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Kef KM1 in need of repair.

Blue Belle said:
Excellent!!.. along with the fact that they are in the hands of someone with a genuine love for the speaker, you are clearly going to do them justice. Any chance of a resurrection thread for the Kef's? If i had the money, i was on similar thinking to you. Send the drivers off to Wembley, but i would have needed to send the amps to Quad for their work, because my forte is wood, so i would have tackled the boxes and stands with a slightly different approach, as a result. Best of luck.
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I nearly bought a pair of KM1s twenty years ago (for two grand). I went to have a listen to them, in an audio post production company in Soho, down the road from a place I used to work.

It was in the evening, and the guy there was like 'turn them up, there's no-one here to disturb' so I did, with a random dance music CD. Sounded OK, and then the bass kicked in on the track I was using. The concrete floor hit me in the soles of the feet three times before I got to the volume control.

I've owned a fair number of decent speakers over the years (Dynaudio M3A's, B&W Matrix 801's, Rogers LS5/8, Tannoy Monitor Golds, various Tannoy SRMs, KEF Reference Model Four, Yamaha NS1000M etc etc). I've stood in front of big pairs of ATCs and Tannoys in studio control rooms. I used to write for Hi-Fi Choice back in the early 2000's.

I've never heard a pair of loudspeakers that can literally bounce a concrete floor off your feet.

I bottled it on buying that first pair of KM1s, primarily because I was living in a little rented room with no space, and have regretted it ever since. Times, and living circumstances, have improved a lot over the last two decades, and I've been on the lookout for a pair of recent years.

I think I have a chance with these. I vaguely know the former engineering manager of KEF, who might be able to put me in touch with some of the design team from the KM1. I do electronics repair for a living, so the amps probably won't be a problem. I know where there's a pair of mids and a pair of tweeters (overseas) for sale. I will have the (paid for) help of Wembley Loudspeaker Company to hopefully fix the drivers I've got.

If I'm right, then I've got the speakers I've wanted for many years. If I'm wrong and end up giving up and scrapping them, I'm down the money I've paid for them and the quest continues.

Historically, I've usually come out on top when it comes to buying broken sound / broadcast gear and fixing it. I sincerely hope my luck continues with these.
 
A magnificent story - it's always lovely to find the elusive "holy grail" that you've lusted after for years. Please do document your journey with them!
 
Concrete floor bouncing - Love this :)

Have fun with them, half the enjoyment is the rebuild and with your knowledge and the internet they’ll be bouncing floors again soon.

So do you now live in an isolated warehouse?? :D
 
Rug Doc said:
Concrete floor bouncing - Love this :)

Have fun with them, half the enjoyment is the rebuild and with your knowledge and the internet they’ll be bouncing floors again soon.

So do you now live in an isolated warehouse?? :D
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It was a memorable moment. I'd like to occasionally be able to re-live it. It wasn't 'they vibrated the floor a bit' - it was three distinct impacts on my feet.

Sadly, at present, I live in a little rabbit-hutch sized mid-terraced house in south east London, but there's a an estate agent board up and my plans are to move over to where I work in Byfleet to a detached house.
 
And so it begins. They have arrived with me.

First impressions are better than I feared. There's no voice-coil rub on the mids. The tweeter domes are indeed undamaged. Woodwork is a little scraped, but not deeply gouged. They appear complete.

I'm feeling optimistic about this. I've tracked down one of the original designers , and as long as my luck holds with the forum he posts on a lot, I hope to be able to ask him some useful questions (types of adhesive, types of ferrofluid etc). I'm awaiting a reply from him.

https://imgur.com/a/O9F3oIo
 
lawrence001 said:
How are the bass units? Really hope it works out for you.
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Not sure yet. Only had time to give the mids a fondle. I haven't had a chance to measure the voice coil resistance on any of the drivers.

I'm going to try and get back to the lockup next week. Annoyingly, it's near work, but that's a fifty mile drive from my house. I've got boring stuff to do this weekend so won't have time to get back to the KEFs until next week.
 
What a quest! Please, make a separate thread, when you will post all of the further updates, as the story of this purchase is to interesting - to keep in here ;-)
 
Rug Doc said:
Concrete floor bouncing - Love this :)

Have fun with them, half the enjoyment is the rebuild and with your knowledge and the internet they’ll be bouncing floors again soon.

So do you now live in an isolated warehouse?? :D
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Yes reminds me that walls probably bounce too. When I spent time buying headphones at the Audio Sanctuary in New Malden last year the chap (whose name escapes me) told me in one of my visits how he was listening in an upstairs dem room and put a crack in the wall from listening rather loud.
 
Just one question, where did you read about the B110s having ferrofluid? I've never heard of that before in any midrange driver. I suppose it's technically possible to use it to cool the voicecoils and improve power handling, although heatsinks are more common.
 
lawrence001 said:
Just one question, where did you read about the B110s having ferrofluid? I've never heard of that before in any midrange driver. I suppose it's technically possible to use it to cool the voicecoils and improve power handling, although heatsinks are more common.
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It's on the second to last paragraph of page two of the KEF brochure for KM1.

There's a copy here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WPjG7Fzr7IiDS2G8-2UYdZQYV1et6y_5/view?usp=sharing-

Dynaudio have been doing it for some time. I''ve got a pair of M3A's and even the 12" bass drivers are ferrofluid units.

https://dynaudio.com/professional-audio-discontinued/m-series-passive/m3a
 
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