Thursday, August 14, 2008

Cat Scratch Fever!


I'm a big time animal lover, and I've got a cat who likes to keep warm on my Krell KRC-HR power supply. He doesn't cause any damage to my gear, and I generally get along with him except when he whines in the middle of the night and interrupts my already fragmented sleep. He's a troublemaker, but doesn't destroy stuff.

This guy must have done something really rotten to his cat to deserve this kind of punishment. We got these parts in after shutdown, and man they look rough. We see lots of cat scratch fever around here - I think audiophiles must be cat lovers. But man, this is bad. The customer said the woofers don't look bad at all which leads me to believe that his cat took running leaps at the speakers, landed on the low-mids, and clawed it's way to the top of the cabient shredding the grilles and everything beneath them on the way up. Despite our best efforts at protecting the delicate Scan-Speak tweeters with a tough screen, you can see that it was crushed by penetrating claws of destruction.

We've seen grilles that look worse than these before. Some have come in with actual tears in them. No such thing was found on these grilles probably because the cat got a great grip on the drivers. This poor guy is out more than $1100 bucks getting his speakers fixed. Bad kitty!

To all you cat owners wondering if you should upgrade to CS3.7s: A number of innovations have been developed to deter cat-scratch fever. 1) when the grille is in place, a screen covers the entire coax making it difficult for all but the most aggressive cats to shred the driver. 2) The tweeter is fortified by a rigid guard which provides a 2nd level of protection beyond the aforementioned screen. 3) The cast aluminum top is formed into a shape that makes it very unlikely that your cat will choose it as a perch.

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