RIP Diamond Tweeter !!!
 

I moved to a new house a few months ago. I designed a dedicated music room. I had issues with the sound of my system (which includes 800D's) that I thought were due to the acoustic space. I've spent months tweaking the treatments and still couldn't recreate the soundstage depth and detail I heard in my old room. Last night I was checking the speakers position and for no specific reason took the tweeter grills off to see if that would help. GASP! One of the tweeter diaphragms is in many pieces. Has anyone had to replace a tweeter on a 800 class speaker? Can it be done in place or does the speaker have to go back to the factory? Fortunately there is a B&W dealer in town. I'll ask him the same question today. In some ways I'm relieved there is a real problem causing my audio angst. I was thinking I'd have to burn down the new house and start over.

Cincy

Cincy
If you go to bwsupportgroup. you will see they have a complete listing of parts available for their gear. It looks like the price is $1142.

800D TWEETERS ZZ14265 800D TWEETER $1146.82

Cincy - Sorry about your tweeters...Glad you found out what is the problem! :yes:

Sorry to hear about the tweeter, but for me it's better to have found the problem and be able to fix it than to go insane trying to figure out why your system sounds different, or whether your actually going insane :)

Wow, I'm sorry to hear that too! The Silver Lining is you found the culprit, don't burn down that beautiful home. ;)

Wow, didn't realize those were such expensive tweeters.

Cincy,

Sorry to hear about your 800D tweeter. I hope you can get it replaced quickly and enjoy your new dedicated listening room.

well, you found the culprit but do you know why the tweeter is damaged? A shattered dome I think would suggest it got knocked somehow. A few months ago i clipped my 800d tweeter and fried it. Thought things sounded just kind of off and flat, then looked more closely and sure enough there was no sound at all coming from the tweeter. I used a multi tester across the terminals to determine that the resistance was infinite..if i remember right, thus indicating it was blown, as opposed to some issue with the crossover. Anyway, there was no real outward indication of damage to the unit, only a very slight discoloration of the dome but that was so slight that could have been there before...not sure. As others have said, you can call or fax your order for the replacement unit to B&W, comes in about a week, nice box, easily replaced with a regular philips screwdriver in about 5 minutes. but dang that thing is expensive. lesson learned for me....don't drive these things hard with a 200w amp

I have always been interested in the 800Ds, but the tweeter problems have always given me pause. Why would a 200W amp clip the speakers if the 800D has a rate of 1000W?

Also, is there a certain vintage of 800D I should stay away from because of a tweeter batch?

A common misconception is that you cannot damage a driver when using an amp of lower power than the speaker is rated to handle. The fact is that blown drivers are much more common with lower powered amps, since when the amp is pushed beyond its limits it creates a high level of distortion. This is referred to as clipping distortion which consists of high frequency components, and that is why it usually results in a blown tweeter driver.