Hi All,
I've been slowly collecting components from the Mordaunt Short Aviano series for... about 8 years! I started out with some bookshelf Aviano 1's, sometime later picked up the Aviano 5 centre and then everything went quiet as MS stopped making/selling them - and in fact seem to have pretty much given up trading completely?!
I had an eBay saved search running for YEARS looking for the Aviano 6 floorstanding speakers to complete the 5.0 setup. I'll be honest at this point it was purely just for the sake of completing the aesthetics, budgets have moved on since I started this "collection" and I should have probably just saved myself some drama and got a brand new setup from another brand, but hey-ho - my eBay search pinged the other day as some Aviano 6 in walnut came up for sale. Yes!
I spoke with the seller immediately and we arranged the deal, next day shipping - transaction was a pleasure to be a part of. I was gutted to find though that TNT were less impressed about the whole thing and by the looks of it had dropped the boxes on their end, several times.
Despite the sellers best efforts at packaging, I got some damage
The veneer of the main body for one of the speakers has a bit of crumpling - but this may be recoverable with an iron, a rag and some patience. The facias of both are a bit of a mess though.
From what I can gather, it's just a grey vinyl wrap on the faceplate - so in theory would be easily enough to peel it off and replace. I'd be highly unlikely to find an exact colour match, so would probably look to replace the vinyl on the centre and rear bookshelf speakers too...
My question for AV forums, a long shot - has anybody dismantled these speakers before and can they comment on the construction of them? It's not clear externally whether the faceplates seperate from the veneered main bodies. If they did, this would be a much nicer job as I could take them off, repair any damage under the vinyl and potentially even send them off to a pro for re-wrapping.
Alternatively does anybody have any generic advice for speaker cabinet repairs like this? I know these are not big-money speakers, but they're now quite hard to get hold of and it's going to cost me the best part of £2k to replace with a new set, so a bit of a DIY project probably isn't a terrible idea!
For the record, we're chasing TNT for remuneration. The delivery was insured, but no idea how we're supposed to prove whether or not the speakers were "appropriately packaged". Might be a fight we can't win, but fingers crossed.
I've been slowly collecting components from the Mordaunt Short Aviano series for... about 8 years! I started out with some bookshelf Aviano 1's, sometime later picked up the Aviano 5 centre and then everything went quiet as MS stopped making/selling them - and in fact seem to have pretty much given up trading completely?!
I had an eBay saved search running for YEARS looking for the Aviano 6 floorstanding speakers to complete the 5.0 setup. I'll be honest at this point it was purely just for the sake of completing the aesthetics, budgets have moved on since I started this "collection" and I should have probably just saved myself some drama and got a brand new setup from another brand, but hey-ho - my eBay search pinged the other day as some Aviano 6 in walnut came up for sale. Yes!
I spoke with the seller immediately and we arranged the deal, next day shipping - transaction was a pleasure to be a part of. I was gutted to find though that TNT were less impressed about the whole thing and by the looks of it had dropped the boxes on their end, several times.
Despite the sellers best efforts at packaging, I got some damage
The veneer of the main body for one of the speakers has a bit of crumpling - but this may be recoverable with an iron, a rag and some patience. The facias of both are a bit of a mess though.
From what I can gather, it's just a grey vinyl wrap on the faceplate - so in theory would be easily enough to peel it off and replace. I'd be highly unlikely to find an exact colour match, so would probably look to replace the vinyl on the centre and rear bookshelf speakers too...
My question for AV forums, a long shot - has anybody dismantled these speakers before and can they comment on the construction of them? It's not clear externally whether the faceplates seperate from the veneered main bodies. If they did, this would be a much nicer job as I could take them off, repair any damage under the vinyl and potentially even send them off to a pro for re-wrapping.
Alternatively does anybody have any generic advice for speaker cabinet repairs like this? I know these are not big-money speakers, but they're now quite hard to get hold of and it's going to cost me the best part of £2k to replace with a new set, so a bit of a DIY project probably isn't a terrible idea!
For the record, we're chasing TNT for remuneration. The delivery was insured, but no idea how we're supposed to prove whether or not the speakers were "appropriately packaged". Might be a fight we can't win, but fingers crossed.