Quality issues with Tekton speakers....


I was reading all the buzz about these Tekton speakers and after sorting through all the reviews, decided to order a pair of the Pendragon (the big ones... $2,500 a pair).

When they arrived, I found them to be boxed well and in perfect shape, although one thing was very noticeable once I looked at the speakers. The woofers had a slightly different tone (color). The upper woofer in each tower was basically dark gray or black (like most paper woofers you might come across) and the lower woofers were slightly blue in color. After looking on the web some, I could not find a Pendragon speaker photo ANYWHERE that had this color difference. Since they did not come with speaker grilles, I knew the color difference would bother me as long as I owned the speakers.

I contacted Tekton (Eric Alexander) via e-mail and explained the issue. After almost a week of not hearing back, I sent another e-mail and his response was...

(copy and pasted right from my e-mail)... " I'm sorry. Please refresh my memory. What seems to be the problem? Thanks, Eric"

I described the issue again and he offered to exchange the speakers. I said there was no need to ship back a huge pair of 85 pound speakers and have him send me another pair and suggested maybe he just send me grilles at no charge to cover the speakers and I could live with the slight color difference in the woofers. I really feel that grilles should be included in a $2,500 price tag however.

All of these e-mails took several days to answer by the way.

He agreed and said he would get the grilles out right away... they were sent a few days later and upon arrival, I realized there was a pretty big problem. I had a normal type speaker grill with 4 pegs on the back and a speaker with no peg holes. After all the time, e-mails, no answers, etc., I was not interested in wasting any more time with the matter and asked for a partial refund through PayPal and asked a simple question... why send me grilles for a speaker that he just shipped to me with no holes to put them in? His reply was to offer to make new grilles and send "velcro dots" to affix them to the speakers with.... WOW.

The WORST part about all this: Within 30 minutes of making a PayPal claim about the issue and asking for a partial refund from him, Eric tried to call me right away... now that there was money at stake.

The really sad part of all this is that the speakers actually sound pretty damn good now that they are broken in... I just hope the quality and communication come up to the same level for the sake of Tekton as a company.
128x128audiofreak32
Audiofreak, I can bottom-line this thread for you...

Along with some helpful suggestions from people who don't have any financial/emotional attachment to Tekton, you're being minimized by two kinds of people here.

The first is the person who actually own Tektons and they're dealing with some latent fear that if the small, independent maker of their speakers were to receive enough negative "press" the company may go out of business and they'd lose access to parts, service, etc. They couldn't care less about your problem, except for hoping that your problem becomes muted so it doesn't indirectly someday become their problem.

The second is the person who has formed an emotional bond with the company, and your issue is creating tremendous cognitive dissonance that they can't compartmentalize. It's like showing up on a Hostess Apple Pie Lovers message board and announcing that Hostess Apple Pies gave you food poisoning - emotional distress galore.

In both cases, it's not their $2500 in play, and it ain't their molehill so to speak. They just want you to go away. And there's a good chance this thread will be deleted, in which case your molehill will have never existed at all.

Going forward, consider this whole situation a valuable lesson learned - about speakers and people. Like Jaxwired posted, should you ever again consider buying boutique, you now know the risks involved, but if you want the drivers to match you may want to consider KEF or Dynaudio (or B&W, Proac, Harbeth, etc)

Best of luck to you.
Hi Roxy54,
Off topic for a moment. Impressions of your AN Kit 300b amplifier, you can answer on my system page if you're so inclined.
Back to the thread topic.
Thanks,
Charles,
Could you provide pictures of the loudspeaker drivers showing the different hues? And to clarify, there are no issues about the drivers sounding different?