B&W 801 Matrix S2 tweeters

[stdan]

Hello,

I need your advice and opinions! I have a black pair of B&W 801 Matrix S2 speakers. I bought them ~9 months ago after a quick listen and visual inspection. They sounded fair, no major dents or bruises, rubbers all soft, tweeters not busted etc. However after playing them for a while it became apparent that tweeters are defective - or at least one of them is. On a quick listen it can go unnoticed, but after playing for a while I noticed one speaker sounds a bit damp, and also that my ears start ringing fairly quickly even with modest sound levels. Today I was able to measure frequency response from the tweeters:

View media item 25475
Blue is one and brown is the other. So at least the brown one is defective, and so bad that I can't play these speakers. The blue one might have something to it as well as the 3k-4k range looks too low to me while it should be steady. I have opened up the brown-line-tweeter and used some compressed air to clean it up carefully, reassembled and measured again - didn't fix or change anything, graphs remain equally bad. The dome and everything appear to be intact, not busted, no dents, not any visual signs of damage. They just don't play well. Tweeters are ZZ09709 ie the original 801 Matrix S2 tweeters.

Official replacement parts for these tweeters have been NLA for who knows how long already, and at this point it seems I'm left with a bunch of crappy, expensive, challenging or dubious options:

1. Ditch the damn things and spend my remaining money on some gear that isn't 30+ years old. Enjoy life and music.

2. Attempt to fix those tweeters myself. There are replacement domes and diaphragms for sale on ebay. They are cheapish, but who knows what their quality is. For example:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/144047585761

These fixes are destructive in the sense that if I botch something it will eventually be impossible to roll back to any reasonable working state. At least by me. Also as the domes and coils seem intact I feel hesitant to start replacing those.

3. I googled for a while and found that Speaker Exchange offers a tweeter rebuild with parts modded from newer B&W models:

https://reconingspeakers.com/produc...ries-tweeters-zz08532-zz8532-zz04372-zz04372/

They don't list this tweeter model specifically, but they do list ZZ04372 which should be 1:1 compatible with this speaker model, so I would expect their offer to be valid in my case. However at the price of $225 per tweeter, plus freight, plus insurance plus VAT it's going to be around $700-$800 in total. I'm located in Finland and Speaker Exchange is in Tampa, Florida, so hauling stuff back and forth involves customs declarations and such nasty stuff.

I even do have the money, and they do grant a two year repair warranty, so I'm not worried of getting scammed here. I'm just thinking "how good will the speakers be if I do this" and thinking that if I spend equal money plus some to new gear, would that be better bang for my buck.

4. Wait for a miracle to happen and for someone to sell their tweeters on ebay (none are for sale right now), hope for those to be solid, reasonably priced and shipped intact etc.

5. Mental breakdown. Family sells gear to cover medical expenses and to buy food. No need to worry about tweeters anymore. Other patients might scream terribly at the ward.


Please people do you have any tips or tricks up your sleeves? Should I try that el-cheapo replacement "coil foil" thing, or just forget it? Has anyone tried Speaker Exchange tweeter repair services? Happy with it? Do you think it's possible that something else besides the dome or coil is defective and causing this? Does anyone know if ZZ09709 has ferrofluid that could have dried up? I searched for information on this, but I have no idea if this tweeter has ferrofluid or not.

Crossovers have been checked, they should be good. I have swapped speaker heads, I have swapped tweeters, I have tried double cabling, different cables, different amps, I'm fairly convinced that there's no other cause, but the tweeters, their wiring or something upwards from their molex connectors.

Any ideas or suggestions would be most welcome. I can provide more measurements, photos or whatever if it helps.

Best regards,

Antti Siiskonen

 

[stdan]

Make sure it is not the crossover first.

I actually already hauled these to the B&W shop in Helsinki for crossover maintenance, and they should be good. Finnish B&W didn't have the capability to do anything for the tweeters though, and they were surprised to hear that any options exist to fix those.

Best regards,

Antti

 

[Webator]

Calling in late here... I am in an identical position, albeit with an 802 SII, not an 801 - but the tweeters are identical. I also had the crossovers checked and updated first. And the speakers are in near mint condition.

I chose to let loudspeakerrepair.com fix the tweeters - seemingly a specialist located in Belgium, which was easier for me than sending them to the US since I am in Germany.

All I can say is DON'T go down that route. That "expert" fitted new diaphragms to the tweeter that look very much like the cheapish ebay things (your option 2) - while damaging the housings and charging 350 Euros for the pair...

Now the sound is RUINED, the speakers sound horrible and are completely useless. And my complaints went unanswered for weeks. Need I say more? I am now contemplating legal action.
Speaker Exchange seems my only option left, as there is no way anyone is going to buy this pristine, but messed up speaker.

What did you finally decide to do?

Greetings,

Ingo

 

[stdan]

Hello,

Oh, man. You're not going to believe what I'm about to say. I also sent my tweeters to that same quack in Belgium, also with shitty results. I'm so sorry now that I didn't post an update to this forum after my sad attempt with loudspeakerrepair.com, you could have saved your money. :-(

We initially agreed that he would replace my tweeter diaphragms and voice coils and fix them that way. But then after zero communication with me, he decided that since the tweeter domes are intact, he'd attempt to fix them another way instead. Apparently the tweeter domes had somehow broken partially free of their base and he glued them back in. I kind of understand why he tried that, but he didn't read, understand or care about the notes and messages I sent him: my tweeters were not balanced and his "maintenance" did not fix this imbalance. Also when I measure harmonic distortion after the maintenance the harmonics seem to play LOUDER than the base frequency, making distortion problems much worse than what they were before. These problems are not difficult to measure and identify if one takes the time and effort to measure them, and it's pretty clear that he had not done so. AFAIK original Matrix S2 tweeters are "dry" ie there should be no ferrofluid in them. I don't know if someone had poured ferrofluid into my tweeters prior to this maintenance, but loudspeakerrepair informed me that he had "exchanged ferro". So all in all I wholeheartedly agree: if your tweeters are broken, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON LOUDSPEAKERREPAIR.COM.

I also sent him messages on whatsapp to discuss and complain, and he was just surprised and asked "they do not sound good?" or something stupid like that. No advice, no compensation offered, nothing. Either his English skills are poor, or he's trying to hide behind his crappy answers. I haven't sought legal action as I don't even know how that works between Finland and Belgium.

I'm in precisely the same situation as you are: my speakers are in superb condition externally. Mids and bass drivers are in great shape with practially no distortion visible in measurements. But without tweeters the speakers are garbage. And only 24 hours ago or so I ordered a pair of those el-cheapo tweeter parts off ebay. I figured that after all these failures I can spend this <100 euros and try to fix those tweeters myself as they can't get much worse than they already are. It's either that or the junkyard.

Speaker Exchange might be a good option, but it's super expensive when compared to the remaining value of the devices. The cost of work and parts is reasonable IMHO, but add shipping and VAT, and it's suddenly ~800 dollars. Even if Speaker Exchange did an excellent job and got these fixed, I guess it would be only a question of time when a rubber part or a capacitor breaks and yet more maintenance is required. The truth is that I didn't understand how old these speakers were when buying them. I paid way too much for them intially, have spent a lot of time, money, effort and mental capacity to get them going, and I've gotten nowhere, just pure misery. For me getting these things was a dream come true .. until I discovered that the tweeters are not ok. Now after a year of studying, trying, failing and wailing I'm starting to think that hauling them to the junkyard and giving them the sledgehammer before leaving might just be the best thing to do.

Again, I'm so sorry I didn't report my bad experience with loudspeakerrepair.com here earlier. I've been seeking help from multiple forums and I didn't even remember I had registered and posted here also. And frankly it's super embarrassing to waste money on such an attempt and fail, so I wasn't very keen on explaining how my failures keep piling up and what the current status is. It's so sad to be in this situation, and I feel ashamed for not knowing better. I want this crap to end soonish one way or another and to move on.

If anyone has any good advice up their sleeve, now would be the time to shine. :-/

Best regards,

Antti

 

[twiiii]

I never liked the sound of the 801's mid range. Give me a pair of the 808's they were a much better speaker. I still don't like modern B&W anything, Especially the latest series with the 8 db peak over an octave wide centered at 10 KHZ. But it seems others are doing it too, today.

I can't say if the issue was the tweeter midrange combination or how the engineers voiced the 801's. But at the time I preferred the top of the line ADS and Mcintosh ML/XR series speakers.

 

[Webator]

Antti,

sad (if at least a bit comforting...) to hear I am not alone. This is so disappointing. Even experts can make mistakes, that's not the point here. But claiming to be an expert and messing up things that you know cannot be replaced is soo unprofessional...

These problems are not difficult to measure and identify if one takes the time and effort to measure them, and it's pretty clear that he had not done so.

He offered me a "complete check-up". But this obviously did not include any measurements.Otherwise he would have discovered his mistakes. My tweeters weren't even broken, only aging. In hindsight, he should have told me "leave them alone as long as they're kind of ok". That would have been expert advice. But this requires a seasoned expert, I suppose.

if your tweeters are broken, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON LOUDSPEAKERREPAIR.COM.

Nothing to add here.

No advice, no compensation offered, nothing

Yep. Another streak of professionalism.

Either his English skills are poor, or he's trying to hide behind his crappy answers

Both, I guess. The first is not an issue, the latter is. The only thing I got after a number of e-mails and even a old fashioned letter was "you can always send them back if you don't like them". Nice.

I haven't sought legal action as I don't even know how that works between Finland and Belgium.

I probably will. This is the EU, there must be ways to do it. Not worth it from a financial perspective, I guess - and he probably knows that and tries to ride it out. But I am not giving up like that.

nd only 24 hours ago or so I ordered a pair of those el-cheapo tweeter parts off ebay. I figured that after all these failures I can spend this <100 euros and try to fix those tweeters myself as they can't get much worse than they already are.

That's what he fitted to my tweeters by the looks of it. Terrible - but hey, you've got nothing to lose.

Speaker Exchange might be a good option, but it's super expensive when compared to the remaining value of the devices

Absolutely - but I've already spent too much money on these speakers. And without proper tweeters, the resale value is next to zero.

For me getting these things was a dream come true ..

Same for me. Wanted to buy these in the early 90s, but couldn't afford them. Spent some time to find a pristine pair now. They cannot just go to the junkyard. All the other parts are relatively easy to source or repair. Except for the tweeters...

If anyone has any good advice up their sleeve, now would be the time to shine. :-/

Anyone?

Thanks,

Ingo

 

[Webator]

This is what tweeters look like after this pricey "repair". And did I mention they sound horrible?

 

[Webator]

This is the frequency response before the repair, showing some imbalance from left to right tweeter:


And this is after the repair. A very slight dip in the lower treble and a subtle raise further up... What's not to like?


(Yes, the measurement were made with a very basic tool. But it's good enough to get an idea. And the sound is even worth than what it looks like. Unbearable.)