Well about 6 months ago I found this Audiobahn AW122T subwoofer in a poorly made cabinet held together with liquid nails. The sub had a torn surround. It was by the trash and I noticed it on an evening walk. So I dragged it home with me. I thought I might refoam it, but what would I use it for? I don't care for car audio.

So it sat and sat. So I decided to have some fun. I connected it to a powerful function generator. Set a 60Hz sine wave and let it rip (kidding) I plugged it into the wall. The wall outputs 120V at 60Hz. Considering it was a 20A circuit it could put out 2400W of power. So yeah... It put up a good fight.

The high wattage cause physical failure. The voice coil moved to far and bent and was sitting out on the pole piece. With this, there was not way the energy could be given off as sound, and the voice coil heated up and burned. That said even if the voice coil stayed in the pole piece, it would have still melted the voice coil windings, but taken longer.


As always, don't try this at home.