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SOLVED: Klipsch RC-35 Muddy sound


Xene99

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Most of you have probably already upgraded from the old RC-35 center speaker(or the old reference series altogether, for that matter).

But for those of you who still have the old RC-35 and have trouble with the sound quality I.E. muddy, scrapy, bad sound, I have found the error.(I don't know if the problem exists on the RS-35 or whatever they were called, the floorstanding one's in the same series.)

After putting up with the terrible sound for way too long I opened up the speaker.(8 torx screws on the front) And what I found was that every spade-contact to the speaker elements was loose. It seems that the wire spade plugs are made of a material that is too soft, so it will create intermittant contact to the speaker element spade terminal when the speaker is vibrating. On my speaker some of them almost fell off when I pulled them.

Solution: Unplug, turn off etc. amplifier etc before attempting this. Pull off each spade plug, and using a flat nose plier, gently tighten the plug before attaching it again. You could also cut the spade plug and mount a better one if you have the tools for it. After doing this a year ago I actually needed to do it again yesterday, so new spade plugs would probably be the best option.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for anyone destroying their speaker, amplifier, loosing the warranty, killing the cat or whatever by following my instructions, but if you are capable of doing such a task as described above, you might get a better sounding speaker.

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I actually got a pair of RF-5s cheap because of that. I went to check out some RF-5s from someone who was moving cross country. They hadn't used them in well over a year since the amp broke. When I cranked them up, one of them the tweeter wouldn't work and the other was cutting in and out. They wanted like $450 and I offered them $200. When I got home, I opened them up, one was completely lose and the other one just needed to be tightened. A year later and they work flawlessly. If I were to change them would it help with the sound?

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Not to sound like a jerk..... but yep loose connections must be anticipated and dealt with. If we could just figure out a way to do everything without wires and/or connectors!

The problem with my RC-35 was right out of the box when I bought it new. I wasn't about to open it up and snoop around.

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Not to sound like a jerk..... but yep loose connections must be anticipated and dealt with. If we could just figure out a way to do everything without wires and/or connectors!

The problem with my RC-35 was right out of the box when I bought it new. I wasn't about to open it up and snoop around.

mine was also bad out of the box, but I had a less than ideal room, and so I assumed it was just the way it should be(it wasn't too bad on low volumes). Besides, had bought it on sale in another city, so I decided to just use it and see if it got better. Searched on the net and found several people had the same problem, but also many didn't som I just assumed I had different expectations about the sound, compared to the synergy fronts I had. Glad I finally opened it up :)

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In defense of Klipsch I have bought connectors and found good and bad in same package. I just adjusted them to fit tighter and moved on. Rick

That is true, but the metal in these seems to be too soft, as I had to adjust them again a year after the first adjustment. These seems to be of poor quality(or a bad batch). I work with high reliability equipment that shall withstand high vibration for many years, and we have not had this problem with the industrial spade contacts we use.

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I actually got a pair of RF-5s cheap because of that. I went to check out some RF-5s from someone who was moving cross country. They hadn't used them in well over a year since the amp broke. When I cranked them up, one of them the tweeter wouldn't work and the other was cutting in and out. They wanted like $450 and I offered them $200. When I got home, I opened them up, one was completely lose and the other one just needed to be tightened. A year later and they work flawlessly. If I were to change them would it help with the sound?

if you already have good, sharp sound, then leave them. but if the sound seems muddy at medium to high levels, or if they are starting to become loose again, I'd recommend buying some new contacts and crimp them on.

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Not to sound like a jerk..... but yep loose connections must be anticipated and dealt with. If we could just figure out a way to do everything without wires and/or connectors!

I thought about soldering the wires instead. As long as the solder joint is done well, it would be a better option with more contact area than a spade contact. But if done bad(although highly unlikely); it could come off after a while and (worst case) short the amp.

I might solder if it happens again.

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Welcome to the Klipsch Forums & Thank you for sharing a solution that worked for you,

thanks, at first I didn't find any real solution to this problem that seemed to plague so many people, so when it happened a second time to me I found that people should know about it. Maybe it's even a problem with some batches of the new series' for all I know.

Edited by Xene99
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