Poor assembly & manufacture of equipment on the Editors Choice award list
rsud -- Thu, 08/13/2009 - 15:20
Hello TAS,
Thank you for another great issue of your magazine with the Editors Choice awards. I do have a bit of outrage to convey relating to a manufacturer of equipment that appears on your Editors Choice awards list. I would appreciate your take on this situation.
Based on earlier reviews in your magazine and positive remarks in other venues I upgraded my system and purchased a Quad 909 Amp and Quad 22L2 speakers. I set them up and began the break in period. After many weeks (being sensitive that the 22L2s require extensive break-in) the best I was getting is what I would characterize as good hi-fi sound but definitely not high-end sound.
After 6 months (which brings us to near about now) and much exasperation I finally decided that perhaps an upgrade to the speaker binding posts on the Amp might help (what is on the Amp is a bit un-ergonomic for a high-end’er as it only connects bare wire or banana but not spades). I opened up the Amp and to my shock I find that most of the wires in the signal path and power are connected to the circuit boards using slip on clips; they are NOT soldered! Since the 909 is a dual Amp design this means the first Amp connects to the second using clips, the power supply connects using clips, and the second Amp connects to the speaker binding posts using clips. Being quite irked, I now pull out the speaker drivers on the 22L2s and find the same thing. All drivers are connected using slip on clips, the speaker binding posts are connected using slip on clips.
I must say that I am outraged that equipment of this caliber, price point from a company with Quad’s reputation/history would use slip on connectors for internal circuitry. This is a connection that, in my experience at least, is quite poor (not solid contact, prone to vibration effects, etc) and will only further degrade over time as oxidation etc set in.
Through great effort I soldered the Amp wires and, upon listening, found a considerable sound quality improvement. I have just soldered the speaker wires as well and found further improvements in the sound. But am I now hearing what your reviewers heard with prototypes or early manufactured models when there may have been more care taken during assembly? I note that the internal wire in the 22L2s is of the type that is copper colored for positive and silver colored for negative. Reminiscent of Home Depot bulk speaker cable, methinks. What other shortcuts have been taken? Is this what we are to expect of outsourced manufacture? Does Quad know that this is how their equipment is being manufactured? Which is worse? That Quad knows or they don’t know? Am I out of line for being outraged that $3000+ of equipment got me this?
Additionally my attempts to contact Quad have gone nowhere as their web e-mails bounce or no replies and no one picks up the phone.
Sincerely,
R.Sud
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Wow.
Quads in general have a history of failures and problems. The ESL 63's from what I remember would fail left and right then they are shipped to somewhere for repairs for weeks then a long time later its back.....but heavenly sound they had. I think someone suggested audio magazines to gather and keep data on reliability of companies as well, but thats hard to do....what company will disclose how many products fail left and right... none will. And you making changes inside the components wouldn't that void the warranty on them, if it had one? again I think quads just have 1 year warranty where competitors give lots more.
In the UK, Quad's reputation for reliability and servicing is second to none. The BBC used pro variants of Quad's amps for decades. Some of those products had been used eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for 40+ years, with a failure rate close to zero.
In fact, one of Quad's biggest problems was its reliability, but not in a negative way. There were nigh on 100,000 sets of Quad 33/405 pre-powers sold in the 1970s and many of them are still in use.
Electrostatic panels can be prone to problems due to the use of a Mylar sheet. That can sag or deteriorate with age and is prone to problems with humidity causing arcing. The same applies to almost any panel design... it's just a function of age, and many ESL 63s are 25+ years old.
Alan Sircom
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus Magazine
London, England
editor [at] hifiplus [dot] com
In the USA service and reliability is NOT second to none. The dam speakers break all the time even in not humid areas. The warranty is just 1 year. Other than that They sound amazing.
Got access to NHT SuperTwo speakers. Pulled out the drivers and found they too are connected by clips.
They are now soldering and pretty large change in sound quality. So its not just Quad equipment subject to this way of assembly.
Soldering, all by itself, should not result in a better contact between metal surfaces.
Soldering only seals the surfaces from contact with air and prevents oxidation while cementing the two metal surfaces together so they will not pull apart under stress. Solder itself is a lousy conductor, even if it's called "wonder solder." :)
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
Is Soldering the standard practice in high end audio? I mean if something is not Soldered like the origional poster mentioned does that mean the manufacturers were lazy or cutting corners on price and manufacturing? From what you say it seems like it shouldn't have much of a difference in sound quality....right? but what about the production standard of a product Soldered Vs. not soldered?
As one example, controlling vibration going into ones electronics is a well lauded effort and quite audible. A slip on connector is not a tight connection and, at the very least, is susceptible to vibration effects. Using slip on clips on the frame of a speaker (vibration) can't be a good idea.
All non-soldered connections (spades, rca’s etc) degrade over time (as Steven mentions, oxidation) and I clean my connectors every few months to quite audible improvement.
So what you say about solder not being a good conductor may be true but its way better than any slip on or pressed connector (rca, spade, banana, etc).
Slip-on edge connectors are often used in speakers since soldering to the driver leads or clips can easily heat-damage the very thin insulation on voice coil windings. This is especially so with tweeters, but once the manufacturer adopts edge connectors for one driver, it will likely follow the same practice for the other drivers in a system. Sure, given good soldering technique, it can be done safely, but . . . .
Speaker manufacturers usually opt to make speaker drivers easily replaceable in the field, especially for large speakers. Even getting a large cabinet to your dealer can be a hassle. If the task of driver replacement is to be entrusted to the end user, or even a dealer, many manufacturers will opt for edge connectors as the solution with the fewest potential downsides.
If you are worried about the sonic effects of edge connectors in speakers, you should also be worried about making any speaker cable connections to your speakers or amps with anything other than a soldered connection. Edge connectors can be very tight indeed and have a relatively large surface area connection compared to, say, a banana plug or spade lug.
If you want a sonic upgrade for edge connectors and don't want to solder speaker wire connections, you can try using Caig ProGold (now known as Deoxit Gold) on the connection. This is connector magic; HP's periodic extolling of this product over the last decade plus are in line with my own experience.
The soldering point would be the same place that the slip on clips attach. There's no danger of damaging the voice coil unless one was to perhaps hold the hot iron in place for a very long time. Speakers I have had from KEF and B&W were soldered just as I have now soldered my Quads.
I look at rca and speaker cables as a necessary evil if we want easily swap components. I have considered soldering these and will perhaps do so when I get my utlimate final possibly best system :-). I currently use a product called TPC for enhancing the slip on (rcas) and compressed (spades) connectors. But TPC and all the other contact enhancers only work for so long (3 months or so with TPC).
My ears are the guide. Soldering the inside of the amp and then the speakers made an order of difference up there with a new component or new wires.
I still have one set of slip on connectors inside the speakers which are not easily accessible, mentally formulating a plan to attack and solder those.
Not sure I want to buy into the "field replaceable" arguement. I think it would be sad to compromise the sound of a component (that is the goal here, yes?) for serviceability.
So, not much traction on this thread. Perhaps my error to start this with a rant. But I am pissed and something I will check for when I buy my next components.
The dealers are hesitant to even show/audition equipment unless they think you might buy. I would be amazed if a company/dealer would let you unscrew or open up their speakers or audio components before you buy. I have never heard of that....but If you can best of luck and let us know the name of the dealer. Although at CES there are products on display with covers not on, may be it can be examined there.....I didn't see any open speakers there.
Quad was always exceptionally pragmatic about its products, even before it became a part of IAG. Basic terminals, standard-grade components, cheap ribbon connectors instead of phono terminals... these were all a part of Quad's 'no-nonsense' approach.
All of this was predicated on concepts very much at odds with that of the typical audiophile. The traditional Quad approach was that things like cables, top-grade components and WBT connectors are all very well and good, but make no diffference to the sound. I suspect the use of clips instead of solder and basic wiring follow the same pragmatic ethos; it's far easier to swap out a damaged board or a loudspeaker driver if it's connected by clips than by soldered connections.
The late Peter Walker of Quad would have said there's no sonic difference between the two connections anyway. He would have dismissed your evidence to the contrary by saying because you invested time and energy modifying the product, that biases you toward it sounding better. I suspect even though Peter Walker had no real influence over IAG's Quad, his approach may well have stuck.
As to the speaker terminals, that's one of the differences between products designed in American and those designed outside. Spade terminals are commonplace in US equipment, but in the UK for example, spade terminals virtually unknown and 4mm banana sockets are standard issue.
Alan Sircom
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus Magazine
London, England
editor [at] hifiplus [dot] com
Hello Alan,
Thank you for this background and insight into Quad's origins.
But I must say, after my grueling exercise of soldering I now can hear some reason to why the 22L2 and the 909 are on TAS's editors choice list.
There could be no reason these pieces of Quad equipment could be on the editors choice list if the review models were constructed as were my version of this equipment.
In some ways I am still trying to better the sound I had from a pair of old (and remarkable) KEF 103.2's and a Bryston Pro-3B amp which the Quad equipment replaced (and both thoroughly soldered inside as I checked!).
And I have a pretty varied background and “ear training” with many different brands and quality levels of equipment from friends systems to in store demos.
I strongly suspect that use of clips was a manufacturing shortcut perhaps done at some point during the long production runs of this equipment (I believe both have been around for at least 5 years). And I question the wires in use inside the speakers as they appear to be bulk ordinary speaker cable where the positive side is a copper colored metal and the negative silver colored metal (meant to help the audio neophyte not to mixup phase).