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Vandersteen 3A sigs, whats wrong here.

I recently purchased a Pair of 3Asigs here on Audiogon.
The problem is they dont seem to have much bass at all.
I have tried many different room placements. They are being feed by ARC VTM100MKII, ARC LS25MKII, ARC CD3MKII. Also with Kember 8HTC true Bi-wire cables, And a variety of IC's including transparent and Cardas Gold reference. Tried single ended as well as Balanced. So the front end gear should be ok, but no matter what I do there is weak bass. I also prefer to listen at lower levels, however regardless of volume it is always week. Any ideas, please help.
vdosc
rhljazz
1,250 posts
 
Could it be you are just used to hearing fat ported bass and the bass alignment in the Vandersteen with the passive radiator sounds comparatively lean? It's easy to find that fat sound appealing. It may also take some time to get used to the difference.

I can make large changes in my setup with a set of ASC tube traps. You might try experimenting.
jebe1
75 posts
 
"Start easy, check your speaker wires at the amp and the speakers, + to +, - to -. "

But if your preamp inverts the polarity, you'll want to connect + to -, and - to +.
audiomax
166 posts
 
I would match high quality/powerful solid state or hybrid amp to drive them towers.
racamuti's avatar
racamuti
362 posts
 
Hi, I once bought a pair of Reference 3A speakers and after a few weeks of driving my self nuts trying to get some bass out of them, someone suggested that I check the internal wiring. I opened them up and found that one speaker had been wired incorrectly at the factory and was out of phase with the other speaker.
once I reversed the wires on that one speaker the bass came back and I was a happy camper!
Just a thought, Tish
dominion78
7 posts
 
I agree it may be a phase issue. Maybe the original owner messed with the drivers and mis-wired the woofer on one speaker...if changing wires at the speaker terminals doesn't net a root cause. You could ask the person you purchased them from if he did any experimentation or repairs.

Also, you could purchase a RS SPL meter and a test tone disk and test to see how they measure. Don't forget to add in the corrective values to your findings to get an accurate indication of the measurements.

Good luck in you discovery,
D
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