ML Aerius and Cinema in 230V land

[bnam]

I moved abroad from CA on a 2-3 year assignment and decided to take my MLs with me. Where I was headed had 230V so I was concerned about whether the speakers would work there. So I contacted Jim and he said I could send in the back panels of my Aerius for conversion, but I'd have to send in the whole Cinema speaker.

Since my trip ended up being pretty much up in the air till last minute, I only sent in the Aerius boards a few days before I left and then picked them up a few weeks later on a biz trip home and took it with me in my luggage. The Cinema was shipped unaltered.

So, when I got here I hooked up the Cinema thru a 2000W voltage convertor (steps down from 230 to 110 but I think the freq is unchanged at 50Hz vs. US 60Hz). The aerius's with the new 230V boards were connected directly and work fine, but the sound through the Cinema is ~>10db less than the front L/R.

Initially I thought it was the reciever problem, but I switched L and Center and the problem remained with the Cinema. Looks like I am getting no sound from the panel part of the Cinema.

I cannot ship the whole speaker back to Jim, but I thought I could just remove the boards and send it back (like the Aerius). The access to the board seems to be thru the cone speakers which are secured with Allen keys which seem to be an unusual size as the ones I have don't fit. Has anyone tried accessing the boards on this speaker? Any tips?

Thanks,
byas

 

[kach22i]

Sell the speaker on e-bay and purchase a new one locally?

Why can't you ship the whole speaker to M/L again?

 

[bnam]

Nothing locally on ebay. Shipping is ~10K miles one way. Can be done, but I'd rather not go thru hassles of customs clearance etc again.

I did find a ML authorized dealer who said he can get the 230V boards from ML, so that's probably the path I'll take.

thx.

 

[Cherian]

See if you can find an 50 to 60Hz 230 to 120VAC inverter. A very low power one will do. You will not need more than 50 VA. You can find these for $200 to $300.00. See the link below. This is a frequency converter. Then you can just use a step down x-former to change from 230 to 120. Good luck.

http://www.falconups.com/ssg-500-05-2006.htm