Originally Posted by: lpmace_98.... Other than using overpowered amps on underpowered speakers, what actually blows out speakers? I guess I'm worried about loud, low frequencies damaging the speakers. Any suggestions?

thnx

Loud & low will destroy a speaker if the cone travels so far that it spends significant time beyond the designed voice coil travel. The coil needs to cool off by passing heat to the magnet structure. Long sessions of high power operation dump a lot of heat into the coil while making it harder for it to cool off. This can eventually cause the coil to fail. In extreme cases, the bobbin of the voice coil can move out past the magnet, and get stuck there. Then the coil burns out. Cone damage may be the result of excessive power, but can also happen due to transients like clicks and pops that cause a brief surge of unusually strong signal to the speaker. It's never a good idea to plug in, or unplug, the guitar cord while the amp is 'live' for this reason.

I'm not sure what you mean by "mini amps", but once you move into the 20-plus Watt range, you generally have better quality components to work with. Another factor is that the smallest amps are all transistor, which produce a DC component in the output if the power amp 'clips' when it is driven hard. Tube amps are transformer-coupled to the speaker, which has the inadvertant benefit of preventing DC from reaching the speaker.