Pushing the envelope on B&W 802 series3

If you don't have stands for your 802's, that would be my first upgrade. A good pair of stands( I have Sound Anchors)will tighten everything up.

If you don't have lots of funds for component upgrades, I would work on the finer points of tuning your system. Clean all contacts. Separate your cabling so its neat. Play around with component isolation. Put some maple under your pre and cd player for instance. Inexpensive maple butcher block can be found at Home Depot.

By doing these simple things you will learn more about your system than if you went out and bought a bunch of toys.

Have the stands, got them with the speakers, thanks. Trying different cables now. we'll see. With a good recording the sound is heaven, not bright just right , great sound stage. Try "The Hunter" by Jennifer Warnes. Great vocal recording, used by Stereophile reviewers for years.

I am sure your 802 are bi-wired?

Upgraded to Tara Labs RSC Prime 1000 15' Bi-wire cable. spades on the amp end bananas on the speaker end. Also re tubed the Audio Research LS-7 preamp with new Sovtek 6922 tubes. It's grrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat. Very Happy. The system will be featured in the Dec. issue of Audio/Video interiors magazine. Stay tuned, Poloman.

Avnut got it right. Play with the low-tech for now. try multiple positioning (move the speakers around a bit.)

Relax. enjoy. Good stuff.

Negotiating now with a friend for a pair of B&K M200 monoblocks, Im sure those will help. Also funds permitting would like to send out to Musical Concepts for modifications. Either the Signature or the Platinum mod if I could afford it. That should do wonders for sound staging. Stay tuned.

Okay, Sold my B&K EX442, right here on Audiogon and upgraded to an older Classe DR-25,250/wpc, much more transparent and greater imaging and impact.

Have a Sumiko-trained technician properly place the speakers in your room. This'll give you more improvement than any equipment change you can make.

Dave

unfortunately, your speakers, especially the kevlar midranges, are still considered to be one of the fastest, most accurate drivers on the planet (unless you have the ears of a martian).
this means the sky is the limit on what amp and preamp you could use, and that goes for your source as well. i had 801's and i upgraded endlessly to get more, always much more music out of them. the last time i heard them my friend, who bought my pair, was driving them with pass aleph equipment (the 1.2 monoblocks were $14k a pair) and once again they were completely transformed into "something else". listening to small jazz groups on them at that point was something you do NOT want to hear until you are ready to clean out your bank account.

I just had the crossovers upgraded. they are ready to be picked up. when I get them home and broken in I will update this thread with a list of parts. And my listening impressions. All the caps were replaced and the boards re glued and fastened better to the cabinet. Stay tuned.

A small word of caution: If you were to try the Filter to augment the low freq, it actually works much better with the series-2 801 & 802. The series-3 has small differences in crossover topologies over the series-2.

And the series-2 also had non ferro-fluid tweeters on them while all tweeters made after 1991 were ONLY with ferro-fluid cooling. The ferro-fluid ones are not as open as their non ferro-fluid counterparts. Lot of series-2 801 & 802 users blamed the speakers for being thin or shrill or edgy. Problem was that owners weren't able to tune it correctly with their system. The non ferro-fluid tweeters I guess are pretty close in HF response with the now much hyped Diamond ones!

Hope to see the new crossover review soon.