Vandersteen 5a battery biased crossovers

Jeff Jones
Put connectors on if you like, there is room for them but remember any noise in the connection will be passed by the caps as noise.
In circuits like this where there is no current flow over a 7 year period of time (basically shelf life) the solder and wire is cheap insurance.

The M5-HP being run un soldered is very risky as 9 volts of noise into a typical amplifier will be one hell of a damaging pop!
As far as quality, I defy you to find another speaker with as much technology and raw parts count for twice the price.
Much of the technology found in the 5A can't be found in any speaker for any price.
By the way the new Model Seven has 36 volts of lithium SOLDERED onto the crossover board. Some how I don't think that was an oversight also.
Best
JohnnyR

Audioconnection - Actually I soldered lighter gauge wire (less chance of damage from overheating) as I could not find room to fit the connectors on the high pass filters and doing the + - arrangement at the speaker crossovers would have been a real nuisance.

Do not understand your risk comment, 9v battery connectors work great and they have been around for 20's of years and used in millions of circuits, I don't think you can find anything that is more well proven rock solid reliable. If you are saying that an open circuit will create a pop, well, I've already had an open circuit when a battery blew up in my 5a, apparently from overheating due to soldering (my best guess) and you mentioned in your previous note that you have seen this also (and it is easy to clean up :)). I have never seen a 9v battery blow up in any other application, if I was concerned about blowing up components my first move would be to stop grossly overheating the battery terminals with soldering irons.

Sorry to hear that Vandy is hanging on to the solder thing in newer designs. Not in the customers best interest in my opinion, but as a once in 7 year thing it is something I think folks will be ok with.

As far as quality, I think you are right and the Vandy's are high quality in general but I suspect that you would agree that missing screws and loose connections and an exploded battery are not what I should have expected to find on my 5a's. As I noted before, none of this was hard to fix, just kind of figured I shouldn't have to.

Jeff Jones, I have changed the batteries on dozens of 5 and 5a and have never found a blown battery on one that was within the date noted in the owners manual.

You never said if your batteries were within the recommended date.
Where they new speakers or demos?
I have sold hundreds of Vandersteen speakers and find
them to have the highest quality control standards.
Disparaging a great product should be done carefully
with honesty and should not be trivial.

About the high-pass, if the connection has any noise or a intermittent connection the caps will couple this voltage change into the input of the amplifier with potentially bad results. Again the solid reason for not offering 9V clip on types as you had suggested, hope this clarifies.

My garage opener uses a 9 volt battery and corrosion is a problem. Some speakers end up in very humid conditions or salt air. If it is too much trouble for you, put in the 9V lithium's which last 11 to 12 years. Best JohnnyR

Audioconnection - "Disparaging a great product should be done carefully with honesty and should not be trivial."
Seems like you are implying that either I'm not being truthful or else some of the problems I had should be considered trivial and not reported? Every manufacturer has to keep on top of quality control and usually the customer gets feedback more in the way of "thank you for the information and we are sorry you had problems with our product".
Batteries were due for a change in 01/13 and I swapped them 03/13 so I guess I was 2 months past the explosion date :).

Jeff, did you contact(Vandersteen Audio) about this information and get an unsatisfactory response via phone or FAQ? Best JohnnyR