Electrostat - M-L; Quad or Soundlab - reliable


Looking for the best electrostat that is reliable. Seems as Soundlab sounds the best performed, but is the most unreliable; Quad is second best performer - very safe - easiest to resell but also unreliable. M-L third, but maybe the most reliable.

Is the reliability issue due to people playing "Pink Floyd at 100 dB" or is reliability also an issue for us 80 to 85 dB people?
dcaudio

Showing 1 response by 6550c

I have never heard of panels being replaced on a 7 year basis like tubes as stated by a previous poster - this sounds perposterous!! I had sound labs and never had a problem with the panels, but the power supplies did act up and fail, One speaker had the bias adjustment fail and the other had 100% power supply failure. I did buy them used and they were abused by the previous owner- i suspect they had been in a flood or something because the transformers were way rusty. I did get about 7 years out of them and all in all was very happy to have owned one of the very best speakers anywhere for a a while- all good things end at some point.

one point i would like to make, is always buy these from a dealer that is "johnny on the spot" when it comes to service. The dealer I bought from was very lame and totally useless when it came to service and support and he was also kind of a liar. Repairs are very expensive and a pita and panels are not cheap and shipping charges will kill you on those things. I dont know what some have been smoking?