Modification of Carver Amazing Platinums... Help
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 > |
Thank you, Sean. If you have a minute, would you please give me your opinion based on this schematic I dug up? http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/8231/mag/bass2.html I value the opinions you make here and I could feed them to a buddy of mine who I know can do the work. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Regards, MG |
I found a solution that took the AL-III's from excellent to awesome! Audio Extreme "[email protected]" (owner Rudi Blianca a well respected ribbon expert on the Speaker Builder DIY news Group)makes an active crossover that eliminates the power hungry passive crossover in the Carvers. It requires bi-amping the Carvers. The difference was quantum. With this crossover and a bi-amp configuration efficincy is advertised as at least 3 dB better. I think it was closer to 6 dB!! My amp now runs cool with little fan actuation. The bass is much much better (tighter amd more Found this on www.audioreview.com regarding the carver amazing III -perhaps this person has a crossover for the platinums- hope it helps. mar4004 |
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 > 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. |
Hello, I have a schematic for the Carver Amazings. I changed my orignal Amazings to bi-wire and it was fairly easy. If you can solder and follow a schematic you can do this. And what a big differance it makes!! The ribbons just come alive. This upgrade will work best if you can vertical bi-amp with two of the same amps. You can e-mail with your address if you like and I can send you a copy of the schematic Regards Bob |
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 > |
Thanks to all for the continued responses to this thread. I've emailed (and it didn't bounce) Rudi, but I haven't gotten a response. I haven't tried to contact Dave yet. Not enough hours in the day for me here recently. Bob, I would love to see your schematic. My first choice (obviously) would be the active crossover. If I can't get Rudi to respond, I need to do the upgrade that you have performed. I NEED (read: want) to get two amps on these suckers ASAP. Sean, four (4) amps is a great idea. And I'm more than sick enough to do it. This disease has really taken root. Best to all, March |
A public thanks to Sonicbob who not only entertained me on the phone last night for 20+/- minutes, but who is also sending me schematics on how to complete the job. I'm sure the guys over at the Planar Asylum will be equally tickled when I share the information that Bob is providing. Still no response from Rudi!!! Looks like I'm going the passive route!! Regards, March |
