Low power amps and speaker damage?

Historically its common for low power amps to damage speakers particularly tweeters when they hard clip and distort.

Tube amps typically soft clip and are less likely to cause damage when clipping to speakers because they distort differently. Read up on clipping and differences between hard and soft clipping for more.

My personal experience is that advances in amp and speaker design over the years makes this less of an issue than in the past, but still something to be aware of and avoid. Clipping is public enemy #1 to good sound....it is distortion and can easily occur anytime to the detriment of sound quality even if no physical damage done. So always better safe than sorry when it comes to having sufficient power to drive speakers to desired levels with minimal distortion. 

When at clipping basically the tweeter sees a peak level for an extended period of time. No time for voice coil to cool. Have you ever seen a tweeter on fire? 
It does not matter if the amp is big or small, you can damage speakers either way.
A small amp let's say 5w most likely will not do any harm when clips as its peak output would be much less than the continuous power handling of the tweeter.
A 30w amp has more chances to destroy tweeters.

MC 
Mine goes to 11.
Nyah nyah.
What Erik said.
iPad ain’t got enough power for destruction.
Doh.
The only tweeter I ever fried was 18 watts, AB SS with a goofy broad at the controls.

I learned the hard way  early on frying several Heil AMT tweets with a 40 watt integrated amp many years ago.   Never again.

Audible distortion = bad... doesn’t matter if it’s 1 watt or 1k. 

Regarding the 12 o’clock thing, read up on Pass Labs pre’s the higher the better...