re: Audiophile/Vinyl Thread - Post Pics, Advice, Questions, Setups, etc.

Well, as they sometimes say...all good things must come to an end.

In a strange mis-hap Friday afternoon , I somehow blew both Beryllium tweeters in the Focal Utopias.

There was nothing audible playing, but I believe I know what happened—without going into too great detail, there was a feedback loop coming off the tape head from the TEAC machine in extreme high frequencies—like over 15,000 Hz—so I couldn’t hear it—and since the tweeters run up to 40,000 Hz, they were way overdriven by an inaudible feedback loop (think of a microphone on a live stage that gets too close to a stage monitor and makes a loud screeching noise, but so high that you can’t hear it.

OK, so not the end of the world...just a costly mistake, right? (The tweets are around $1500 each to replace). Well, not the case.

I reached out Friday afternoon to Audio Plus Services, the North American importer for Focal, to see about ordering a new pair of tweeters. The tech informed me that the tweeters for my speaker were no longer available......WTF??...really?

The speaker is 10 years old—in high end world, that isn’t ancient, not to mention that it was a $25k loudspeaker. What’s more, the Focal Grand Utopia Be, the $85,000 big brother of mine, uses the exact same Beryllium tweeter. So if someone has a pair of 10 year old Grand Utopias and they blow the tweeters, they now have $85k boat anchors??

After placing me on hold, he then informed me that I MAY be able to send them back to France and have them rebuilt, which could take 4 months and a crapload of tarrifs going from me to Canada first, then to France, then back to Canada, then to me.

At this point, I am pissed...I am to the point of leaving them (I really love their sound, but not having replacement tweeters, which are the most replaced part on any speaker, is unforgivable—especially at this price point).

When in Houston a few weeks ago dealing with the Pioneer reel deck, we hung out with the fella that owns a high end audio store in downtown Houston. He had a pair of speakers on the main showroom floor that he recently started carrying. It is a company out of Lithuania called Audio Solutions, and the speaker was the Figaro XL

This thing sounded fantastic. It is a BIG speaker—almost 6’ tall, 2’ deep and 15” wide, weighing in at 231 lbs. each (for reference, my Focal is 167 lbs.). It has (4) 9” woofers, (2) 6.5” mids, and a silk-dome horn tweeter. They are very efficient (92 dB), and can play pretty darn loud if asked too.

So, I am going to pull the trigger this week and order a pair—just need to decide on a finish. They are drop shipped direct from Lithuania and take 2-3 weeks to arrive.

I am not going to replace my Utopia with the new version because, frankly, I just don’t think it is a $40,000 speaker (that is how much the price of mine has increased!).

Now, Kevin at Upscale Audio has a tempting offer...the Focal Stella Utopia rev. 2 on blowout...$42k...normally $99k. They recently updated all to rev. 3 (small changes internally and some new automotive paint samples) and hiked the price again to $119k...Focal is getting out of hand. But even with that, I just don’t want to go back for their lack of making replacement parts for a reference level speaker that is only 10 years old.

So, here is the Audio Solutions Figaro XL...

Figaro XL