Zu Omen or Tekton Lore

I'm in the process of upgrading the crossovers, and need a little advice.

I was curious about the zobel, the crossover I recieved from Eric has a zobel, but is 5.6uf and a 3ohm resistor. I believe the zobel you guys talked about is a 4uf and an 8ohm resistor. Now is it a replacement for what's there or is it put in parallel with what's there? Or would you leave well enough alone?

Did you guys experement with extra damping material, what did you use and what where the effects?

And as a side note, I'm not going with the mundorf sio yet... I can definatly see why they are suggested, I think they would be synergistic with this speaker, but alas finances at this point. Anybody try any PIO, I'm going to try Russian KBG first and possibly try bypass with SSG Silver Mica.

Just want to comment on the KBG crossovers with SSG's bypassing them...Oh wow there's resolution, and more natural sounding too, everything sounds more real, more organic. The bass is tighter and much more defined, I've never heard the zing of the round wound bass strings on Blue Rodeo's 5 days in may! There's so much more detail. More soundstage information and images are clearer defined. Albeit the soundstage depth has not improved, but again it is more defined, the back details are brought to where the soundtage existed before. There's more drum stick on cymbals and dryer violins resonating with better seperation in orchestral. Horns, vocals, drums, piano all sound more real. Highly recomended upgrade for a budget.

I might try it without the SSG's later on but I have a feeling that's were allot of the detail is comming from.

Now to experiment with the Zobel a little. If you put the specs into a zobel calculator it comes to 8.61ohm and 14.11uf, that's much larger than 8ohm and 4uf or the 3ohm and 5.6uf already in the crossover.

Yes, I just pulled out the crossover with a bit of force, you shouldn't have to pull too hard.

I've removed the ssg bypasses and I'm running just the kbg's right now, and it's better toned, coherant and dynamic, ie,; less detail but also less compression in the highs. Those ssg's pull out too much detail I think by compressing the highs.

a couple other things you could do; With the shunt, instead of changing capacitor values is reduced the 3ohm resistor to 2ohms. This seems to help a touch, just right for me, I did try some other value capacitors and settled on this for now. Also some additional batting behind the speaker helps alot to focus the image.

I still think if you can afford it the SIO would be synergistic with helping the soundstage and detail of the Lores, but I've never actually heard it just speculating on my SIO experience in amps.

Genjamon,

SSG is a Russian silver mica capacitor, I was running .1uf values which is a very large value silver mica. They're more detailed than any capacitor I've heard, and I have some really nice teflons. They ended up sounding compreshed and hashy after I got over the thrill of the detail.

KBG is a PIO Russian Capacitor, some say it's copper film, but I havn't taken one apart yet. I actually doubt it, Russian pio caps oil makes aluminium yellowish IME.

The KBG's mellow the tweeter a bit as well as a little more relaxed and natural sounding. Still not perfect but an improvement IMHO.

As mentioned earlier on this thread there is a hotness in the lower treble and is mistaken as the tweeter, but with the high crossover point it's more likely the upper range of the woofer as a few guys here have discovered. I reduce the resistor I mentioned even more (1.5ohm), I may try taking it out period but I'm not in a hurry to try as I think the Lower treble helps add to the "live" feel.

I still very much like mine.

Still want to play with the crossover too, but I'm a pretty big nerd when it comes to this stuff. I also put in a Duelund resistor, and cotton insulated wire. I'd really like to try Duelund caps, but I think they're too much for me now, I'll probably put them in my pendragons when I get them ;)

If you can afford it I really do think Erics recommendation of SIO would be the way to go, he does know what he's doing. A SIO cap in my preamp seemed to bring out more depth, soundstage and dynamics that the lores had to offer if that has any correlation. They're also very resolving in the highs and smooth in the "live" area.

SIO = Mundorf Silver-in-oil, it is Erics recomended upgrade that you can purchase from him. You can buy parts and diy but for the price he offers the upgrade is nearly worth the parts alone.