2. speakers
  3. 1126890142

upgrading speaker crossovers & tuning

I recently picked up a pair of Snell type A's (orginals) in near perfect condition. The foams were recently upgraded.

I have them hooked up to 60 watts of tube power while I search for the preamp & power that will drive them for real.

At this point the speakers sound fine (barring the lack of the right power), but I'm considering having the crossovers upgraded. I found a gent out on the east coast that has redone one pair of Type A crossovers with apparently very good results. (see bottom of webpage --> http://classicloudspeakerservices.com/gallery.html#crossover)

There is one point I'm sticking on & I hope someone here can help me out. It's said that Peter Snell 'tuned' each set of speakers prior to them being available for sale. I hear this is still the practice today.

One description of the tuning I've run across is: "A highly specialised set up process, which matches the crossover to the drivers in a way that not only aligns the drivers in the frequency and time domain, but also affects the dispersion."

My question is whether the crossover upgrades will basically negate the tuning that Snell did. Is this 'tuning' marketing hype or something real that shouldn't be lost? As I said, the speakers currently sound very nice, but I have to believe the capacitors and resistors might be weak just from age alone on top of being obsolete in design.

If the tuning is lost by the upgrade, can I get it back? I'm told there are variable resistors in the crossover that may be the tuning mechanism & that the upgrade doesn't touch these. Would this maintain the tuning in spite of the upgrade?

Lots of questions I know...

thanks
fishboat

Showing 1 response by rauliruegas

Ag insider logo xs@2x
rauliruegas
12,762 posts
 
Dear Fishboat: I agree almost with Jeff.

Where you can hear an improvement is when you change the inductors and capacitors ( less with the resistors, but you can try. ).

The Alphacore inductores are the best that I know, I'm using the silver wire version, better than the cooper one.

About the capacitors: I already try almost every cap out there, including the Sonicaps that are very good, and I think that the best are the ones from V-caps: hands down any other cap in the market for a speaker crossovers.

For the resistors, nothing come close like Mills resistors.

Where I disagree with Jeff is about the variable resistors, because this ones are used to " tame " some internally design parameters and maybe you could use it for align something in the speaker crossover.
Now, if after you change the caps and inductors you think that everything is Ok, then you can follow to change that variable resistors for good fixed ones ( Caddock ).

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.
More to discover