Subwoofer plate amp FIRE.

I woke up the other day to the smell of burnt plastic. I didn't hear any noises or see any smoke and my smoke alarms didn't go off. I thought it could be my neighbor since I live in a duplex. A couple of days later I went into my second bedroom to listen to some music. My sub was dead and no LED on the back. Next I pulled the fuse and it was blown. I had a spare fuse so I put it in and the LED would switch from red to green but still no sound. A few days later I pulled the amp and was shocked at what I found. A capacitor had exploded and caught on fire. It leaked onto the circuit board below it and burned completely through the board. Many of the surrounding areas where covered in soot as you can see in the pictures. A few spots on the MDF around the cut out for the amp have burn marks in them. The MDF was very close to catching on fire. In total I have five subwoofers in standby mode in my house. Four in my main theater and one in my second bedroom. They all have the same Bash amplifier. I'm worried this could happen again if I leave any of these amplifiers in standby mode. I think one of my only choices is to turn all of them on and off manually after every use to prevent burning my house down. The other option I'm considering is removing all of the plate amplifiers and using a large pro amplifier I have sitting around to power all four subs. I think I could wire two subs in parallel on each channel on my two channel pro amplifier. I don't want to alarm everyone but this is dangerous.

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They're all pre built purchased subwoofers. All Cerwin Vega CLS15S subwoofers. I'm only sharing this because they have Bash plate amplifiers. Many other subwoofer companies also use Bash plate amplifiers. I know this isn't the first time a plate amplifier has done this. I read that some plate amps that ED was using also did this. I'm not sure who produced those plate amps though.

You're right. I noticed that bulge on the cap. Maybe I will pull the plate amps on the rest of my subs and check the caps. Thanks for the tip.

I will take a better look at the board below it and report back. It's a little difficult to see. It looked like it had stringy spider webbed melted plastic. That can't be good. I'm good at soldering so if I need to solder that wont be a problem.

I removed the screws from that circuit board to get a better look. It doesn't look good. It looks like a hot mess.
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In the past I have had another one of these amps die on me. It was just a diode that failed. No fire. It was fixed under warranty. Now I have no more warranty left on any of the subs. I'm not sure if the plate amps are available from CV anymore. The last time I checked several years ago they where available for $300. So I don't think buying a new amp is possible. Lucky for me I do have some spare plate amps and drivers for these subs. I got them off Craigslist just in case something like this happened. I didn't think they would catch on fire though. I'm really considering pulling all of these amplifiers and turning all four of my subs in my main room from active to passive. I will make some amp block off plates and install some speaker binding posts in the block off plate. If I remember the Bash amp is 250rms and 300w peak. The driver in each sub is 4ohm. My pro amp is 2ohm capable and makes 600w at 8ohm in stereo mode. Do you think the outcome would be fine if I wired two subs per channel in series? Wired this way each channel would power two subs and see an 8ohm load. In the past I have used the gain matching method for calibrating so I would use that again with the gains on the pro amp. Any opinions on this? Positive or negative. By doing this I already know I will be avoiding exploding caps catching on fire.

That's an idea but I think if I'm going to remove all the plate amps I will try and use my large pro amp to power all four subs. That would require only one amp to turn on. I'm not leaving those plate amps on anymore. So now I need to flip four switches with the plate amps. I did a test of the driver on that sub with the plate amp that caught fire. Luckily the driver seems fine.