Crossover problem and solution
 

I'm fairly new here and have been sharing some stories that folks might find interesting.

Several years ago when I was working as a mastering engineer, I noticed some distortion coming from one of my Dunlavy SC-V's. I had let a friend blast them one night and feared he had blown a driver.

I was able to figure out what was going on by using the Alan Parsons & Stephen Court Sound Check Audio Test Disc from Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs.

Using 1/3 octave filtered pink noise bands, I could hear low frequencies were getting to the tweeter, thus a crossover issue. The tweeter was fine when fed frequencies above it's crossover point, but low frequencies were getting to it and causing it to distort. Luckily, I caught it in time before it damaged it.

I had to get a friend to help wrangle the beast (over 6' tall and 330 lbs) and remove the lower woofer so we could get to the crossover. We had to use a long pipe and a hammer to get the rear panel out, it was very tightly sealed.

Fortunately, visual inspection and some poking around revealed loose wiring that solved the problem. The speaker was not that old but had been shipped to the dealer and then to me. I suspect whoever assembled it did not tighten the connections well and with use, they had vibrated loose enough to cause the problem.

Glad it was not a component failure, that would have taken a lot more time and effort to fix.