Has anyone else ever bent thier voice coils in 6x9`s? I used to run my pioneer 6x9`s off the head unit until they started making a wierd cracking sound...... the H/u screwed them somehow... or at least thats what Pioneer said, they said they should be amped because of thier nominal rating..? Im confused now because Im reading alot about running 6x9`s off h/u`s...
Tsa-6970E`s 330W 3-ways
Anyways.. just my experiance.

i haven't done or heard of this before, my mate runs his 330's with an amp and so do i

Im running them currently off an amp, no problems after amping them. Im just abit worried about sending them too much power now lol which i dont think ill be able to do with my shytey amp.

Has anyone else ever bent thier voice coils in 6x9`s? I used to run my pioneer 6x9`s off the head unit until they started making a wierd cracking sound...... the H/u screwed them somehow... or at least thats what Pioneer said, they said they should be amped because of thier nominal rating..? Im confused now because Im reading alot about running 6x9`s off h/u`s...
Tsa-6970E`s 330W 3-ways
Anyways.. just my experiance.

i cracked some in my old pioneer 6 * 9's got the competition ones for a bit extra under warrenty and had no more problems of that kind

Okay, there are two ways car audio companies measure power on their equipment:

1. Peak Power (or PMPO) = useless, doesn't mean a thing in the real world. Don't quote it, don't mention it.
2. Nominal Power or RMS (root mean square) = much better, actually means something.

Basically peak power is what the amp can put out and what a speaker can handle for a split second before it gets damaged. RMS is the average continuous power an amp can put out and a speaker can handle without damage. Because musical peaks are varied and unreliable Peak Power is useless in describing a devices abilities.

Okay, the power output of headunits is almost always measured in Peak Power, so a 4x50W headunit is probably more like a 4x20Wrms unit, not all that much.

Now, you're probably thinking "Great, at least my speakers won't blow because my headunit won't put out enough power to do that" and you'd be wrong. The problem we now come by is the fact that when an amplifier (like the little one in your headunit) is reaching the extremes of it's abilities it begins what is known in the audio industry as "clipping" - instead of the peaks of the sound wave being nice and curvy and always changing, they start to develop flat sections of DC, or square wave distortion.

Clipping is very, very bad as it can cause serious damage to your speakers (which do not like being forced to the extremes of their suspension and getting stuck there while your headunit is clipping). However, over-powering a speaker (and running it continously at stupid levels) can cause melted voice coils (which means bye-bye speaker).

So, how do we sort out this conundrum that is amp and speaker matching? Well, let's say your speakers have a rated power output of 50Watts RMS (remember we don't use peak readings, so 330W is not a useful figure) then you should probably use an amp that has an output power rating of AT LEAST 50Watts RMS, but preferably a little bit more as speakers, unlike amplifiers, can handle a little bit of their own distortion without too much damage. Too much power, however (like 300WRMS) is just asking for over-excursion of the speaker driver, or melted voice coils.

I would say a Clipped Signal has done the Damage...
But Bending a Voice coil and Melting one is a little different...
Never heard of a Bent one, I can only assume that you were pushing them way hard and the signal clipped ????? or some one has pushed down on your cone and warped it that way..

Yep I would assume that clipping had fooked em ,at the time they were running off a 52Wx$4 :gtfo: Sony headunit
the bloke that repaired them was stumped aswell as to what actually happened to them... but 4 or 5 weeks later they were back in my hands. Im trying to avoid Clipping my new head unit, but im abit confused by all its settings...Pioneer 5750MP.. any help would with some basic settings be much appreciated as i dont wanna kill my amp, sub or rears! lol
I never had to worry too much as the last head unit had bugger all settings and was easy as pie to work... this new 1 really confuses me at times lol


actually the amp can die cos i want a new one :badgrin: Any suggestions???? *please no KENWOOD!!!* :rant:

i haven't done or heard of this before, my mate runs his 330's with an amp and so do i


Do your Pioneer magnets hit the torsion rail for the boot lid??