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Are my Quad Esl 63s off colour?

Andy at A Quad Thing fixed the panel's on my 63s about 5 years ago and so far they have been so very good. He offered to work on just the offending ones but given the travel etc I thought might as well have them all done a once.

Andy was great to deal with, friendly and as I understand it uses the same 6 micron Mylar as originally used by Quad. I reckoned that if necessary I'd be happy to have them repaired every 10 years if it mean I no longer kept box swapping.
 
Crappy cap, next to a big IC, getting boiled away day after day.

Mostly though it's glue failure which then causes flapping which leads to arcing and if left blown parts.

Yep, one of my bass panels failed a couple of weeks ago due to the glue. (it's the last original panel - all others have been replaced over time by Quad).

Came home from work to what sounded like rapid machine gun fire!
It must have been doing that for hours :(
.... into the repair corner they go.
 
Good luck with them hopefully they don't need new membranes.

I have two good sounding, but one stinky quad 63s at the minute. Waiting on eht pcbs from China first then I send off input pcbs layouts and rebuild those. Its either a cap or a transformer by the smell of it, but I fancy making new boards as a project anyway.
 
Yep, one of my bass panels failed a couple of weeks ago due to the glue. (it's the last original panel - all others have been replaced over time by Quad).
Came home from work to what sounded like rapid machine gun fire!
It must have been doing that for hours :(
.... into the repair corner they go.

Bad luck. It's not a good time of year for it to happen, is it? Hope you get it fixed easily.

I reckoned that if necessary I'd be happy to have them repaired every 10 years if it mean I no longer kept box swapping.

That's what I thought, but I'm starting to get a bit old to lugg them down from the loft listening room, into the car and drive to OTA. I'll manage it this time, probably, but next time in 10 years? Mind you, by then I'll be well past my sell-by date so probably won't care a toss, if I'm still here to care! :)

Anyone heard Quad Z-3s? With the ribbon tweeter, they're supposed to be Quad's next best thing to their electrstatics.
 
Wonder is your attic very damp? Humidity might just be impacting them. Mine were done by Quad in 2010 and touch wood still sounding excellent.
 
No, the attic isn't damp, although it can get a bit cool up there in winter ~10° and warmish in summer ~30°, which I suppose the 63s won't like much.

Actually, they've been fine for the last couple of days. I did try to ring OTA but haven't managed to get a reply yet.

Procrastination (and indecision) seem like the best policy for the moment. I'm very good at both!
 
If they're sizzling or rustling they're getting ready to arc, its just a matter of time.
 
The swings in that room are fairly big. It is strange that it is intermittent. I hope Simon is wrong with regard to the arcing. Just clutching at straws UK and Ireland climate can be very damp in winter time. Condensation all over the place. It sounds like your attic is not fantastically insulated. I would chance holding off and see how things go.

Dimitry you really want another pair you just focus on these threads to try and convince yourself you made the right decision. Touch wood I have had two pairs of done Quads and no issues. I expect at some point due to the nature of ESL's they will need to be serviced/renewed. You either accept that just like most products they will need maintenance and repair and if abused that will happen more often. If you don't move on and be happy!
 
The swings in that room are fairly big. It is strange that it is intermittent. I hope Simon is wrong with regard to the arcing. Just clutching at straws UK and Ireland climate can be very damp in winter time. Condensation all over the place. It sounds like your attic is not fantastically insulated. I would chance holding off and see how things go.

Dimitry you really want another pair you just focus on these threads to try and convince yourself you made the right decision. Touch wood I have had two pairs of done Quads and no issues. I expect at some point due to the nature of ESL's they will need to be serviced/renewed. You either accept that just like most products they will need maintenance and repair and if abused that will happen more often. If you don't move on and be happy!
On the contrary, I know I made the right decision. Sometimes one has to give up things you love, because they keep failing you.

What is humorous is the Quad fanboys' insistence that Quads just "need maintenance", like any other speaker. A modern cone, planar magnetic or ribbon tweeter based speaker doesn't require maintenance in any real sense of the word. They will work perfectly well for at least 10-15 years with nothing required of the owner other than the on/off switch on the source. Quads, on the other hand, will rarely last that long without an expensive and time consuming panel refurbishment. And in many parts of the world, one has to box them, put them on a palette and call the freight company as part of the work order.

Like I said, if you live next to Quad or a very competent repair person, they are great. In many (most) circumstances, they are unfortunately not. The blame is SQUARELY on the company for NEVER developing a reliable ES panel in all of its' many decades of operation, or for NEVER developing a speaker design that could be easily serviced by the customer.
 
It is also humorous that fanboys invariably interpret any negative information about their idol-company as an attack on their world foundation and integrity. Therefore, the source must be attacked and destroyed, in order to preserve the cult of the company.
 
Just wondering if your claim is factual or fantasy.
Surely, it's fantasy. All speaker owners hawl their speakers back to the factory every few years. That's why good speaker manufacturers include return shipping coupons with their products.
 
Ah come on Dimitry calling people fanboys and inserting lines that suit your position. I think I am being perfectly reasonable. ESL's need more maintenance if one is a long term owner. Lots of products are like this. Yes cone speakers appear in general to require less maintenance or renewal. There is no industry generally available for restoring repairing old 2k cone speakers. You just don't get it. In my case I spent approx €1400 buying Quads that had been re-paneled. This work was done 9 years ago. They still sound like new. Either I am lucky or the service life often suggested of circa 10-15yrs depending on use is accurate. I accept this as I feel I am getting a speaker that sounds very special for a fairly small outlay. No cone speaker I have come across in that price range matching the performance I like/get from the 63's. But I understand that you had some bad experiences and that will influence your long term view and willingness to go back to the well.
I had those issues with Citroen BX's but I have stuck with Citroen and have a C5 that is now 14yrs old and with the exception of normal wear and tear items has been incredibly reliable.
 
Ah come on Dimitry calling people fanboys and inserting lines that suit your position. I think I am being perfectly reasonable. ESL's need more maintenance if one is a long term owner. Lots of products are like this. Yes cone speakers appear in general to require less maintenance or renewal. There is no industry generally available for restoring repairing old 2k cone speakers. You just don't get it. In my case I spent approx €1400 buying Quads that had been re-paneled. This work was done 9 years ago. They still sound like new. Either I am lucky or the service life often suggested of circa 10-15yrs depending on use is accurate. I accept this as I feel I am getting a speaker that sounds very special for a fairly small outlay. No cone speaker I have come across in that price range matching the performance I like/get from the 63's. But I understand that you had some bad experiences and that will influence your long term view and willingness to go back to the well.
I had those issues with Citroen BX's but I have stuck with Citroen and have a C5 that is now 14yrs old and with the exception of normal wear and tear items has been incredibly reliable.
We have gone over this many times before. Quad is a very special speaker, which requires special maintenance, well in excess of typical consumer expectations. I quoted Quad manual, which requires you to keep the speaker in a low humidity environment, which is impractical in many world locations. Low temperature is also not recommended, due to CTE mismatch between the ES film and the frames. These are obvious technical issues that a company with technical ability and available funds could fix, given decades of time. Quad did not. Well, OK, then they should have redesigned the speaker for easy plug-in disassembly and assembly, so they could simply ship you the new panels and have the owner replace the faulty ones. Quad did not do that either. So in the end, Quad owners are mostly in the UK and some parts of Europe, with ownership severely restricted in most of the world.

All of this is due to the company essentially freezing the actual design and build process of the ESL-63 and remaking it in a new enclosure for ever. It's just a real shame the company started by Peter Walker ended up never being able to actually take real ownership of this technical achievement and bring it into the 21st century.
 
I am using a single ESL - made in 1957 - and it was fully restored only two years ago from original, still working, condition in Huntingdon.

Perhaps they were designed for British conditions?

ATB from George
 
Dimitry, I get the needing to be near a repairer bit, because 63s do seem to go off sooner than conventional speakers, but in the current market if you are near someone who can look after them, they are an audio bargain. £1 450 for a fully refurbished pair of 63s from OTA that will beat pretty much any conventional speaker up to £3 000 and over. If they need re-doing after 10 years, that's still a good deal. Just a bit of hassle that's worth it until you start to get too old to play the game.

BTW, as I said earlier up thread, they had to go back to OTA just after I bought them for a very similar problem. It wasn't the panels, but I can't remember what it was. They've been fine for the last three days, now. We had all the family here for a week or so over Christmas, with all their phones and "devices". Is there any way they could have interfered with the 63s? So far things have been ok since they went!
 
Dimitri, I see you're relying on obfuscation once again, just point to the post where a quad owner compared their service interval to normal speakers and claimed similarity, simple really. You're just inventing quotes to suit your position.

We all know they're fragile and have a very finite service interval, we accept that.
 
Dimitry, I get the needing to be near a repairer bit, because 63s do seem to go off sooner than conventional speakers, but in the current market if you are near someone who can look after them, they are an audio bargain. £1 450 for a fully refurbished pair of 63s from OTA that will beat pretty much any conventional speaker up to £3 000 and over. If they need re-doing after 10 years, that's still a good deal. Just a bit of hassle that's worth it until you start to get too old to play the game.

BTW, as I said earlier up thread, they had to go back to OTA just after I bought them for a very similar problem. It wasn't the panels, but I can't remember what it was. They've been fine for the last three days, now. We had all the family here for a week or so over Christmas, with all their phones and "devices". Is there any way they could have interfered with the 63s? So far things have been ok since they went!
Hopefully they will stay healthy for a long time, and you are close to a place that can repair them.

They are a bargain in the UK, but they are a bargain for a reason. Total cost of ownership makes them markedly less so. However, in the right location, and with ability to move them back and forth to the "speaker garage," they are fabulous.

My irritation is not with the speaker as such, but with the company's utter inability to make it into a reliable, sellable product, either through a reliability redesign or through a reparability redesign for 50 YEARS.
 


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