Help with Martin Logan Quests.

I spoke to a tech support at ML a few months ago regarding this same issue. He told me that there is a "life expectancy" for their ESL panels that range from 8-10 years depending on usage. After that, the above mentioned simptoms are normal. I own a pair of Sequel IIs and the cost of the panel replacements are $549 +SH. This comes with a ML 3 or 5 year warranty. The replacing procedure is pretty simple and your speakers will sound as wonderful as the first day you brought them home. My panels have not reached that point yet, but may soon. Till then, I came up with a smaller and cheaper (less that $10) but not the most "correct way" of reducing the bass due to room geometry. My Preamp does not have any bass or treble controls, so an inline resistor did the trick for me. I can give you more details about that if you're interested. Best of luck and happy listening.

Shahen

Thanks for the suggestions. The problem seems intermittent. They are working fine today. These were purchased around 93, so they may need new panels. I'll vacuum first.

The Audio Control equalizer has done the trick for the bass. It is an inexpensive but effective cure. I've thought about using a resister, but the room problems are too severe.

All of the advice above is good. Do vacuum the panels regularly, but honestly--it's time for new panels. M-L has made a number of improvements for their panels, and you will benefit from these as well as the fact that yours are probably near the end of their life expectancy--particularly if you live in a humid area which lowers the life expectancy.

Shahens, since I am bi-amped and use the speakers passive crossover, the amps are still seeing full bandwidth. An active crossover takes some load off each amp but I can't do that with these speakers. You mentioned installing an inline resistor and that is something I've thought about on the input to each amp to remove some of the frequencies that will be remove by the speaker crossover. Did you install the resistors before or after the amp?

Thanks, and happy holidays to everyone.

Rives, you are probably correct to encourage me to replace the panels. I'm not ready to spend the money for a new pair. New panels would sound better anyway, but what about circuit upgrades. Should I have someone replace circuit components with improved parts? I've done this with box speakers before and had good results.

Both times I have had this problem, it went away after a few hours. When it happened on Monday, we had just painted part of the house (away from the speakers), and had opened the house to clear the smell. We live in South Texas and humidity is always a problem. On top of that it rained some that afternoon. We closed the house and turned the AC on around 6 pm and the problem was gone by 10 pm.

Thanks for the help.