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Re: Hissing from Quad 63s - reason?

Posted by kentaja@yahoo.com (M) on April 18, 2007 at 13:33:49

In Reply to: Re: Hissing from Quad 63s - reason? posted by stickler to perfection on April 17, 2007 at 20:37:55:

Not necessarily. Noise under high humidity does not always mean a panel has gone south. If it did, I would conclude that virtually every panel Quad produces is defective.

I have brand new Quad produced panels that under high humidity will start to make noise. And I have yet to find a Quad, the new ones, that given enough humidity don't make some noise. These are brand new Quad speakers. Get the humidity high enough with the original ESL and the bass panels will start to make some noise as well. Not nearly as bad as the ESL63, but the faint noise of excessive leakage is there.

The glue failure, stator delamination problems you mention, yes, are very common problems with this design. When this happens the problem will be quite evident independent of humidity.

The only question really is what is too much humidity? To get the original ESL bass panels to make some noise the humidity will need to generally be 80-90%. With the newer design, noise can start as low as 60% but generally is not a problem until the RH hits 70% and higher.

Late generation ESL63 and the current speakers employ a varistor on the EHT board to reduce the available voltage to the panels as leakage/current demands become too high under humidity. The EHT board on the ESL63 went thru several revisions over the years to control excess leakage of the panel.

If the speakers are making hissing noise get the humidity down. If the noise is gone and the speaker will produce 95-100dB levels prior to shut-down the panels are fine.

Of course if the humidity is already low and the panels are hissing, then yes, it is time to replace a panel(s). Stator delamination or excessive oxidation of the conductive coating will generally be the problem. I have, unfortunately, pulled part panels that appear to have no problem at all, i.e. glue is intact all around, not a hint of oxidation or damage to the coating, and the things hiss. This speaker can be finicky in the extreme at times.

Given the wide production variation of Quad panels, this noise/humidity issue is a moving target and some panels do better than others. Just like some panels will play considerably louder before the the charge starts to migrate and the speaker shuts down. Tight unit-to-unit consistency of the panels is not a hallmark of Quad even today.

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