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Has anyone lost a KEF tweeter?

Wednesday I had a beautiful sounding system and Thursday morning the right side was so much louder and the left side was muddy sounding. I switched interconnects.  I switched speaker cables. Then I pulled out a test disk and played a 10khz tone.  Yep the tweeter in my left KEF Reference 5 speaker isn’t working.  I called KEF USA and they told me to call a couple of places for service.  The first place hasn’t worked on speakers in 4 years and I’m not sure the second place had even heard of KEF. One thing the guy from KEF said, was that all the speaker cables are soldered on the Reference 5’s. I checked the wires on the back plate and they were fine. So it either the crossover (s) or the tweeter part of the UniQ.
 

Grrr!

128x128curiousjim
curiousjim's avatar
curiousjim OP
4,739 posts
 

After answering questions and hearing that this almost never happens, I sent it in (I paid shipping) and they fixed it. (I believe they replaced the UniQ) and they shipped it back.

All the best.

steve59's avatar
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steve59
1,772 posts
 

It's surprising to hear of Kef tweeters failing as bulletproof as my experience has been.

yyzsantabarbara
4,862 posts
 

One way to solve this if you do not want to do it yourself is to contact a good audio shop in your area and see if they have a tech who can come over to your place.

When I had my adventures with the Thiel CS3.7, which also had a busted tweeter/mid issue like the KEF, I had the seller of the speaker pay for a tech from the local shop to do the fix (soldering). I found other issues and since I had seen how the tech did it, I went about repairing the other issues myself. The speaker sounded perfect after the multiple issues were resolved. I measured the speaker to confirm.

One thing that helped me was that the Thiel drivers did not need any calibration after installation. I had tweeter issues with my very old Ravel Salon 1 and Ravel asked me to ship the speakers back to them since they said they needed to be tested after a tweeter replacement. A real PIA since the tweeter failed 2 times.

 

 

curiousjim's avatar
curiousjim OP
4,739 posts
 

@steve59 

Yeah, that’s what I thought when I bought the Ref 5’s.

But…

curiousjim's avatar
curiousjim OP
4,739 posts
 

@yyzsantabarbara 

I confirmed the tweeter was out, but I still had to go through the song and dance.  Oh,  and according to KEF, they are the only ones who can replace the Uni-Q’s in the Reference 5’s and that everything I saw on YouTube was wrong.  Heck I tried to save them some money by asking them to send me a new uni-Q and I’d fix it myself.

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