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Anyone else notice how hard it is to sell off used speakers these days ?
A friend has been trying to sell some Vandersteen 2 CE'S, and has dropped the price to 300.00, but no one seems to want them. People are scared shitless because of the old ferrofluid used in the tweeters.
Old dried up Ferrofluid is a very real thing, and not a good one.
Follow Ups:
......
Old dried ferrofluid as in asbestos?
Or just poor sound?
Hopefully, my 'new in box' Dynaudio D21 tweeters and D52AF upper mids are still good.
Otherwise, I'll be pissed.
:)
I would think that NOS tweeters would not suffer as much from the drying out problem. My guess is that vibration and/or heat probably have something to do with the problem if/when it actually does occur.
It's the economy- blame Obama...
Sorry, I am not an Obama Hater, and the economy is booming here in the Tampa Florida area. Because of the heat and humidity in this area, mold and mildew grows rampant on the shingle and barrel tile roofs here in Central Florida. My company cleans these roofs, using a non pressure washing process I helped develop. We are booked up with work nearly a month in advance.
The Tampa Florida added more new jobs then anywhere else in Florida, in the last 4 years.
Is the use of Ferrofluid part of the cleaning process?
Does your special process work on moldy records?
We use Sodium Hypochlorite, that is basically store bought bleach times 3 in strength. I have no doubt that bleach will remove the mold, but would have concerns about what it will do to the vinyl.
Consider yourself very fortunate, there are too many Americans, who cannot say the same.
Understood, we really got screwed on the NAFTA Agreement, it sent our good jobs overseas, with the stupid idea that once these overseas people got good jobs, they would buy from us. Well guess what, most of our good jobs have been sent overseas, and they are buying from China.
We are doing well here in Tampa, because we have deed restricted subdivisions who have to get there roof cleaned, or get a Lien placed on their houses.
which is about as grave a problem. :(
This is a major concern, which needs to be escalated to the Major Concerns Department, as it especially pertains to the fiscally inhibited among us! ;)
The greatest impediment to advancing an audiophile system is the audiophile.
When we lived in Central Florida the spider's were large and way to many running around inside the home.
One large spider kept it's eyes on us as we walked around the room.
It turned and kept a close eyes on us.
Another spider was so large, when I finally got it with a powerful Milele vacuum cleaner the noise it made as it was sucked through the vacuum hose
was unsettling.
I internet ordered some demonWP after doing some research about what was the best spider killer along with a dedicated plastic pressure spray container. The company that I bought the demonWP from also sold a nice sprayer.
Bye bye spider's.
Wow. How audio topics can wander afar and askew....
aa
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
Parameters of the foam are far more important to driver performance than a touch too much or touch too little FF.
I've got 25 year old tweeters that haven't dried , but had several where the fluid leaked out (Morel). Morel also had issue with FF spewing on inside of dome for some that were "Air Shipped".
I was told that Ferrofluid provides mechanical dampening and dramatically reduces Qms [and thus Qts] of the driver and flattens its impedance curve in the Fs zone
I was also told that if the ferrofluid is removed, then most T/S parameters of the tweeter would change. Qms will be higher and the driver may tend to peak near Fs before rollof ['honky' sound], even Fs may change. The crossover would also need to be redesigned since the impedance curve will have different shape and a big resonance peak
A tweeter designed to rely on ferrofluid dampening may be unusable after ferrofluid is removed.
The ferrofluid is part of the motor of the driver, and is not always there for just improved heat and power handling. It can drastically effect the performance of a tweeter, and in fact, some high end speaker companies have been tweaking tweeters with it for years.
I do agree with you about the importance of the foam used to refoam speakers. Unless the exact foam is used to refoam the speakers as was originally on them when they were new, what you now have is a pair of totally butchered speakers. I had a pair of old Infinity Prelude PFR's that were playing just fine, until I decided like a dumb ass to "treat" them to some new foam. I took them to a well known speaker repair shop, and when they called me to pick them up, I looked at all the midrange drivers. To my dismay, the new foam freaking covered nearly 1/2 of the cone area of the drivers. To say they sounded like shit is a gross understatement. The drivers were paper, and because I feared any more refoaming would totally kill them, I donated them to a Goodwill, hoping to get a tax write off, which the IRS disallowed.
are still ticking away almost forty years later!
who cares about dried up 'ferrofluid'?
It's a good thing they have FF cooled tweets since I sometimes use a 300 watt amp with them now. :)
Vandys Typically rot out their Surrounds!
(ferro fluid swill is only a minor nuisance)
AND The only place to get a Vandy decently fixed is to send it back to the factory where they will replace worn out drivers And whatever else... then revoice the speaker to the factory sound!
Vandys used a wide variety of Drivers and would tailor /tweak the Crossovers etc to Maintain the Vandy Sound.
Making DIY repairs Sketchy at best.
These Well known issues and the consequent significant cost of Competent repairs has a Large part to do with Lowish resale on clapped Speakers.
Clean out the gap with tissue or paper towel - problem solved
Because if you manage to clean out the old ferrofluid, it still leaves the problem of which viscosity, and how much of the new ferrofluid to replace it with.
I have read that KEF claims 20 to 25 years for a ferrofluid aided tweeter.
The drying up of Ferrofluid is no Myth, it is very real unfortunately.
Here is a post I found that pretty much sums it up.
It is impossible to make comparison to new unit, as ferrofluid has dried also in NOS units, unless they have been rebuilt recently.
There are at least two reasons why ferrofluid has been used. The first thing was to provide better time constant for thermal capability. Fluid will conduct heat to magnet assembly more efficiently than air in the VC gap, so tweeters will not blow so easily during short overload situation. This feature will also improve linearity as DCR of VC will not change during louder passages, consequently crossover parameters stay closer to targeted ones.
Second bonus that fluid will provide is mechanical damping of VC. If you look impedance curve of ferrofluid cooled tweeter, you should note that Q at resonance is usually quite much smaller compared to non cooled tweeter. This makes it easier to use low order crossovers and less impedance compensation is needed to stay within targeted acoustical slopes close to crossover.
When ferrofluid dries you will loose both features. If you are not using too much power thermal issue should not be problem. When you loose mechanical damping, crossover design will effect how far you are from targeted slopes. In 2-way design when fs might be 1 octave from crossover frequency, difference might be considerable. In designs like AR9 where upper crossover is quite far from fs, loss of damping is not big issue from this view point... but mid might be working closer to fs...
When fluid dries in magnetic gap, only volatile parts of fluid will not contaminate the gap. Other parts of fluid will stay adhered in the gap and coil former. If weight of moving assembly will increase fs will decrease, sensitivity will decrease. Other things may also happen, but our experts might have better understanding for this. Contamination on gap surface might not trouble at all, unless gunk developed will not make contact to VC... and this certainly is not good thing.
I usually try to be optimistic... but as you can see, this ferrofluid issue makes me think at least tree times before going any further.
Anyone else notice how hard it is to sell off used speakers these days?
No problems here.
A friend has been trying to sell some Vandersteen 2 CE'S, and has dropped the price to 300.00, but no one seems to want them.
For sale where? I don't see a listing in the usual spots. Closest I see is an ebay listing for $475 and that's local pickup only. Don't tell me it's on Craigslist..
I think the resale value of these are not that great. Vandersteen sold a ton of model 2s. Used 2Ce Sigs and 2Ce Sig IIs come up for sale all the time, so I suspect most people who are interested in the model 2 are going for the later versions.
Also, floorstanding speakers are expensive to ship. If you're buying or selling $5000 used speakers, spending $200-300 on shipping isn't that big of a deal. But if you're buying or selling speakers that are only worth maybe $700 in mint condition, shipping is big negotiating point.
If they're in good condition and your friend is willing to ship them, post them on Agon with some good pictures. Ask for $500 plus shipping and they should sell.
If you're friend doesn't want to ship them, well that explains it. The chances of finding a local buyer who knows and appreciates them is pretty small.
I think that most types of tweeters will last 20 years. After that point, most speakers should be sold for pennies on the dollar unless they have been thoroughly refurbished.But even if what you are saying about tweeters is true (or at least partly true), it might also be true that prices in general today are lower than usual because people are broke. Lean times are not kind to the purveyors of non-essential items.
Yes, the public does want more fluids. Not sure that they want more ferrofluids though.
Edits: 04/19/16 04/19/16
People are hurting, I have lowered a 6 year old pr of $7,000 speakers that sound excellent and are in good condition to $1,800 and cant sell them.
And you can get replacement parts if needed.
Where have you listed them besides AA? If you're only listing them on the Asylum Trader, then you're not even trying to sell them.
There really isn't much action on AA trader though. At least not for items of significant value. If you don't want to deal with Audiogon, try US Audio Mart. You'll get a lot more eyeballs there. I would be surprised if you can't get $3k for them on Audiogon or US Audio Mart.
I has successfully bought AND sold gear on Asylum Trader.
AND as I only deal with registered inmates who have a history of posting here, I have never experienced any of the AudioGon/Ebay crap that makes dealing in used gear a hassle.
Sure, lots of people have bought and sold gear on AA Trader.
Even so, I've observed that many items that are posted here first show up later on other sites and sell there. For expensive items, I would guess it's the majority. I've seen some items that would be an almost instant sale on Audiogon sit here for > 1 month. Inexpensive stuff and vintage stuff seems to move a little better.
Part of that is probably because there just isn't enough stuff on the trader to attract the eyeballs that the bigger sites attract. Also, if you're buying or selling something really expensive, I think the AA trader is riskier because the transaction process isn't managed like it is on eBay or Audiogon.
NT
I'm having a hard time selling my Volkswagen Passat Diesel and have dropped the price, people seem to be scared shirtless. I am now wondering if it may be the ferrofluid in the tweeters?
Thought it was poisonous or toxic or something!
Did a quick search and it seems that it is NOT the end of the world
and can be fixed (see link) if one has the... skills.
Nice to see you posting; haven't seen your moniker in ages.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
But how do we KNOW it is really fixed ? Not only is it major surgery to remove old ferrofluid from a tweeter, but how do we KNOW how much to put back in ?
Of course, the speaker repair folks have hopped on the bandwagon with ferrofluid replacement kits for tweeters, but it sure looks like "one size fits all" to me. Unless the exact amount of the exact same viscosity ferrofluid is used, the "repaired" tweeter will never be the same.
A sobering thought indeed.
Simple: You fill it up because you really don't want air pockets.
From the period of about 2000 to 2007 or so, Vandersteens were really hard to sell, and 2Cxxx's would go for around $300 for the pair.
Then, suddenly, their used prices shot up. WAY up. I recall them going for no less than $700 a pair. Many sold for more.
Now - you're saying they're down to the $300 level?
Odd.
BTW - has anyone actually confirmed that ferrofluid actually dries up, or is that just another highend audio myth? Maybe I should start one.
Hey - here's a good one. MOSFET transistors dry up with time.
Severius! Supremus Invictus
I had contacted B&W speakers and they stated at that time its a no.
They had never heard of this.
They stated the only way for ferrofluid to dry out was to leave them exposed to air the diaphragm off the magnet or the tweeters overheated.
What is so "Odd" about 300.00 a pair for old Vandersteens ?
Until the model 2 CE, they used foam surrounds for the drivers, and are well known for coming apart.
in the late 2000's.
That's what's strange.
Foam surround is the material of choice for surrounds. It allows greater linearity. But - maybe Vandersteen should've gone to low fi, thumping Cerwin-Vega Pounder route and used some other material. More pounding and lasts forever. Toss in an array of piezo tweeter - yeeeeehaw. Now THAT's what I call speakers.
Rock on.
Severius! Supremus Invictus
Gang, a quick call to the Vandersteen factory dispels any myth-making regarding the sudden and/or abrupt (however slowly at first) complete and otherwise heretofor now rendered useless ferrofluid contained within these very well-designed tweeters. Case in point, the individual selling those speakers happens to be a friend of mine one who just recently reported to me that a buyer from Miami, which is a good four hour car-driven passage across Alligator Alley and to the north in fact did not only buy these speakers, but also jumped into the truck just moments after having made the purchase sight unseen but based on the accurate physical description in the ad and his own ears when hearing the earlier model in an even older pair of an all original and unrefurbished or unmodified Vandersteen Model 2.
Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but the buyer also paid the full asking price of $350 for the pair and was in quite a hurry to get them on his truck and therefore to his way out of the neighborhood into the nether regions of downtown Miami. I highly doubt that my friend will become the equivalent of a facsimile victim in the film Scarface as a result of his sale. Perhaps one might find and cite from the plethora of published scientific journals this "drying up" of properly engineered ferrofluid tweeters in what amounts to over 80,000 pair of still presumably functioning Vandersteen lower end loudspeakers. That swamp land the buyer might drive back and forth across to get from the East to the West Coast of Florida is chock-full of for sale signs just for you. With all my love,
Goyescas
Yes yes ka7niq, I know it's you!
PS good luck in securing employment as Richard Vandersteen's product and general public relations manager, provided as richly as you are with all of this osmosis given factual information regarding his entire product line. Look behind you. See anybody? Haha just kidding! All in the fun of irresponsible dissemination of fiction as fact, right?
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