from the woofer and it broke. The Kharma distributor said this was only the second he had heard of with an Atma-Sphere amp, but that it was much more likely with an OTL amp because of the lack of transformer. Ralph is interested in the frequency with which this occurs, as he feels it only happens with ceramic woofers, which are much more likely to blow than non-ceramics. Have any other OTL owners had this happen to Kharmas? I guess the lesson is to keep testing tubes or keep a careful eye on them to prevent this happening, but I would like to know if this was a freak happening or more common than has been generally accepted? Judging from the number of Tenor-Kharma combos out there, it should be more common than I thought if the combination of OTL and ceramic woofers is a problematic one.
springbok10

Showing 3 responses by tireguy

Howie- As I understand it the issue is not power handling but distortion/amp cliping which causes the driver failure.
Cinematic_systems- The drivers used are not stock accuton drivers, kharma modifies them in house. So your right its not expensive but it can be time consuming and difficult to find the right replacement driver.
Springbok10- Don't worry about the driver replacement it really is very easy to do. If you have little to no experience soldering ask a friend to help you, if you can't find that practice on some scrap wire until you get the hang of it. Have a friend hold the driver and you solder it, should take less then 15 minutes, even if you work really slow.