As I mentioned in another thread, I’ve just inherited my late Uncle’s Naim / Linn system, which has Naim Ariva’s (s/n 208895 - 2004).
Unfortunately the tweeter on both speakers is not responding. They whole system has been sat unused (but connected up) for about 8 years, and I know prior to my Uncle’s passing they were working perfectly as he was meticulous about maintaining his setup.
Is this something that is cost effectively resolvable? is likely to be a problem with the tweeters or the cross over? It seems odd that they have both failed, and seems to me to be linked to that fact they have not been used for so long.
Naim told me back in April that they no longer stock tweeters for Arivas, unfortunately.
Separately, I was informed by my dealer that the crossovers are hard to work on because they are mounted internally. Basically I would have to send the entire speaker to them for crossover work, whereas with Allaes/SBLs/etc with externally mounted crossovers you can simply remove them and send in just the crossover. Not that it can’t be done - it would just cost an arm and a leg to ship the entire speaker back and forth. Not worth it in my case given the relatively low value of the Ariva and the long shipping distance.
Hopefully you can salvage the speakers, particularly if they have sentimental value to you.
Thanks for the response - that’s what I was concerned about - looking at current value of the Ariva’s (~£300) there’s going to be a cut off point of the cost of repairing them, irrespective of the sentimental value.
It is very odd for tweeters to fail through lack of use, though of course they could have been destroyed at last switch/off if done incorrectly, e.g. by an uninformed person, causing a high volume thump through the speakers. One thing worth doing before buying tweeters, is either access the crossover and disconnect a tweeter wire, or take out a tweeter and disconnect a wire, whichever easier, then put on some music and use a voltmeter to check for a signal on the crossover output. If nothing then look to the crossovers.
Voltmeter will need an AC setting, and go down to a few 100mV sensitivity, though start with a higher range.
I have Arivas and had one of the tweeters stop working. I was unable to purchase an exact replacement but found a pair on line for a very reasonable price, can’t remember where, maybe parts express or similar. the replacements look identical from the front but from the rear they are missing the extra magnet used for shielding. IMHO they sound every bit as good as the original tweeters. All the drivers in Arivas are Vifa. I suggest you remove one of them and search it’s product number, the ones I got were almost the same number.
Thanks @anon85526005 & @Innocent_Bystander; have put a voltmeter across the tweeters and they are getting power when playing, so looks like the crossovers are good. I’ve managed to source 2 Vifa XT19TD-00-04, which is the un-sheilded version of the original Vifa XT19SD00-04 (thanks to Jerry at Falcon Acoustics for this info) - they should arrive tomorrow and I’ll report back once fitted.
The shielding shouldn’t affect performance (if it was done properly), merely enabling them to be placed closer to a CRT screen without distorting the picture (I have seen a speaker affect a TV image from about 3ft distance). These days I guess few people have CRT TVs or monitors.
One Christmas an uncle gave me a pair of bar magnets (I think I was five or so). Imagine my delight when I found out that I could distort the picture on the B&W TV set and draw with the magnets. Imagine my horror when some of the marks didn’t disappear. I think it fixed itself in a few days.
