question about installation of 20 amp wall plug

Stick a volt meter inthere and measure your voltage and see if the voltage is correct. Remember, Black-Hot, White Neutral, Ground Green, Ground the bottom hole, neutral, the wide slot. Amp sounds like it had one foot in the audio casket, the other on a banana peel. A time to fry....Best of luck. Have an electrician do the work. If your home owners insurance found out you have a fire from your wiring, coverage is not likely.

I don't think it's the wall outlet. Popping at the speakers and a smoking amp... that is most likely an open safety capacitor that's in parallel with the filtering cap causing a line-voltage arc over.

But judging by the way you asked your question about receptacles and circuit breakers, I would strongly suggest an electrician check out what you did.

$4 at Home Depot but priceless when installing receptacles. LEDs indicate if wiring is correct, open ground, hot/neutral reversed, etc.

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100031636

If the outlet was wired backwards could the amp feed line voltage through the RCA connectors ground wire?

John C.

If the outlet was wired backwards could the amp feed line voltage through the RCA connectors ground wire?

Under most circumstances the answer to that would be no, John. With properly designed modern equipment the ground (shell) of the rca connectors is in common with signal ground, the chassis of the amp or other component, and ac safety ground. All of those are isolated from both the hot and the neutral of the ac wiring. The connection between chassis and ac safety ground is intended to cause the ac circuit breaker to trip in the event that an internal short makes the chassis "hot."

But given all the ways in which the outlet could have been miswired, combined with the possibility (as GS suggested) that the "cheap integrated amplifier" (as the op described it) could have had a defective line filter capacitor, or marginal insulation in its power transformer, combined with the facts that we don't know if a source component was connected, and whether the component(s) had two-prong or three-prong plugs, and whether or not the amp had been used in the recent past, there are probably more possible scenarios than it's practical to enumerate. The op should have the wiring checked out as has been suggested, and also have the innards of the amp looked at by a suitably experienced person, to try to identify what smoked.

Regards,
-- Al