This morning I powered the speakers up for the first time secured in the cabinets (3/4" MDF) and noticed an odd smell of a distinctly chemical nature, coming it seemed from the bass reflex port. I had previously powered them up outside the cabinet for initial testing of the amp, and hadn't noticed it then, but that could just be me.

The smell had a slightly varnish-like character to it, but so far the cabinets are just MDF and gorilla glue right now. I didn't notice any smoke or anything, and when I disassembled it to feel around for heat, nothing felt warmer than ambient temperature, but it had been a few minutes.

I should mention that my gainclone seems to have a little trouble as it hums a bit, which is being worked on, and when I first powered up this morning, I discovered that my source (laptop) picks up a heinous hum when connected to a monitor. It ran like that for maybe a minute before I found it was the monitor. The volume was never that loud, though.

My main question here is whether the smell I'm describing is "new equipment" smell or "you're hurting me!" smell. Aside from all this, everything sounds great, even with a little hum, and will post pics when it's really finished.