I bought my wonderful speakers in 1982. About 20 years ago, I had to replace one of the electrostatic transducer panels, and that went well. Recently I've had more problems that have turned very frustrating.
Last autumn, one of my speakers had audio output way down. I quickly discovered that one of the panels had fallen silent. I opened the enclosure and found a broken wire, which I tried to splice, but the output was now loudly distorted. I took it to a shop in another state where they had some experience with the brand (I live near Asheville NC) and they got it working OK. It continued to work well for about six months, but now it's back to severe distortion in the same panel.
Replacement panels are very expensive, and the wiring is very difficult. These things are not built to facilitate user repairs! They're also extremely heavy and awkward to load and unload, being nearly eight feet tall. The shop that I took them to in Greenville SC is not interested in digging into them again.
So my choices:
Anybody have a better idea?
Last autumn, one of my speakers had audio output way down. I quickly discovered that one of the panels had fallen silent. I opened the enclosure and found a broken wire, which I tried to splice, but the output was now loudly distorted. I took it to a shop in another state where they had some experience with the brand (I live near Asheville NC) and they got it working OK. It continued to work well for about six months, but now it's back to severe distortion in the same panel.
Replacement panels are very expensive, and the wiring is very difficult. These things are not built to facilitate user repairs! They're also extremely heavy and awkward to load and unload, being nearly eight feet tall. The shop that I took them to in Greenville SC is not interested in digging into them again.
So my choices:
- pay a bundle for new panels on eBay and hope I can install one correctly,
- break the things down and sell the parts on eBay,
- cut one of the leads on each speaker so the outputs will match, or
- cut the lead on the bad panel (not trivial due to the way the darn things are designed) and try to balance the output with the pre-amp balance control.
Anybody have a better idea?
