tweaking cross over speaker

can you solder? call parts express for the parts

I had a local awesome Tech upgrade my old Celestion Ditton 442's for maybe 200-300 bucks and it did wonders. Granted they were from the late 70's early 80's but still. Hey used the same caps in my Conrad Johnson MF200 (There black/really dark red i forget the name). He also installed a fuse which would blow before my tweeter, sonicly I dont if this will degrade the sound but I cranked those up high and just blew fuses intead of tweeters. Screw sonicly they were awesome when i got them back, they were awesome when I handed them off, They just had a far better presentation, smoother midrange and highs, and were jost overall more listenable and we never agreed on which cable to use so he kept the stock one. I think if you make the right choice youll be very happy. Talk to a good local tech or speaker manufacturer and ask there advice and possibly offer them the job would be my best advice.

Actually Im pretty certain the fuse was already there. But you could have it put in possibly

Installing larger gauge inductors will lower the DC resistance of them. Series resistance in the inductors are part of any serious crossovers design, so changing it is not recommended.

Peter

Thenis, Look me up and send me an email at home with all of the speaker information that you have. I will look your speakers up and give you solid changes that you can make. PBN Audio is absolutely correct about resistance, but I have had a coil winder for years and have resistance charts, we should be able to sub some without problems. Either way, send me what you can and I'll see how I can help, Tim

Hi Thenis, Caps are an easy change. The biggest difference will be made by changing any cap that is in the positive lead. These caps will be in the crossover circuit directly and not compensation circuitry. Any film cap should be an improvement over electrolytic. Grades in asending order are Mylar, polycarb, metalized polyprop, polyprop, poly styrene, paper & oil, teflon. Most companies today use Metalized poly propylene, the higher the voltage capability the better, these are generally a very nice improvement over electrolytics or mylar. It really depends wether the caps are series or parallel wired in the crossover to know how much difference the parts will make.
As mentioned earlier, switching coils or inductors is a little more tricky. Sometimes, a coil is wound in a smaller gauge to use its resistance in place of a resistor to cut the parts count in a crossover. If you can keep your resistance matched, it is typically much better (at least in tweeter & mid circuits)to replace iron ferite or steel core with air core, but resistance typically needs to be taken in consideration, it does depend on the coils use. I hope this all makes sense. To go much past this, I really suggest you buy a book on speaker building or find someone that has some real experience that you trust to guide you along the journey.
Good Luck,
Tim

Are the current inductors air or iron core?
Iron core has some theoretical problems....saturation at high levels and such.

To get an aircore to match, you'll need to know the DCR of the inductor to be replaced. THAN, spend some time looking at what's available. A small difference in DCR will not make a big difference.
For example: My Maggies have an iron core inductor in the lo pass on the 'woofer'. It has a DCR of 0.4 ohms. The panel itself? 4.1 ohms. So, since they are in series, the total resistance is 4.5 ohms. So far ok? Well, what happens if I go to a 0.2 ohm aircore inductor? Total DCR for the driver drops to 4.3 ohms, the crossover point shifts and the balance between the hi and lo drivers changes...the lows are now a little louder.

Consider your changes carefully. Parts ain't parts.