Merlin owners who have modified x-over?

I find Bobby P's sharing of an on-going R&D project refreshing. There are very few manufacturers who bother to participate in these forums at all. I doubt those who decline to do so are reticent owing to ethical concerns about mixing advertising in an "open forum." Rather than share information, they are as likely determined to wrap their R&D in a cloak of invisibility.

David P, As Alice said, it gets curiouser and curiouser. Now a post by someone who lambasts a manufacturer and a dealer, has no Agon-listed system, and provides a pointer to a 20% off sale at PCx... BTW, see my system for Merlin modified with Claritycap MR, Duelund, and Mundorf-- all excellent piece parts in this context.

David P., Actually I use only Claritycap MR and Duelund resistors in xover. Elsewhere in system I have used Mundorf Silver/Gold, V-Cap, and NOS Russian teflon caps-- all excellent and significant improvements compared to stock caps found in even very high-priced components.

The stock inductors in Merlin VSM are heroically large, custom-wound affairs that I don't plan to replace. My only experience with aftermarket inductors is with Alphacore aircore foil types that I use as 95kHz noise filters in analog domain of my modded CDP. I have a switch on that player that allows alternating between filter vs. straight through-- so I can hear what those inductors are doing. They are very transparent, detailed and smooth.

As great an effect as piece parts can have on a system, I have been reluctant so far to accept the significant upcharge for Duelund capacitors. The marketing that accompanies these caps seems to position signal caps (and particularly xover caps) much like standalone audiophile components-- with commensurately exhorbitant prices. My experience modifying every component in my system does not wholely reject this idea, but in the end it seems to me more likely that the psychology at work resembles the marketing of very expensive cables. With cables I know that relatively inexpensive DIY designs can get very close to uber-priced commercial cables. The marginal return (for the DIYer at least)may be is greater putting the expenditure into some other improvement. Of course if cost is no object then anything goes.

Claritycap MR and Duelund resistors were broken in and evaluated separately in each section of the crossover. The MRs sound great across FR and are claimed by design to have internal resonance control characteristics similar to Duelund. Duelund graphite resistors (once broken in) have an exceptionally clear, detailed, and musical HF and represent excellent value-- even in view of relatively high price for a resistor.