Snell C-III

Snell used a lot of electrolytics in his crossover, which are all past their end of life.

Completely worthwhile replacing with film - BUT!!!

Really strongly suggest you measure the ESR of what you are replacing. Those old wet caps were a lot higher in ESR than modern wet or dry caps, so altering them without being able to fully analyze what you have and what your targets are can yield unexpected results.

Ideally, see if you can find some one else’s work on this already. It may save you from reinventing the wheel.


If you can’t do that, or it sounds like too much trouble, compromise and replace wet caps with Dayton or Mundorf bi-polars. Certainly for bass caps, which can be pretty big, this can be a big cost savings. :)


If you want to measure what you have, I suggest DATS V2. Inexpensive and very accurate.

Have owned many pairs of Snells over the years.

Before removing the woofers, you may want to remove the tweeters and see if they are dead or not. if dead, no need to remove the woofers. Just replace the tweeters, if you can find a pair. Pretty hard to find these days.

The woofers are mounted with a tar like material to the front baffle. Don't pry on the outer edge of the woofer basket, or you'll just chip up the baffle face edge. Need to get a small screw driver and press through the mounting holes to gently pry woofer out. will take some time so dont rush it.

as for the caps, there is probably a mix of electrolytics with film bypasses. If the electrolytics are dried out, then may consider  replacing them, but and a big but, be careful since you will screw up the tonal balance of the speaker if you go too far. Each Snell used to have the cross over hand tweeked to get it to match a master reference pair.

Leave those x-overs alone! Peter Snell used quality parts in his x-overs! No need to be so neurotic! I own Type AIII's, E's and J's.

Try asking your question over at DIYaudio.com