Tannoy anyone? Cheviot Legacy vs. Stirling GR

@budburma

That does NOT sound like my experience at all with new Tannoys. Sure, they can sound better with burn in but they shouldn’t sound anywhere near bad at hour 0. Burn-in isn’t going to fix that. I would NOT be a happy camper in your shoes.

It’s definitely worth opening them up and checking all connections (i.e. carefully remove the front drivers and then binding post plates). The internal speaker wires are not soldered to the drivers nor binding posts. They are connected to terminal posts via cheap little slide clips. I’ve even seen those come off from shipping. I’ve had one come off from loud bass playback in my Canterbury GR. If a driver or drivers(s) is no longer connected because of this, it will very clearly sound "broken" (maybe a disconnected woofer in your case). 

At least feel the surrounds for vibration during playback to make sure neither woofer is "cold"! 

@mulveling  As an owner of the Sterlings I appreciate your information regarding the internal wiring.  Seems like it would not be to difficult to remove the drivers to make repairs if necessary. I wonder if the drivers are available and at what cost. May have to look into this.

As an afterthought, I have had my Sterlings for ~18 months. to listening sessions due to temporal constraints I likely have somewhat less than2 00 hours on them. I wonder about the breakin period.

I have a couple of Tannoy Kensington and Canterbury, IMHO there isn’t much of opening/breakin.

The day I received the Canterbury, I connected them to an amp and a streamer in a  room I never use, left them for 5 weeks 24x7 the sound had changed but  not as much as others experience.

Same with the Kensington 

Well, I'm told by the dealer in Montreal 250hr and by Upscale 300hr with some significant change at 100. Upscale is working with me to look into it. I'm dubious about taking them apart myself. The Montreal dealer wants a 25% restocking fee. As @mulveling says, I'm not a camper at this point, but the story's not over yet.

That kind of break-in has not been my experience with new Devore Super Nines or Dynaudio1.8mkII back in the day - they started out very good and wound up great. And, these Tannoy don't sound anything like my friend's - I bought these on my listening to his Stirlings with my Leben CS600 and wires. So, the only difference being our sources. His Linn/Adikt/EAR 834P vs my modded TT and same modded pre - Thorens/SME/Soundsmith/EAR. My digital source has always sounded great too....Music Vault Diamond/AMR DP777SE all guccied up with nice tubes, etc.

My suspicion at this point is that these are a faulty pair somehow and hope that it's not indicative of the overall line. If they don't fall into place somehow, I guess I'll have to eat the 25%....