Yet another failed Class D subwoofer plate amp! This latest one was on a system in our mountain house and was purchased new directly from the manufacturer, Anthony Gallo Acoustics in 2014. It was never abused and was sparingly used on a very nice sounding stereo system with passive wall mounted AGA Strada 2 main speakers ($2000 for the pair). The AGA TR3 subwoofer had cost $1000 new 9 years ago, and my KUDOS to AGA as they are still able to support the customer with a replacement plate amp for $210 shipped. I'm looking forward to receiving and installing it so I can get that system fully operational again.
This latest Class D amp failure brings my total of failed subwoofer plate amps up to 4 out of 6 subs. 3 of those 4 failures were Class D subwoofer plate amp failures, and 1 of the 4 failures was a Class AB subwoofer plate amp failure. The remaining 2 subs don't use plate amps, and have had no failures of any kind. In other words every single plate amp active speaker (all were subwoofers) that I own has failed. One even took out its woofer as collateral damage when it died. This latest one lasted the longest at 9 years before failing, and this one is the only one that is still being supported by the OEM. JBL and EV were not able to support providing replacement plate amps for their subs, and I had to adapt alternative generic plate amps from Parts Express to those subs, which required me making sheet metal filler plates in my metal shop to adapt the OEM sub cutouts (holes) to the dimensions of the replacement plate amps - as there is zero standardization in plate amp dimensions.
Upon visual inspection of this latest failed Class D plate amp I can see a few caps that look bad, but there is a lot of brown Glyptol and white RTV on the board securing components and making board level component replacements too cumbersome an exercise. Thankfully the woofer is fine.
What all of these plate amp failures have in common is that they all lived their lives inside a speaker cabinet with poor ventilation and plenty of vibration. This just adds further fuel to my belief that active speakers, subs or mains, are ALL destined to fail in a vastly shorter timeframe than passive speakers. These failures will be the electronics, unless they fail in a manner that also kills the driver. To be sure, I own several sets of passive main speakers that are over 30 years old with no failures.
I am very appreciative that Anthony Gallo Acoustics is able to support providing a replacement plate amp for my 9 year old AGA subwoofer!!! They are very customer focused, unlike JBL and EV who could not support providing replacement plate amps for subs that were quite younger than 9 when they failed. Anthony Gallo Acoustics was acquired late in 2022 by Pulse-Eight.