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JM Labs Electra 946 lack of high-end detail

I have a large open-plan home theater room that I could not fill with enough sound from my Boston VR-M90 mains. My (5th) sub, an SVS PB2 Plus, was up to the job, but overwhelmed the Bostons. So after reading the critiques in this forum I bought a used pair of Electra 946s. With a single Adcom 5802 they lack all high end detail. Bi-amping them with the Adcom 5802 bottom and 2 channels of an Adcom 5503 (a bright amp) brought out a lot of detail in the speakers, but they still lack the finesse and detail of the Bostons. (I like the Boston sound.) I use an Outlaw 970 pre/pro.

Any suggestions as to how to brighten up these speakers would be appreciated. My beef in partivular is with the single 5" midrange speaker and tweeter, which sound dead.

These speakers are the '80s speakers I couldn't afford back then: big stupid bass, as someone has pointed out, efficient, loud, but not refined.
lmhlaw

Showing 2 responses by undertow

undertow
1,033 posts
 
Aball, I think the 80's speakers he is refering to is the Bostons, not the JM Labs.. Focal drivers used in all JM labs I have had are anything but forgiving and low detailed highs or Crisp mids.. Mostly they are normally pretty midrang and Hi's heavy, so something else is going on here in my opinion.. Maybe a speaker Short to a wire inside or you have them Out of phase hooked at the amps, but that would normally make them even more Thin and bright..
undertow
1,033 posts
 
You can get exact driver replacement from Zalytron.com in new york, if they are still in business.. Also back when I had some Midrange drivers from Focal, I think they were what is called the Polycarbonate type or something, basically had a grey sand like feeling surface, they did not have the greatest quality control for some reason.. I would get a driver here and there when building kits that would actually make a scratching noise when moved by hand in the piston like pumping motion, this was a hung up or slightly out of center voice coil, and I guess it would make them not perform as well as a super smooth piston movement and made them sound like More Restricted..

I ended up getting them replaced and then they sounded better, I would assume having something like that out of whack and supposedly being the Hi quality tolerance FOCAL driver the gap and resistance.. etc in the speaker was off. By the way JM labs are FOCAL drivers, and can be found at other places as well, like Madisound.com ..

Other than that Zaikesman could be correct in the crossover, maybe a out of tolerance resistor or Cap??
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