RF-25 Tweeter Issue

[marigoldilemma]

Hi,

I bought my RF-25s about 6 years ago or so and they have performed wonderfully. I recently noticed that the sound from my left speaker just wasn't matching the output of the right. Upon closer inspection, I discovered the left tweeter was not putting out the same level of signal as the left. I put in a mono CD (beatles) so the channels should match exactly, and sure enough the left tweeter was not matching the right. What's strange is that in most of the reading I've done, the tweeter either works or it doesn't.

So, first thing I did was switch the connections on my receiver (yamaha RX-V995). This receiver has connections for two sets of speakers (A and , so I switched them to B from A, just to make sure it wasn't a bad jack. Nothing changed. I took the banana cables off and reconnected the wires using bare cable, thinking maybe the banana plugs were causing the issue. I've had this happen before when the wire came loose from the banana plug. Well, using bare wire didn't fix it. So, finally I took the right cables and sent them to the left speaker and vice versa. Still the same left tweeter issue. So, I've narrowed it down to the tweeter/cross-over.

I took the front plate off and check the wires leading to the tweeter; they're fine. I then looked the cross-over and it looks fine. I've exhausted my limited ability to diagnose this issue. The one thing I was going to try was unhooking the tweeter from the wires and switching them, and that would narrow it down to the either the tweeter or the cross-over. I tried to pull the metal clips from the tweeter connectors, but they just wouldn't budge. I was afraid of breaking something, so I stopped and that's where I am now. Should these clips just pull off the connectors, or do I have to loosen them in some way?

If I can test the tweeter by switching it and it turns out it is the tweeter, how do I go about getting a new one? Also, how much do they cost?

Thanks for any help that can be provided.

Jason

[Bill H.]

http://www.klipsch.com/na-en/support/contact/

[wuzzzer]

I read through your post and it doesn't sound like you checked the bi-wire/bi-amp metal jumpers. Are they connected correctly?

[marigoldilemma]

Well, the jumper bars on the back of the speakers have been removed. You must do this to properly bi-wire. My Yamaha simply has two inputs for Left and Right. The cable that I bought with the speakers is a biwire cable, so it has four leads coming out of the end for the speakers, but on the receiver/amp end there are only two leads per speaker. So the + and - are combined at the receiver end.

I will admit some ignorance, however. The wires are Tara Labs Prism biwire cable. I don't know anything about these, other than that's what the dealer gave me (I negotiated these for free since I was buying two pairs of RF-25s). Each wire has a red or black sheath on the end with an HF or LF on it. Presumably these are High Frequency and Low Frequency designators. I hook the + and - HFs to the posts assoicated with the tweeter (the upper posts), and the LFs to the lower posts. The odd thing is, there are four wire "colors": white, black, blue and clear. These do not appear to be labeled. The sheathing designators (the HFs and LFs) are NOT the same between the two speakers. I think the blue cable is HF on one and it's LF on the other. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the important thing is which wires are combined and taken to which jack at the receiver. If they get switched, you can get out of phase or worse.

[wuzzzer]

Try installing the jumper bars back in and hook up the speaker with a single positve and negative cable and see if anything changes.