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Upgrade 20 years old crossovers

My last thread informed me that the best thing I can do for my great 20 year old speakers is replace speaker wire inside cabinet and replace capacitors etc. on the cross over circuit board. Please help me prioritize in what order to change components on an old cross over circuit board say electrolytes, plate capacitors, resistors etc. Obviously there is diminishing return. Thanks in advance for helping out.
dcaudio
freshpuma
45 posts
 
Hi

I would suggest that you change one component at a time, listen to it for 14 days, then put back the old component and see if you like the old or new better.

I had a pair of old Tannoy dual concentric speakers. As I was unexperienced, I replaced all the parts at with really expensive stuff. I used the new crossover for some months, and then I decided to sell the speakers. Prior to the sale, I installed the old crossovers. And guess what, the speakers sounded better with the cheap old parts.

You can probably make your speaker sound better with exotic parts, but also worse.

What kind of speakers do you have?

Theo
dcaudio OP
88 posts
 
I have Etude MP1. They are twenty years plus old and have compared favorably in my opinion to Talon Firebird and Coincident Total Victory.
mingles
796 posts
 
You can spend a small fortune on capacitors and not achieve much. If you're looking for a dramatic change in sound, you should look elsewhere. If you're looking for a fun project to learn something new, then I highly recommend digging in. Remember though, upgrades like these don't add much (if any) to the resale value. These projects are definitely for DIY tinkerers.

I haven't found cap upgrades in crossovers to make a dramatic improvement. The change can be nice, but it's subtle. Others may disagree, but this has been my experience.

Theo's advice is good... go slow and be frugal. If I were in your shoes and wanted to experiment, I'd pull out one crossover and look at the caps. In particular, pay attention to the cap going to the tweeter. It's arguably the most important in a crossover b/c it passes high frequencies and filters the lows. This is how caps color the sound. Cheap caps like Bennic, Dayton, and Solen are often characterized as having a veiled sound when used in HF filters.

If you want to experiment, I'd start with the tweeter cap. I suggest a Dynamicap or an Auricap. If you want to go with a cheaper alternative, look at Sonicaps. They get glowing reviews:

http://www.10audio.com/sonicap_oimp_multicap.htm

I honestly don't think new wire will make much of a difference.

Best of luck,
Mark
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