B&W 803D crossover caps

Thank you for sharing your crossover upgrade experiences - I previously owned the 803D and 803 Diamond speakers - great value high tech speakers with timeless industrial design.

Mark:

You're welcome. They are sounding exceptional right now. That 47 mFd EVO SGO midrange coupling cap is really making a difference.

Hi guys,

I just took my midrange crossover out and replaced it with the midrange crossover of the 800D.
The bass and treble crossover are the same  in the 803D as in the 800D.
I owned the 800D years ago and always liked the sound of its midrange.
The sound wasn’t coming from the midrange but was like hanging around the speaker. (Maybe reversed polarity? )
I owned and tweaked lots of B&W speakers. The silver signature is one of my reference speakers and are recaped with mundorf silver gold in hi frequency and mundorf silver gold oil in midrange.
The sound is really transparent, lots of resolution, silky and no harshness. (Tweeter is also operating in reversed polarity here!)


There is some place in the bottem of the 803D cabinet.
Remove the bass crossover and install the 800D midrange crossover in theen same compartment, but upside down on the matrix internal structure.
Afterwards the 803D sounded
BEAUTIFUL.
The emphasis of the tweeter disappeared.
I wouldn’t put the silver oil, silvergold in oil in the tweeter or midrange because personal I found them to be a bit too detailed.
The 800D was the most natural sounding speaker of the whole 800D series. (800D, 800 Diamond )
The crossover cares 2× mundorf supreme and 1 silver gold (no oil).

Cheers Werner.

Love reading this stuff as I am a big BW fan.  Good job gents. 

@dhl93449 
@stoni 

I have 803D first series since 2009, I won't change them with D2 or D3 series since (expecially the D3 with only 2 woofers) I find them leaner than the original D series.

The 803D are the best speakers (in my very well tuned system, with Purepower 3000 and two isolation trasformers added in series, one for Luxman 509u integrated amplifier, one for Accuphase DP 700 SACD player, Cardas Clear series cables - Beyond XL for isolation trasformers, Beyond and standard Clear power for amp and source, Beyond XLR interconnects-, except for speakers -where I have still the old Golden Reference, 2 pairs biwiring-) I have ever heard in their price range, they are complete speakers and can play all kind of music, with satisfying bass response (no other speaker have that punch) and great clarity and imaging.

803D obiouvsly have faults:

- in the highs, sometimes harsh/hard/highlighted  (I could never make Genesis' "Selling England By The Pound" sound without harsh metallic highs, since lots of albums sound great and smooth, maybe it's a matter of recordings)
 - in the midrange, lacking of warmht and richness, sometimes hard in jazz music (horns dynamic peaks sometimes are strident)
- in the bass, sometimes fat in the mid-bass (covering the lower midrange) and not so well articulated and "vibrant"

After reading your experiences, "merging" both, I am considering to replace caps, sticking with Mundorf, trying to respect as much as possible the original project:

- the Supreme SG on the tweeter, with a Supreme SGO; I hate silver sound signature, but I want to respect the project only adding "warmht" and refinement an oil cap can bring to the table

- the MKP coupling cap on the midrange (the bigger weak point!) with a Supreme EVO Oil; I started thinking about a Supreme Classic, but it seems it does not fit :/ ; Stoni said his 803D2 now sound better than the Sonus Faber in the midrange using Supreme Evo Oil !
I don't want to add silver at this point, where the original project had no silver caps, and I don't want to highlight upper midrange giving an unwanted "silver signature"

- the Supreme SG bypassing cap on the midrange with a Supreme SGO (same as tweeter thoughts : I hate silver, but I don't want a revolution, only a step up in warmht and refinement)

- the woofers MKP caps, with ... ???
Maybe every other cap I will put will be better than the MKP, so I would not have to worry about!
As I told before, keeping punch and richness, I would like to improve bass articulation making it more "vibrant".
I am thinking about Supreme Silver Gold, without oil (maybe could I "recycle" caps I put out of tweeter and midrange?) ...
There was no silver in the original project here, but I think it could be useful making bass faster. On the other hand, I don't want it to become lean.

Any comment or suggestion (keeping in mind I want to use only Mundorf capacitors and I don't want to change too much the speakers, but only to improve where they have weak points) is welcome, many thanks if you do