Can a power surge cause amp to clip?

For a surge to come into a home it would have to come from the pole or a lightning strike, right? So isn’t that the reason for the bonding between pole and the ground rod at the main, over current coming in.

I’d make darn sure there wasn’t a problem there first..

That is the reason for a fast acting surge protector and voltage maintainer. The higher the joule the faster the reaction time.

We use to have brown outs, just a power supply killer. Then blackouts.
Coming back on was the second problem (surge) after the couple of hours at 100-120.
Thus a maintainer and surge protector..

No problems sense the late 80.
They went from 8K to 20k lines in our residential area. First upgrade sense before WWII they said.. Copper line to aluminum. They said it was a better material.. LOL I kept my 50 year old copper at the time.. I had an upgrade option.. Either or. It stopped all the power outages and I never lost another PS on a computer. Tandy, Atari, Commodore 64 and Clone 8086 and 88s.. 5 meg hard drives were super expensive and you had to flip a 360 floppy to get both sides at 160 bytes per side.. 

That sure was a long time ago.. Been here a long time.. 1982.

Regards

There is something wrong with your amp. Probably in its power supply. Bad capacitor?

A power surge can potentially damage an amplifier. The first thing you want to do is check the fuse(s)  inside. Technically, fuses in audio gear (specifically) can last forever, but when accepting any kind of interference, they may take the "hit" to protect other internal components.

Also take a look at the capacitors and the ends of soldering joints from cables inside the amp. If you see any red (mercury) or corrosion (brown) that is a bad sign.

If the problem persists, fixing it would involve what I explained above. Advanced stages of failure could include the amp shutting off by itself or making sounds while powering up. 

thanks again for all the inputs. will def open up the amp and have a visual inspection. the 5A 250V fuse is still functional at the moment.

Some folks have said it wasn’t clipping that I heard. The amp I have is McIntosh MC7100, and it has a built in anti-clipping circuit called Power Guard. When the speakers were making the "clipping sounds", it sounded like as if you manually accidentally touched the RCA inputs to the amp, and it gives off a static like cracking sound. This would then trigger the Power Guard (it has LED indicator lights).

Any advice appreciated