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Vandersteen 2C One speaker has a persistent hum

steve wuertz

steve wuertz

New Member
Hello

I'm an intermittent lurker and 1st time poster looking for advice. I purchased the pair of 2C from a dealer back in the 80s and I've always loved them and they have been trouble free. I've been away from audio stuff for some time -home projects, career and vintage Alfas. Recently I started hooking up my old equipment again.


My Hafler DH101 pre amp has died so I hooked up my old Kenwood AV receiver KRV 9030 and was glad to be running the Vandys again. After a year of intermittent listening a slight hum emerged on one speaker and it was not noticeable when listening at volume. Several months after that one day the hum became noticeably louder. You still really cant hear it at volume but in between tracts or when you are loading the CD player it's there and its worrisome.

I've swapped cables and the issue persists no matter the channel so the fault seems to be with the speaker and I'm guessing the crossover network. My experience is limited in electronics but I'm recalling if I'd had no sound look at the caps first when evaluating. With a hum, what is the most likely suspect? I'm no engineer but I've heard some sample hums on forum sites and it sounds to my untrained ear like a 60hZ thing and not an open loop.

The Vandy's design makes crossover access difficult and I don't want to start wildly taking stuff apart. My gut, however tells me the cross over needs to be evaluated regardless. A visual may ID burnt components and then its on to bench testing. I'm open to suggestions and your experience. If its bad resistor or another component, I'm thinking both crossovers need to be brought back at the same time-resistors, caps etc

Thoughts and suggestions appreciated

thanks

steve
 
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Swap the speaker wire connections at the amp left to right and leave everything else unchanged. Does the hum stay with the speaker or move to the other side?
 
I have swapped the connections from the other speaker-the noise persists therefore the amp doesn't seem to be possible as the problem follows the speaker not the cable. The swapped cable previously on the right side had no issues. I've seen discussions on blown resistors on Vandy's causing issues but that discussion did not address if it was a hum or a signal degration of some sort.

The cross overs have thermistors, resistors, caps and other components. If it were a blown capacitor, I'd think-no sound at all. From reading the forums it seems Richard Vandersteens pat response is ship both speakers to us (normally about $150 for shipping and we'll provide an estimate. Given that the crossover is under a pound, I'd rather be in a position to have a reasonable confirmation that the XO is likely the culprit and therefore just ship a XO or if Vandersteen wont go that route, rebuild the XO myself or find a tech with better testing equipment than I have

Thoughts would be appreciated and thank you in advance
 
I agree with the above. There's very little chance your speaker is generating or somehow instigating a 60Hz hum. There's some ground connection issue somewhere else in your system. Or a bad interconnect cable. Vandersteen crossovers are laid out pretty much like any other crossover. There are a few tricks in there, but the original 2C was pretty conventional. Very doubtful a bad resistor could influence a ground hum. I have been proven wrong before, but I'm 95% sure this is not your issue.
 
steve wuertz said:
With a hum, what is the most likely suspect?
Click to expand...
Under normal conditions, something upstream from the speaker, not the speaker itself.

2C is a passive dynamic loudspeaker and cannot generate an audio signal(hum) by itself, under normal conditions.

To verify this, disconnect the wires from the suspect speaker. Does it still hum with the wires disconnected?
 
steve wuertz said:
I purchased the pair of 2C from a dealer back in the 80s and...they have been trouble free...I hooked up my old Kenwood AV receiver KRV 9030..After a year of intermittent listening a slight hum emerged on one speaker and it was not noticeable when listening at volume.
Click to expand...

Try process of elimination, do you have another amp or receiver to connect to the speakers? if so try that.

There's a good chance your Kenwood is the culprit
 
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