Back in early September during a Friday afternoon listening session, to my horror, the mid-panels in the right channel of my RM30 Series II started to make an intermittent “fuzzy/crackling" type sound that went on for a few minutes and then all three panels in that channel went completely dead.
Knowing that these drivers are wired in series, and having the OXO option, it was easy to disconnect the "Mid" crossover terminals and, with an ohmmeter, isolate the problem. It turned out that the top driver had opened (failed). I removed it from the enclosure by cutting the leads (as I had seen Brian do during a service call) and then removing the spade lugs by carefully securing the lugs and phillips head screws while loosening the nuts .
Viewed under magnification I noticed that the contact pad for one of the terminals appeared to be partially separated from the diaphragm and that both it and the diaphragm itself had lifted from the PC board. Also noticed, was the conductive layer on the interior wall of the screw hole was partially gone.
Since I don’t fully understand how the circuit is physically made up between the terminals and the conductive strips on the diaphragm, and also, realizing that I had little to lose, I decided to implement a “seat-of-the-pants” kind of fix. I cut ~1/4” wide strips of aluminum foil and wrapped the foil around the terminal screws just under the heads, going around twice. When reassembling, the foil mushroomed slightly under the spade lug on one side of the PC board and nut on the other side. I then cleared the excess foil between the terminals to prevent a short. The resistance now tested comparably to the other two panels and the driver also responded as expected when a 9 volt battery was applied to the terminals.
That was over three months ago and after many hours of listening, the speaker has performed flawlessly. Sooooo, if you have a Neo-panel failure all is not necessarily lost. It may be possible to fix it. I’m posting this with the hope that it may help a fellow VMPS-er some day.
-Doug
