I don't get it. I picked up a pair of Totem Sttaf at the weekend, they were faulty, and cheap because of it. They came with claws, all the ball-bearings and grills. A new pair in this spec would have set you back ~£2.2k.
A bit of faffing about swapping drivers between cabs pointed to the crossovers being at fault (at this point I was expecting something to be very expensively wrong). As it turned out, a resistor had all but vaporised on the tweeter circuit on one, and was on the way out on the other. A pair of Mills wire-wounds later and all is good.
Taking these speakers apart, I can see that there are compromises, compromises that on the face of them seem like they should be too far for the price tag. The binding posts are like any other on any speakers that are well under 500 quid, the cabinets are nice, not exceptional. They are simple and light, very light (yeah, I know Totem's mantra is along the lines of less mass, less energy stored or somesuch - it all seems, on the face of it, to be a ruse to allow small, light speakers to be sold for a lot of dollar). The Tonsil pressed-steel-basketed woofers and seemingly basic tweeters which I went to the effort of contacting a supplier in Poland and wasting their time in getting a new pair of each priced up would have set me back an almighty £90 for all 4, total cost shipped to the UK, and £30 of that is postage. A single Dynaudio tweeter for my long gone 72 SEs was over £220, and at least Dynaudio drivers look like serious components with all the nice casting details on the woofer baskets, vented poles and aluminium voice coils etc. The Sttaf crossovers, whilst seemingly happy to shed resistors, look pretty damn serious at least in terms of their simplicity and the size of components strapped to them. No PCB, all point-to-point.
Taking the Sttaf drivers out, you have socket set button-head machine screws that have been wound into the MDF roughly perpendicular to the surface, no metallic inserts anywhere (I know, these can work loose over time, but at least they don't wear out, although to be fair they're not meant to be un/re-fastened on a regular basis).
This is not my first experience with Totem speakers; I once had a pair of Rokks that were well looked after and worked well, until one day I heard a distortion-like bass driver death-rattle from one of the cabs. It wasn't the woofer, but actually the back panel of the cab. It had literally been blown away from the carcass of the cabinet. It took a gentle push for it to fall out completely (I Titebonded it back in, no problems after). These speakers were similarly 'cheaply' built.
Is the borosilicate internal damping that Totem employs that expensive?
I can only conclude that the speakers are far, far better than the sum of their parts, and that in part at least is the justification for their price tag.
At this point, I'm genuinely in fear for my Kef 104/2s when I plug them back in. The Totems are, so far, ridiculously good for what they are.
Anyone else feel similar, or am I in a minority?
A bit of faffing about swapping drivers between cabs pointed to the crossovers being at fault (at this point I was expecting something to be very expensively wrong). As it turned out, a resistor had all but vaporised on the tweeter circuit on one, and was on the way out on the other. A pair of Mills wire-wounds later and all is good.
Taking these speakers apart, I can see that there are compromises, compromises that on the face of them seem like they should be too far for the price tag. The binding posts are like any other on any speakers that are well under 500 quid, the cabinets are nice, not exceptional. They are simple and light, very light (yeah, I know Totem's mantra is along the lines of less mass, less energy stored or somesuch - it all seems, on the face of it, to be a ruse to allow small, light speakers to be sold for a lot of dollar). The Tonsil pressed-steel-basketed woofers and seemingly basic tweeters which I went to the effort of contacting a supplier in Poland and wasting their time in getting a new pair of each priced up would have set me back an almighty £90 for all 4, total cost shipped to the UK, and £30 of that is postage. A single Dynaudio tweeter for my long gone 72 SEs was over £220, and at least Dynaudio drivers look like serious components with all the nice casting details on the woofer baskets, vented poles and aluminium voice coils etc. The Sttaf crossovers, whilst seemingly happy to shed resistors, look pretty damn serious at least in terms of their simplicity and the size of components strapped to them. No PCB, all point-to-point.
Taking the Sttaf drivers out, you have socket set button-head machine screws that have been wound into the MDF roughly perpendicular to the surface, no metallic inserts anywhere (I know, these can work loose over time, but at least they don't wear out, although to be fair they're not meant to be un/re-fastened on a regular basis).
This is not my first experience with Totem speakers; I once had a pair of Rokks that were well looked after and worked well, until one day I heard a distortion-like bass driver death-rattle from one of the cabs. It wasn't the woofer, but actually the back panel of the cab. It had literally been blown away from the carcass of the cabinet. It took a gentle push for it to fall out completely (I Titebonded it back in, no problems after). These speakers were similarly 'cheaply' built.
Is the borosilicate internal damping that Totem employs that expensive?
I can only conclude that the speakers are far, far better than the sum of their parts, and that in part at least is the justification for their price tag.
At this point, I'm genuinely in fear for my Kef 104/2s when I plug them back in. The Totems are, so far, ridiculously good for what they are.
Anyone else feel similar, or am I in a minority?
