Happy holidays, all. I'm having some trouble with one of my recently acquired KEF 104/2 speakers. Specifically, a distinctly "muffled" sound from speaker B.
First, some back story. I've been using a junky pair of JVC speakers (SK-S11's, yikes) that I got at a rummage sale ten years ago, and it was time for an upgrade. I had been scouring the local craigslist adds for a while, looking for a pair of KEF 104/2's. After a few months of no luck, I pulled the trigger on a pair from eBay, and unfortunately they were too far away for me to pick up, so shipping was the only option. They were in great condition physically, and better yet, they had been recapped, refoamed where needed, and had MT-1191 tweeters put in.
So I patiently waited for them to arrive, and when they did, the boxes were a bit beat up. They were quite well packed, so I was surprised to find a bit of damage. Speaker B had a 1" portion of the corner veneer damaged, two of the grill pegs broke, and one of the grill MDF cross-beams, for lack of a better term, cracked. I was able to fix that with some wood glue. All in all, though, they looked to be in excellent condition.
Next, I gave them a listen. The speakers are powered by a Yamaha A-S501. I started the volume low and worked my way up to just slightly louder than normal listening volumes, so they were never given a ton of power. After after a good hour of listening, I determined that speaker A sounded phenomenal, but speaker B had a distinct "muffled" sound, almost as if I was listening to it under a blanket. I am a novice when it comes to audio equipment and speaker problems, but I enjoy learning about it. I tried to watch as many youtube videos and poured over posts in this forum to try and solve it, but the issue persists. Here's what I have done to troubleshoot the problem to this point.
- I changed sources from turntable, to tuner, to CD, to digital, changing the balance back and forth to compare speaker A to speaker B. Same result
- I swapped the speaker cables so the inputs to each speaker were switched. Speaker B still sounded off. I believe this test should isolate the problem to the speaker
- I performed the "toilet paper tube" test. I placed the roll up against the tweeter on speaker A, and it was very "crisp" and "sharp" sounding, for lack of a better term. Speaker B was definitely producing noise, so it was working. The sound, however, was "muffled" or "muddy".
- I removed the front portion of the speaker to make sure are the wires were plugged in properly. all wires match the diagram on the speaker itself
- Inspected the Mt-1191 visually. Solder seemed good, and no visible damage or disconnected wires.
-I removed the top subwoofer to access the board that held the caps. I removed that, and compared them to images of the falcon acoustics replacement set to make sure they were actually changed out. They did seem to match, and none of the caps appeared to have broken or been damaged during shipping. Two of the clear zip tie things were broken so I replaced those. I have attached photos of the caps and the solders in case something looks amiss that I can't detect.
After this, I put it all back together and crossed my fingers that all the putzing around I did would have magically fixed it, but nope, same problem. Today I bought a multimeter and both speaker A and B read just a hair under 6 ohms.
So I've reached the end of ideas on what to do next to troubleshoot the issue, or what the issue could even be at this point. My only guess is that one of the caps is bad or something, but they were just replaced about a year ago. Wise members of Audiokarma, what should I do next? What could this be? Thanks for any assistance you can provide, and happy holidays.
First, some back story. I've been using a junky pair of JVC speakers (SK-S11's, yikes) that I got at a rummage sale ten years ago, and it was time for an upgrade. I had been scouring the local craigslist adds for a while, looking for a pair of KEF 104/2's. After a few months of no luck, I pulled the trigger on a pair from eBay, and unfortunately they were too far away for me to pick up, so shipping was the only option. They were in great condition physically, and better yet, they had been recapped, refoamed where needed, and had MT-1191 tweeters put in.
So I patiently waited for them to arrive, and when they did, the boxes were a bit beat up. They were quite well packed, so I was surprised to find a bit of damage. Speaker B had a 1" portion of the corner veneer damaged, two of the grill pegs broke, and one of the grill MDF cross-beams, for lack of a better term, cracked. I was able to fix that with some wood glue. All in all, though, they looked to be in excellent condition.
Next, I gave them a listen. The speakers are powered by a Yamaha A-S501. I started the volume low and worked my way up to just slightly louder than normal listening volumes, so they were never given a ton of power. After after a good hour of listening, I determined that speaker A sounded phenomenal, but speaker B had a distinct "muffled" sound, almost as if I was listening to it under a blanket. I am a novice when it comes to audio equipment and speaker problems, but I enjoy learning about it. I tried to watch as many youtube videos and poured over posts in this forum to try and solve it, but the issue persists. Here's what I have done to troubleshoot the problem to this point.
- I changed sources from turntable, to tuner, to CD, to digital, changing the balance back and forth to compare speaker A to speaker B. Same result
- I swapped the speaker cables so the inputs to each speaker were switched. Speaker B still sounded off. I believe this test should isolate the problem to the speaker
- I performed the "toilet paper tube" test. I placed the roll up against the tweeter on speaker A, and it was very "crisp" and "sharp" sounding, for lack of a better term. Speaker B was definitely producing noise, so it was working. The sound, however, was "muffled" or "muddy".
- I removed the front portion of the speaker to make sure are the wires were plugged in properly. all wires match the diagram on the speaker itself
- Inspected the Mt-1191 visually. Solder seemed good, and no visible damage or disconnected wires.
-I removed the top subwoofer to access the board that held the caps. I removed that, and compared them to images of the falcon acoustics replacement set to make sure they were actually changed out. They did seem to match, and none of the caps appeared to have broken or been damaged during shipping. Two of the clear zip tie things were broken so I replaced those. I have attached photos of the caps and the solders in case something looks amiss that I can't detect.
After this, I put it all back together and crossed my fingers that all the putzing around I did would have magically fixed it, but nope, same problem. Today I bought a multimeter and both speaker A and B read just a hair under 6 ohms.
So I've reached the end of ideas on what to do next to troubleshoot the issue, or what the issue could even be at this point. My only guess is that one of the caps is bad or something, but they were just replaced about a year ago. Wise members of Audiokarma, what should I do next? What could this be? Thanks for any assistance you can provide, and happy holidays.
