HELP! Large speakers fell over during shipping.

The problem with crating is they assume a forklift will be used and that everything will be kept upright. Cardboard boxes actually work better because they require padding all the way around. That is for example what Tekton does. They are marked UPRIGHT but because of the way they are packaged it hardly matters.

Anyway with crates they can do things like bolt the speaker to the crate using the speakers threads. These are intended for floor spikes, not for holding the whole speaker up in the air upside down or sideways. Subjected to these kinds of loads they can pull out, leaving the speaker to bang around inside the crate. So look first for damage to these thread inserts.

If these are really strong and don’t pull out then the next thing that can go is the cabinet. This wasn’t designed for side loads either. So inspect carefully along every cabinet joint, corner, and edge. Of course it kind of goes without saying the driver cones, but you would spot that immediately. About the only thing there is soft dome tweeters can dent in and pop back out and it looks horrible but does no lasting damage and after a while even the crease disappears.

Almost always the crossover is build on a piece of MDF. Caps, inductors and resistors are simply zip-tied or hot-glued to the board. The board in turn is hot glued to a cross brace or something inside the cabinet. From the crossover wires go to each driver. There’s foam or batting in there. Bottom line, nothing in there to be damaged. The one thing that could happen is the board breaks off. Stand the speaker up, and tilt it to one side and then the other. Anything loose inside will shift around and you will hear it.

As far as the drivers being shock damaged, could happen I guess. What happens is the voice coil gap is very very small. The voice coil fits in a gap formed between the outer magnet and the inner pole piece. It takes a lot of force to do this but it is possible to shift the pole piece enough to freeze the voice coil and destroy the driver. (Ask me how I know!) The test for this one is simple- tap on the cone. If it moves freely you are good to go. Won't work for tweeters but if the woofers and mids are good they are far more massive and subject to damage so if they are good the tweeters should be as well. 

This is all from actual experience. My Talon Khorus were crated. They had to send THREE to get ONE here in good shape. All the damage explained above happened to the others. Now I know why Eric uses cardboard and styrofoam.

If Talon was dumb enough to pack any speaker that way, they deserve the incurred cost to replace them. Honestly, that is pathetic.  I have received two different speakers that were factory crated and the packing was by far better than any cardboard box and foam packaging I have ever received on any speaker, including a pair of Tekton Electrons. Of all the packaging I have seen, I would describe the Electron packing as adequate, nothing more.

In the pictures the seller sent, were the crates banded to the pallet? I would be surprised if a freight company accepted them without banding, but you never know. If they were not banded to the pallet, I can see how they could be easily dumped off with a forklift. It would also likely be the sellers problem. 

There were no crates, just two large (original-mint) boxes wrapped together in cellophane, sitting on a pallet with no strapping (seller's mistake). We figure the forklift driver had them off center on the tines, and they fell. Who knows. Someone was curious to know what high end speakers looked like because one side of the beautiful black cardboard box was torn down about 2 feet, but since they were upside down at that point, they must have given up. MORONS!!! The trucker that attempted delivery said that probaby 4-5 different companies would have been involved in getting them to me. So it could have happened anywhere/when.

I had a similar experience with one of a pair Totem Acoustic speakers. They were shipped by the dealer in their factory boxes. One speaker arrived a day later than the other and when I looked at the second speaker box I suspected there would be a problem, as one corner of the box was damaged. I opened the second box and after unpacking found the bass driver had a large, readily visible hole  in it. I had to ship the speaker directly to the manufacturer for repair. Totem advised that the crossover assembly had become detached and came through the back of the bass driver! Totem suspected that the box had to have been dropped from a considerable height (like off the back of a truck 5-6' or so). The dealer, who shipped the product to me, covered the repair (replacement of bass driver and crossover) and was unable to recover anything from FEDEX even though the shipment was insured, I provided photos of the damaged box and driver, and the damage was not due to improper or non-factory packaging.

Look for any holes, deformation or cracks in the driver cones of the mid- or bass- drivers. Also, if the speaker is not too heavy to slide along a carpeted floor, listen to see if you can hear anything moving inside the cabinet as you move the speaker. Obviously, you should not hear anything. And you need not move the cabinet very strongly to hear something, if anything is loose. Those are my suggestions for identifying potential damage in addition to what @millercarbon explained.

Totem did a great job with the damaged speaker. They match drivers when they make a pair, have records of the drivers used and had a  replacement driver and crossover on hand to install. I have listened to the speakers for around a thousand hours and am quite pleased with them, noticing no difference in the reproduction quality of the two speakers. Obviously if you can get the dealer to provide a new pair instead, that would be a great alternative.