Domes & Ribbons Sharing


I have an original pair of the Legacy Classic's from 1985 that I have kept for all these years.  They are really my backup speakers that switch on and off when I want to hear them.   Needless to say, one of the original Leaf tweeters was blown, and the crossover stop working at that point. The existing Leaf was a pair of
 EAS-10TH400A which are very rare/expensive and hard to find I had to find.

Legacy directly me thankfully to a Beston RT002A ribbon which fit nicely in the hole. The problem was the really in the crossover and I could not find or isolate the reason why the both new ribbons would not work. I   I decided to wire in at the terminal where the dome which is an Audax TWO034XO which has a family low crossover point around 800HZ and the Beston are are at 2000HZ.  My question to those who might know or understand this better than me, can you really piggyback a dome and a ribbon with the same crossover points?  I ask Legacy and they said it would not damage the ribbon since its capable of 40 watts and the Audax is capable of 70 watts.  

After a couple weeks of listening I really like the sound and I am wondering if this has been done before and is there anything wrong with doing it this way?  I presume that the ribbon will go on at it's low point of 2000HZ but will shut off at whatever the dome was set at, so its never gets to 20HZ or more, which of course I cannot hear anyway.  Does anyone have any input for me on this subject or suggestions to make it better without really digging into the crossover to find whats wrong.  Let me know your thoughts. 


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Showing 1 response by jmcgrogan2

I have an original pair of the Legacy Classic’s from 1985 that I have kept for all these years.

Wow, must have been one of Bill’s first pairs. Wasn’t he calling them Legacy 1’s back then? I don’t think he changed the name to Legacy Classic until the mid 90’s. I bought a pair of Legacy 1’s in 1987, though they are long gone by now. That was my gateway into high end audio. First time I ever heard names like Vandersteen, Audio Research, and Stereophile.
Those were the days....

I seem to recall blowing out a dome tweeter. Bill did not have any replacements. He sent me two new dome tweeters with two resistors, and then walked me through the crossover changes that I needed to make over the phone. Basically just jumping a resistor into each crossover.


After a couple weeks of listening I really like the sound and I am wondering if this has been done before and is there anything wrong with doing it this way?

If it sounds good to you, don’t worry about it, just enjoy the music.