Brass screws make a real difference on Dunlavy s ?

Well, I took your advice and decided to tighten the screws on the SC-V(s)and everything in the HT room ranging from the SC-IV(s) to the SC-I center channel. Some of the screws were very snug to begin with while others took a couple of rotations to tighten to a solid point. Putting on some high rez very familiar music showed the effort to be worthwhile. Not talking about an earth shattering difference, but observable.

Many thanks!!

Good question(s) Foster. What I noticed was a modest amount of additional transparency. It is the sort of improvement you get when using a good CD cleaner or beveling the edge with a lathe. Last night was fun using some very familiar high def CDs as reference, and then applying most all my standard tweaks in addition to the tightened screws. I have never heard the reference two channel system sound better. This evening I plan to do the same sort of thing to the reference HT room to see if similar improvements are found. I will post the results.

To answer a couple of comments/questions, I just simply tightened all existing driver mount screws to a secure/snug level. I did not try to apply a lot of force or torque but tried to bring all the screws to about the same point of rotation. I did this with seven speakers associated with two different systems. As I mentioned before, some screws were already very tight, some I could move maybe a quarter turn and some were loose enough to require a couple of full rotations. The benefits to the two channel systems were readily observable but not earth shattering by any means. The speakers in the HT room were harder to get a gauge on, but overall I would say there was at least some minor improvement there as well.

It's been interesting to see some of the rather skeptical reactions to this post. All I can say to this is that tweaking a system is a process of trial and error, but the cumulative results of staying open minded and incorporating minor changes can have (and often does have) major improvements to a system. That can be true even if the system is performing already at a very high level.

Tweaks are typically the least expensive things to do to a system. In this case tightening the screws took all of ten minutes or so. I then had the pleasure of listening to familiar source material and finding a trace more detail present than I thought possible to extract.

Begator, seems to me you enjoy splitting hairs. Am I to understand that tightening screws to their original tension level is not a tweak, but if they are now secured better than new and an advancement in sound is the result, that somehow this is a tweak?

I guess if drawing these distinctions makes you feel wiser and better about the discussion, I say go for it. Hey, it's a free country.

Thanks Peter for getting the discussion back to something useful. I plan to keep the Dunlavy(s) for a long time and as they age there will no doubt be a need to find creative ways to maintain or improve their performance. As a side note, I have had some issues with the binding posts on the SC-V(s) and have had to replace some of the midrange drivers. All-in-all, however, I think that the Dunlavy designs are 'true classics' worth the time and effort to keep them in top operational condition.