Wednesday I had a beautiful sounding system and Thursday morning the right side was so much louder and the left side was muddy sounding. I switched interconnects. I switched speaker cables. Then I pulled out a test disk and played a 10khz tone. Yep the tweeter in my left KEF Reference 5 speaker isn’t working. I called KEF USA and they told me to call a couple of places for service. The first place hasn’t worked on speakers in 4 years and I’m not sure the second place had even heard of KEF. One thing the guy from KEF said, was that all the speaker cables are soldered on the Reference 5’s. I checked the wires on the back plate and they were fine. So it either the crossover (s) or the tweeter part of the UniQ.
I confirmed the tweeter was out, but I still had to go through the song and dance. Oh, and according to KEF, they are the only ones who can replace the Uni-Q’s in the Reference 5’s and that everything I saw on YouTube was wrong. Heck I tried to save them some money by asking them to send me a new uni-Q and I’d fix it myself.
One way to solve this if you do not want to do it yourself is to contact a good audio shop in your area and see if they have a tech who can come over to your place.
When I had my adventures with the Thiel CS3.7, which also had a busted tweeter/mid issue like the KEF, I had the seller of the speaker pay for a tech from the local shop to do the fix (soldering). I found other issues and since I had seen how the tech did it, I went about repairing the other issues myself. The speaker sounded perfect after the multiple issues were resolved. I measured the speaker to confirm.
One thing that helped me was that the Thiel drivers did not need any calibration after installation. I had tweeter issues with my very old Ravel Salon 1 and Ravel asked me to ship the speakers back to them since they said they needed to be tested after a tweeter replacement. A real PIA since the tweeter failed 2 times.
After answering questions and hearing that this almost never happens, I sent it in (I paid shipping) and they fixed it. (I believe they replaced the UniQ) and they shipped it back.
Thanks for the tip, but they (KEF) told me I couldn’t get the UniQ out and that it has to be done at their facility. So it’s looking like I’m sending it to New Jersey, next week.
no fuse in kef speakers. my original uniq reference 10 year clock was ticking so i ordered a pair from the us kef distributer and installed them myself. back then kef drilled the midrange magnet and used an extended pole piece on the back of the tweeter secured by a screw tight to the back of the mids magnet. mine were the R105/3 and the drivers were removed from the back of the faceplate.
I’m with you. I’ll remove a few screws and un-solder and re-solder something and (I’m sure that’s more than a lot of people would do), but that’s about it. I’m also expecting (🤞) something more than lip service from them as well!
Ask Kef if they will replace the uni-q. Or if out of warranty sell you one. The way these things are constructed, if the tweeter is gone, it will be very hard to replace just that part. When folks have blown their uni-q drivers on the q series or LS50, I’ve seen them get replacements of the whole unit directly from Kef by supplying a serial number of the speaker in question. One used to be able to just buy the drivers for diy but Kef put a stop to that about 8 years ago.
At for how to get it off, I am guessing it is front mounted and the trim ring is glued over the flange. Kef should be able to verify this.
Also, one should be able to test the crossover electronically with a meter to rule that out. Good luck.
If you can't source the correct driver from KEF, you may not have many options. There are many different types of the Uni-Q driver. You may have to buy complete replacement units. Call KEF again and inquire about the cost of replacement units. I would also talk to someone in tech help and see if you could use drivers from one of the other cheaper loudspeaker systems and replace the pair with those. Finding someone to repair the Uni-Q driver might be quite difficult or impossible.
But may people think doing technical stuff is for other people that they’d prefer to pay--implying that such stuff is beneath them.
This may be more the way you think about it. I think most are thinking they 1) don’t want to void their warranty, if applicable and 2) don’t want to screw up an expensive speaker if removal of the driver is more than just turning a few screws, which is likely the case here.
Jerry, KEF use that UniQ tweeter inside the midrange design. I’m not even sure there’s a safe way of removing the outer ring without mucking it up. I’m thinking it’s just a snap in plastic ring, but.
I'll add that there are good things and bad things associated with being a physicist and an engineer. First, you can never fully enjoy action movies again because your brain keeps pointing out all the things on the screen that violate the law of physics.
But may people think doing technical stuff is for other people that they'd prefer to pay--implying that such stuff is beneath them. But it sure is nice to be able to fix your own stuff.
Assuming it's your tweeter, and it probably is, I'd pick a pair of aftermarket tweeters that I considered an upgrade and install them. I probably wouldn't wait for KEF to provide a replacement tweeter. OEMs are notoriously slow with parts. Of course some big OEMs, like KEF, may make their own tweeters wtih a unique footprint making it hard to change. I upgraded my tweeters in my current speakers to Be and it was a 30 mintute ob to solder them both in. They weren't cheap, but it was a good change.
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