New Tekton Pendragons On The Way

"Sometimes it takes time to truly understand what a component does right or wrong. What's more reliable, snap judgement or long term audition?"

You'll get no argument from me. However, nothing wrong with an initial assessment, as long as it's prefaced that way. No one will hold one to a first impression if long term listening bears out a different opinion. I've been there before myself.

Shakey

I didn't want to say anything in public because I don't want others to get the wrong idea about the speakers. Keep in mind this is with my equipment in my room. First off, Eric Alexander was very accommodating to me. I wanted the speakers for last weekend and Eric made it happen. I am really thrilled that he went out of his way to make it happen.

I received the speakers Friday morning via FedEx. The boxes are huge and had no less than 8 red fragile stickers on the box in addition to large writing saying they were high end furniture and to treat it as such. With that being said, FedEx did manage to damage one of the speakers. The box with the damaged speaker had holes in it and tears. FedEx certainly didn't heed Tektons instructions on safe handling.

I got in touch with Tekton right away and made them aware of the situation and they offered to send out a new speaker immediately as replacement. At the time, I declined the offer.

THE SOUND: I put around 30 hours on the speakers over the weekend, listening for all the usual foibles. I was concerned the highs would be too bright with 3 tweeters in a line array. Not so, the highs were very smooth and never, ever called attention to themselves. The mids were overall smooth as well. The imaging and sound staging were everything an audiophile/music lover could ask for and I never felt they didn't deliver.

It was the bass or lack of it that was very problematic for me. No matter where I positioned the speakers and I moved them all over the room, the bass was very anemic. I am positive it was a room interaction somewhere, but that was the deal breaker for me. Male voices that were normally deep were very light sounding with no sense of body. Again, this is in my room which is large with 70's style shag carpeting and slanted ceilings.

I know it is not the fault of the speakers in any way and I really wanted to keep them, but I knew I would never be satisfied with the bass so I am sending them back this Thursday. You may think I am being a bit hasty, but I went down this road before with another pair of speakers 5 years ago, but instead of returning them, I tried to fix the problem by throwing a lot more money into the system. Nothing helped, and I didn't want to experience that again. I didn't want to go through the anxiety and sleepless nights another time.

So there you have it. I really wanted to keep the speakers but they just didn't work in my room. The fit and finish of the speakers is outstanding and I really don't understand how Eric can give you so much for so little cash outlay.

Any chance they're out of phase? Maybe the terminals on one speaker were wired backwards. Compared to the hassle of sending them back, it's worth reversing pos/neg on one speaker to see if the bass shows up.

Of course you may already have done that.

Since those woofers are commercial-grade units with pleated surrounds, I wonder if they demand a longer and vigorous break-in. Those should have bass out the wazoo. But "should" and "is" are two different things.

Already thought about the phasing and tried reversing the leads on one speaker. Really no difference in sound. No amount of break in would magically give me bass where there was none.

Very surprising. In my 15 x 26 ft room the bass was fine. Not overblown, but there when it was supposed to be.

Could the xovers have been damaged in shipping? Something sounds amiss.

Shakey