Let us know how it turns out after the break-in period.
Looks fabulous.
Reference 3A upgrades!
Posting this as both a thank you to Mr. Tash and as information for anyone who’s contemplating upgrading their Reference 3A’s. I just received back my Royal Virtuoso monitors with every viable upgrade option and what I have here before me is a VAST improvement over the original. I’m running them 24/7 to break in, the beryllium tweeter is pretty badass, superb definition with apparently zero fatigue. Communication was good and turnaround time was about 2 weeks after all the options were decided. Bonus points to Tash for tolerating my relentless questions. Exemplary customer service from Divergent Technologies, I couldn’t be more satisfied.
Here’s the work order:
- Larger bucking-magnets added to the existing magnets.
- Solid Delrin acoustic lenses are installed to the core of the driver magnet.
- New set of multiple KPM polypropylene capacitors in parallel, with a Mundorf oil and small Teflon by pass capacitors installed.
This replaces existing old paper in oil capacitors (also excellent but a little too slow for the new beryllium dome tweeters).
- Heavy steel tension rods are installed across the cabinet and new more effective acoustic materials added inside.
- Gold plated copper binding posts are installed replacing the old connectors.
- Beryllium dome tweeters with microfiber textile material clad flanges installed.
- New shorting jumpers made of 7Ns pure OCC copper/Teflon conductor will be supplied.
- Soft brass screws are used for mounting the drivers.
- Rearranged the mechanical grounding of the main drivers to accommodate the bucking magnets.
- Special heavy gauge OFC Litz and thiner pure 7Ns copper OCC/Teflon tweeter wires are used to rewire the speakers.
- Damaged speaker grill repaired inc new fabric.
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@testpilot Before obtaining the RV I had looked for a set of the 40th, not an easy find. Understandably so. |
Hey @j1ny, I also had my Royal Virtuoso’s upgraded by Tash at around the same time. I do believe that the Royal Virtuoso is one of the most criminally underrated speakers out there. There we’re a few important differences- I did not opt for the tweeter upgrade as there are many who like the new beryllium tweeter but some that do not. I did not opt for the tweeter upgrade, but did everything else, even though I am highly suspicious that whatever internal copper wiring they are using now is going to to be better than the original Van Den Hul monocrystal silver wiring. I will say that these speakers post-upgrade seemed significantly faster than before. They also clearly had more resolution than pre-upgrade. My upgrades were also quite affordable. To me this is one of the biggest bargains in audio. The one issue I will warn about- the solid core copper wiring they are now using internally started to rattle audibly at low frequency. This is an unacceptable side-effect and needs to be addressed. I will be sending in a pair of Reference 3A La Suprema II’s for upgrades, but I won’t be messing with the tweeter or the internal wiring. |
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