Vandersteen 5a battery biased crossovers

Helpful thread, thanks all. When I pulled the crossover boards out of my speakers I found that one battery had apparently shorted, and had blown its guts out the bottom. I'm the original owner and do not know when this happened, my guess is that it has been like this since the factory test floor. The batteries are series connected so the blown open battery would have removed all 3 from the circuit.
All 8 batteries have fairly heavy wire soldered on to them and generous amounts of solder, I strongly suspect that the heat required to solder does internal damage to many of the batteries at installation.
I normally am a Vandersteen fan, but this is just a really awful design.

Audioconnection - We could just quit and declare peace on the topic if you want to.
Have talked to R.V. in the past, he said he had a reputation as a grouch but I found him personable and straightforward. Have not bugged him about the minor quality control things noted here (screws missing and loose receptacle to plug connections) or the battery thing which really just came up.
My previous comment was in response only to your "Disparaging a great product should be done carefully with honesty and should not be trivial."

Audioconnection - I didn't say that the batteries are a 'bad' design. I said "really awful" :). Not disputing their function in providing bias voltage, I just think that they were probably added as an after thought/ improvement subsequent to testing and soldered only because there is not ample room to provide for connectors (we do circuit design & prototyping at my place of work and stuff like this happens, redoing boards is expensive, for premium priced components though I think it is time to bite the bullet and give the poor buyer a cheap, simple, and reliable means to swap batteries, the other thing is that sometimes when board layout is done you remember all components but forget things like connectors that are unique to one component).

Not sure what you mean about the battery in my remote, pressure connectors are typically found throughout every component of a stereo system, including several wire to lug points on the Vandy's, and they work just fine, which is a good thing because soldering to my TT cartridge would be a real nerve wracking job :). If I was going to be concerned about a pressure connection in the Vandy's (and I'm not) I'd worry about the tiny spring loaded contacts in the impedance matching dip switch arrays. The contacts on a 9v battery are huge - gigantic - enormous (pick your favorite word here :) ) in relation to their electrical requirements.

Sounds like I'm anti Vandy & I'm really not, the big things (sound quality, value etc) I'm happy with, just expected he would have cleaned up some detail level / attention to detail things better (the batteries, one speaker was missing the screws that hold crossover to speaker, both 110v subwoofer amp receptacles required bending so power cords would be securely connected, I think that is it, all easy enough to fix but I don't think the buyer should have to).

Sonofjim - not sure about which. Am thinking I want to take to whole system to something SET like though. Midrange lush, less truth but more beauty. May just keep the Vandy's and push them with an original issue BAT VK75 for a while. May go all the way to a flea amp and super high efficiency speakers.

Bjesien - If you swap them again, a lighter gauge wire will let you cut down on battery heating and still get a good connection. If you have the occasion to see a 9v battery with the innards on the outside you will see some very light gauge wire used in a series connection, it works.

Audioconnection - Actually I soldered lighter gauge wire (less chance of damage from overheating) as I could not find room to fit the connectors on the high pass filters and doing the + - arrangement at the speaker crossovers would have been a real nuisance.

Do not understand your risk comment, 9v battery connectors work great and they have been around for 20's of years and used in millions of circuits, I don't think you can find anything that is more well proven rock solid reliable. If you are saying that an open circuit will create a pop, well, I've already had an open circuit when a battery blew up in my 5a, apparently from overheating due to soldering (my best guess) and you mentioned in your previous note that you have seen this also (and it is easy to clean up :)). I have never seen a 9v battery blow up in any other application, if I was concerned about blowing up components my first move would be to stop grossly overheating the battery terminals with soldering irons.

Sorry to hear that Vandy is hanging on to the solder thing in newer designs. Not in the customers best interest in my opinion, but as a once in 7 year thing it is something I think folks will be ok with.

As far as quality, I think you are right and the Vandy's are high quality in general but I suspect that you would agree that missing screws and loose connections and an exploded battery are not what I should have expected to find on my 5a's. As I noted before, none of this was hard to fix, just kind of figured I shouldn't have to.

Audioconnection - "Disparaging a great product should be done carefully with honesty and should not be trivial."
Seems like you are implying that either I'm not being truthful or else some of the problems I had should be considered trivial and not reported? Every manufacturer has to keep on top of quality control and usually the customer gets feedback more in the way of "thank you for the information and we are sorry you had problems with our product".
Batteries were due for a change in 01/13 and I swapped them 03/13 so I guess I was 2 months past the explosion date :).