Posted by marcos augusto on October 26, 2003 at 18:19:51:
In Reply to: SoundLabs: Are they prone to problems? posted by Steven Evanson on October 26, 2003 at 13:07:03:
Steven,
----Sorry to hear about your problems with the M-3's, but don't give up on them yet and hang on to them, because, as you so succintly pointed out, there aren't any speakers out there that sound remotely like a pair of Sound Lab speakers at their peak and in their full "glory"!!!....
Interesting enough, i am also a long, long time user of electrostatic speakers and i owned the original Acoustat-X, which i purchased back in 1979 and kept for many years with nary a problem ever arising, besides the original power amp that came with it, which was eventually replaced with the Acoustat interface that allowed owners to hook up amps of their choice.
I finally sold it in 1997, when i then purchased a more recent-vintage pair of Acoustats, which were replaced by my current pair of Sound Lab A-1's, bought in december of 2000.
Within 1 year of my Sound Labs purchase, they began to develop some problems : a hissing sound, a low level hum and their "efficiency" (playback level) went really down, to the point that the bias control became of no use.
After e-mailing Dr. West several times back and forth, i came to the realization that, although the problem was almost entirely of my own creation - by "playing around" with the bias controls too often and raising them to their maximum levels for extended periods of time for the purpose of "cleaning" the membranes, i inadvertently damaged them, to the point that both of them had to be shipped back to the factory for repairs and installation of brand new membranes - even though there weren't any warnings in the owner's manual concerning exactly such a misguided procedure as the one i repeatedly performed !!!
Perhaps you did the same with your speakers >>> maxed out the bias control for extended periods of time ???...And by that i mean, longer than 8 minutes or so, at a time ?....
On the other hand, if you did not "play" with the bias control as described above, and your speakers developed a membrane "meltdown" on their own, it seems to me that since you purchased them directly from the factory, i am sure that Dr. West will be more than wiling to fix the problem at no charge to you.
Just be a little more patient, just like i was a few months back, when i was so despondent with the temporary "loss" of my beloved A-1's, until they came back from the factory sounding better than ever and i learned a precious lesson of using that bias control with the utmost of care!!!