Shahinian Obelisk vs VandersteenTreo

tomic601,
Thanks for the info. 
If the crossover is faulty I will certainly fix it locally. If it's the driver, tough luck, off it goes to RV for rebuild.
Thanks to all for your advice and help. 

@ja_zz 
Actually, I think it is the other way around. Johnny R said you should be able to swap out drivers. The xover might be more problematical. Though I think Mr. V. builds these speakers so that they don't have to be shipped back whole when something breaks.
Bob

I "believe" I read in one of Richard's "Ask Richard" Q&A postings that he talked about how carefully the drivers in a pair of speakers are matched and then during testing the crossovers are adjusted as needed to meet a tight tolerance of response.

Here's the "believe" part.  I believe Richard may keep on record data about the response characteristics of drivers in a pair of his upper tier speakers of which I would consider the Quatro to be one.  It might be worth a call to RV in Hanford to see if I'm on point or not.

I truly empathize with your plight.  I can't remember hearing of new Vandys not working right from the get go except in the case of transit abuse.

Years ago I sent my model 3s to be upgraded and a "challenged" fork lift operator decided to drive the tongs of the lift through the speaker box.  Good news.  Vandersteen notified me right away, dealt with the shipper directly, fixed the damage, sent me back a fully intact pair of speakers including a copy of the receipt for the damage done by the shipper for my records.

Vandersteen ships their speakers standing upright in the box secured to a pallet. The problem is, when a speaker is shipped this way and I suspect most speaker companies ship this way, it will put a driver in the speaker at risk of having its voice coil damaged when speaker is bounced or impacted. When I transport speakers in their box, I lay speakers on their backs so the voice coil will react more naturally  to a bounce  or impact meaning the cone will move up and down more naturally in the magnetic gap. This isn't perfect, but it does help in transit. I had to replace a cone midrange driver that was damaged this way. I did it myself, but I don't think the speaker manufacturer was as fussy about matching the drivers to the crossover as Vandersteen is. If Vandersteen could send you a properly matched driver, you could easily make the repair yourself.

Gentlemen,
They were hand-delivered to me by the seller's nephew in his Land Rover (he was going somewhere further).  Although they wrapped them up well in bubbly cellophane (whatever the name of this material is), I guess it took some damage.  Or maybe it was defective upon dispatch, I don't know.
I got in touch with RV, he is willing to rebuild the driver, since he has none of them left in stock. A very helpful gentleman indeed. But this requires taking it out and sending it in, which takes a lot of time, especially around Christmas.