Modification of Carver Amazing Platinums... Help



I recently purchased what I believe to be the BEST bang for the buck, the Amazing Platinums. MINT condition piano gloss for only $800!!

Anyway, I was extremely disappointed to find that not only are they not bi-wirable, but the binding posts were outfitted with crappy plastic lugs. I want to vertically bi-amp these speakers with an Aragon 4004 mkII on the subs and a Music Reference RM-9 on the ribbons.

Can anyone with experience please explain to me what needs to be done to accomplish this, or point me in the right direction for modification instuctions?

I've posted this question to the Planar Asylum and done extensive searches on the net (with what little time I have) to no avail.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help me!!!
marchman

Showing 3 responses by sean

Your best bet would be to contact Sunfire and ask for Carver technical assistance. They may be able to forward you a copy of the schematic or point you to someone that can. From there, it should be relatively easy to seperate the two sections of the speaker once you can see exactly what is going on. Sean
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Marchman, Thanks for the kind words. With that in mind, my advice to you is to look into contacting Rudi if at all possible. Mrcaspence1 and Mar4004 gave you some leads that might be easy to follow up on.

Active bi-amping with a good crossover will make a PHENOMENAL difference to most any speaker. According to Mar4004 the results were "Quantum" with this speaker. I would not doubt it in the least. I like to refer to this as "direct drive" since the amps load directly into the drivers with nothing to get in the way. Since you've already got the amps, i wouldn't hesitate to take the next logical step. Not only is amp efficiency increased, the difference in sound quality will drop your jaw.

You might also want to run this by Dave at CarverAudio speaker repair and see what he thinks. Stephen was kind enough to post that link and it was pretty interesting to say the least. I'm sure that he's learned a few things along the way.

Talking to either or both Rudi and Dave should give you a better idea of where you want to go. Like anything else, i would suggest talking to experts in the field when dealing with a specific product. Those two are evidently quite qualified to pass judgment and make suggestions. Not having near the knowledge or experience with these speakers that either of those gentlemen would, i'll refrain from opening my big mouth and defer to their expertise : ) Sean
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PS... I tried to buy a pair of these not that long ago, but the "weasel" that was selling them began playing games. After i emailed him and told him that i would come pick them up that day with cash in hand, i never heard back from him. A few weeks later, i saw that he had re-listed them with a sizable price increase. I guess that he figured out that he had priced them under market value due the amount of responses that he had received. Evidently, he decided to "correct" his mistake at my expense and not honor the original posting price.
If you wanted to go all out ( HA !!! Who wouldn't "like" to ??? ), one could probably make even further gains by actively bi-amping and using 4 identical mono-blocks for amps.

It is commonly known that most ribbons / planars / E-stat's can be difficult loads. Obviously, so can multiple woofers. If one were able to give each section of the speaker its own dedicated amplifier and power supply AND maintain channel seperation, you would have the best of both worlds. That is, so long as the amp was capable of driving each type of load easily AND sound good doing it. As we've all come to find out, some amps have specific sonic traits and may work best over a limited frequency range. Sean
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