Loose Drivers

Nope, this isn't a post about dogging.

I recently noticed a distortion coming from what I thought were my relatively new Quad 12L's the other day. The Quad's are 4-5 months old now (bought new).
The distortion sounded like a very large moth fluttering its wings somewhere near me (i bloody hate moths).
After jumping back into my skin, I very carefully tightened up the screws (allen key type) used to attach the drivers into the cabinets...and to my surprise, some were very loose indeed. In fact, 2 on the right tweeter could've been turned with my fingers they were that loose

My question is: Is this normal? I have now tightened up all the screws in both speaker cabinets and was I hoping it was a one off and wouldn't have to do it again.

PS It didn't cure the problem. The sound was the cloth front cover of the passive sub under the table rattling (amazing that I could've sworn it was coming from both speakers about 5 feet away from it...the distortion was being "thrown" forward quite a bit). Now fixed.

PPS tightening up the drivers might have focused the vocals slightly....but I'm not too sure as the new lack of sub distortion is the more noticeable difference (which might account for the percieved clarity).

 

Oh, I'm off then

 

Its not unusual. The whole lot is vibrating all the time so its worth checking your drivers now and again.

 

it's a good idea to gentley tighten the screws every so often. it is all vbrating, somethings will come loose.

 

I had a loose driver once, until I bolted him in, only ever pressed his face against the window, fully secured now

 

Tighten until you hear something metallic fall off inside the cabinet and then back off half a turn

 

you've got to be damn careful.

I over tightened my bass units on my old speakers, and nearly wrecked the drive units.

The sound became dreadful aswell. Luckily I didnt do any permanent damage, and carefully managed to get the bolts back to the correct level of tightness.

Definately one to be careful with.

 

Buy a torque driver

 

I would just nip them up - they arent high tensile bolts and MDF/chipboard is not very rugged. then apply some locking compound/nail varnish/Wilco's all purpose glue to discourage loosening.

 

I hand tightened them (but not too tight as i realise it's only wood).
I was just surprised they came from the factory like that (surely only a few months of music wouldn't loosen them so much?).
They are currently tight enough to not be loose but not enough for me to hear any odd noises or dimple/damage the veneer (or, to put it another way, it would be straight forward to carefully unscrew them...I wouldn't need to have the arms of a Russian shotputter )