Vandersteen 3A sigs, whats wrong here.


I recently purchased a Pair of 3Asigs here on Audiogon.
The problem is they dont seem to have much bass at all.
I have tried many different room placements. They are being feed by ARC VTM100MKII, ARC LS25MKII, ARC CD3MKII. Also with Kember 8HTC true Bi-wire cables, And a variety of IC's including transparent and Cardas Gold reference. Tried single ended as well as Balanced. So the front end gear should be ok, but no matter what I do there is weak bass. I also prefer to listen at lower levels, however regardless of volume it is always week. Any ideas, please help.
vdosc
I agree it may be a phase issue. Maybe the original owner messed with the drivers and mis-wired the woofer on one speaker...if changing wires at the speaker terminals doesn't net a root cause. You could ask the person you purchased them from if he did any experimentation or repairs.

Also, you could purchase a RS SPL meter and a test tone disk and test to see how they measure. Don't forget to add in the corrective values to your findings to get an accurate indication of the measurements.

Good luck in you discovery,
D
Richard Vandersteen is still around. You can contact him and describe the symptoms. May be an easy problem such as swapping out bass drivers if there's defective one.
Use a test CD to do a phase test. I use a Rives Audio test CD 2. You could always just raise the cover sock on both and put some heavy kettle drums and place your finger to see if the woofer pushes out or in as others suggested. If one pushes in reverse the woofer wiring. I keep a cheap integrated amp just as a system isolation tool. The woofer coils could also be overheated as it is used. The 3a is not as efficient and may need more power amp.
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