I had posted these in various places some time ago so here's a solo thread on pics of FO speaker flaws for easy reference.

Bought a pair of QS8s and this was the only flaw i could find, on one of them.


These are the only two possible flaws i could spot on my VP150.
The grille hides both regardless of how small and invisible they are.

Wow, those are more severe than all the FO's I've every purchased. In fact, I have yet to be able to find any defects after looking everything over with a fine tooth comb.

If i presented some pictures for scale at a distance say of 2 feet away, you would never be able to tell there was anything present.
I've had people come to audition the Axioms at our house and they asked about the Factory Outlet option.
I always tell them they've already been listening to FO speakers and if they wish, to try and find the flaws on them.
To help them out i at least let them know that the EP350 was bought new, not from the Outlet, to cut down on their searching time.
No one has spotted the QS8 vinyl wrinkle. It is about 3/4" long, near a back corner and looks more like a wood ripple than anything. It is by far the worst 'flaw' on any of our FO speakers.

These were the same pics you sent me when I asked about the factory outlet back in May sometime.

Really not bad at all, and from what I hear this is as bad as it gets!

I will be making my future axiom purchase through the factory outlet.

I think the wait time will kill me though!

If you check for one of ctown's posts awhile back he had a couple of quite bad FO speakers.

I will post my 2 flaws that I could find on my 3 FO speakers later.

Wow, ctown's FO speakers were def. worse than the ones shown here.

At least they let him upgrade to new ones for a reduced fee of $23 (i think 5% extra instead of 10% extra.)

If you ordered an entire 5.1 system that looked like that, the fee would probably by more substanstial of course....

Other people's experience with the FO seems to be mostly positive though.

Here is a couple of pics of my M60s from the FO, both are very minor and one is on each speaker.




There a couple of very minor seam issues on the bottom plate to sides but hardly worth taking a picture of. I wouldn't refuse them from a nonFO purchase if they were bought that way, that's how minor they are.

Yeah, here were my issues with my FO M22's.


JC at Axiom told me to send them back and for something like $20 extra I got a brand new pair of M22's that were not B stock. Great company to deal with. My QS8's are FO and nothing wrong with them so far.

Completely happy with my setup.

I got a vp150 from the FO dept. and i couldn't find a defect.... and I checked! If its there I can't find it ....