A couple of thoughts
I never cease to be amazed at people,
First, don't any of you think that a $600 subwoofer should be made as well as my $200 DVD Player, or my $800 Receiver, or the host of other things that were plugged into that surge protector?
NOTHING else in the house, either time, was damaged except the Yamaha Subwoofers.
Second, I had never even HEARD OF authorized or unauthorized dealers until AFTER my first sub failed. I had purchased a subwoofer at a reasonable price from a dealer, that according to epinions.com was reputable. If I hadn't liked the YST-800's sound so much, I'd have ditched Yamaha then.
I've purchased MANY items on the internet, including digital cameras and everything electronic I can imagine, with NO PROBLEM ever. Both times the subs arrived in OEM boxes and packaging with warranty cards, manuals and sealed plastic packaging. I don't know what could possibly be unauthorized about them.
My thinking at that point was, "I'd just had one sub fail and I'm already DOWN $600. I need to get a new sub." And you suggest that I spend ~$200 MORE than that to go with an authorized dealer, rather than finding "low price on the internet" in order to replace the unit. I don't know how you think, but I go based on the whole of my experience, which is that my electronic equipment doesn't generally fail. So I concluded, perhaps falsely, that the Sub failure was a fluke. Not likely to happen a second time, so why spend more again.
Also, EVEN IF Yamaha honored my warranty, shipping and being without the sub would add up to more hassle than it would likely be worth. If it was MADE WELL I wouldn't have to deal with it.
Keep in mind that NOTHING ELSE has failed when the power comes back on. THINK of all the electronics in a house. And think of all the times power goes off (when you are not home, so you can't anal-retentively run around and unplug everything) and comes back on. My computer equipment survives it too, on the same surge protectors. But not a Yamaha Sub. How hard is it to protect the equipment from this failure? Everything else in the house seems ok with it.
See a pattern here? I do. You are whistling in the dark and trying to justify why it is MY fault instead of Yamaha's fault so you won't worry quite so much. You're thinking, "well, I don't have to worry about that because I do ______ and that protects me." Don't worry, its human nature. People in California think people in Florida are crazy because of the hurricanes and people in Florida think people in California are crazy because of the quakes.
Third, you suggest my suppressor wasn't any good, but NOTHING ELSE EXCEPT THE YAMAHA SUB had any problems. It is a Panamax SurgeProtector 8C.
http://www.panamax-sales.com/SP8C.htm That should be able to handle a power on/off.
And Sheep, your reply makes even less sense to me.
Are you suggesting that Yamaha unloads defective equipment on the public via "unauthorized dealers?" If so, that alone would make me avoid them like plague.
Ultimately, I'm not looking for your sympathy or your asinine blame. I will most certainly change my ratings of these subs on public product rating sites where I previously had high ratings. I will also create a page detailing my experience and make sure that the search sites are presented with those pages so they come up when someone does a search on Yamaha. They can draw their own conclusions, but at least they'll know their situation going in. As for your belief that creating the website wouldn't be fair, neither is my spending $1,200 on Yamaha Subwoofers that have failed when all my other equipment survived. So apparently life isn't fair, is it?
WHAT I CAME FOR was help. I asked a couple of questions, that have remained unanswered.
"WHAT could be frying on these subs? Is it something I can easily fix. I'm rather handy with a soldering iron, but I've forgotten way too much college physics to likely chase down the problem unless it is a common thing. I can find no instances of this on the internet.
I am basically left with two great speakers, and boxes, and two fried amps. Would one of the amps at
www.partsexpress.com do a good job, and would that be a good way to fix the problem?"
Thanks,
-Tom Steele