Electrostat voltage hum, need help please.

Mr. Soundman

AK Member
Hey guys! I've been trying to get my Infinty 2000A electrostats working that I just got a few days ago. The only thing heard thru the electrostats is a voltage hum. I've replaced the 20 and 55 micro farad caps. And I replaced one of the diodes in the group of 3 that is for the electrostats. The woofer and midrange work great, just wish I could get the electrostats to work. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your response.
 

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First, check for a ground loop. (When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.)

Run a signal generator through the speakers with nothing else connected so that you've isolated it from the main gear and can tell if it's endogenous or exogenous to the speaker.

Are you hearing hum through the speakers or just nearby? If it's nearby, you may just have buzzing from your transformer. Try mounting it on rubber grommets, as the original rubber (if any, I can't tell from the photo) has likely dried out. (I bought an huge assortment of grommets on that auction site for less than ten bucks.) If it's the windings, a high melting point Wax is the usual trick to fix that.
 
Those RTR tweeter are very reliable so it's unlikely that all (or even one of them), has gone bad.

You have probably lost the bias voltage or, the audio transformer that feeds the stators on the tweeters, is bad. From what I can see in your picture, it would be the board and transformer that would be generating those voltages. I would check those areas first for proper operation, poor connections, etc.

Please keep in mind that the bias and stator voltages can be several KV so caution is advised when working in those areas.
 
Check the speaker terminals for voltage. There should not be any when plugged in. If so, you have leakage.

WHen these came out I bought a pair and they blew up and were replaced with another new set that likewise blew up. Amp at the time was a Marantz 15 so not a lot of power. After 2nd set, went back to JansZens.
 
I had the same hum problem on a quad bass panel that got leaky . Leakage current loaded the polarization voltage hv cascade so much that there was hum riding on the HV dc. After fixing leakage, hum vanished. Leakage can be checked by inserting a neon/cap combination (like in Quad ESL63) between cacade output and electrostatic element.
 
A great big thank you to Retrovert, Brian, JAN Amps and volkerw for your replies and
information! It's greatly appreciated. I am going to have some free time after this weekend so I can put this info to work. I'll check back and leave info of my progress.
 
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