Eliminating spade connectors, upgrading bits, soldering all of it in

I worked at a speaker factory on the production assembly line in the early 1980s going into college.  I remember all of the time put in to the cabinets, drivers, attention to the special look of the speakers, yet the internal wiring and connectors were just okay, nothing special. 

Later on a good friend was into buying the so called "signature" version of the speakers he liked all made in Canada.  He’d compare the standard models to the special signature models with the all silver soldered-in connections and we’d do some bakeoff listening sessions and A/B them. There was a difference in sound. 

Same approach - I revised some of those old factory speakers we put together on the line, picked up a few pairs used in local classifieds and did these same type of mods, and could hear a difference as well. Re-sold them to try the same on a few others, and people enjoyed them with their systems, something I tried many years back just for fun.

re: K-horns, I could definitely see how some of the ultra-high efficiency systems would be fun to listen to the differences and compare. A buddy does this with his, we designed three pairs of replica Onken Altec speakers this way, or they wired them up like this after the cabinets were all designed. They took things to another level, and that was really fun to hear on some crazy heavliy customized AudioNote amps with those big horn speakers.  Bringing back inspirational memories for sure.  

Its been a while since I’ve done any speaker tweaks or mods and it was fun to re-try something like this that finally got a chance to go back and re-do. Finding easy and small low cost things to do like this that help make a difference is rewarding. Something to do on a rainy day over the winter perhaps.

Inspiration - 

I was pleasantly surprised after my local amp tech/designer/upgrader reconfigured and soldered in the bridge rectifiers, wiring to new binding Cardas binding posts, and a few other things for me on my little Class A 50w solid state amp. The results from this is what inspired me to go back and re-do the speakers in a similar manner. Maybe a good winter project for someone else here to try and compare on yours! Something different to post about here I guess.  Enjoy! :) 

Last year I did just that on a pair of SVS "Ultra" Towers.  Changed all connectors and binding post to Furutech gold.  Also re-built the crossovers with MUCH better capacitors, inductor coils and resistors.  Because of the much larger components the crossovers are in custom external enclosures.  The internal wiring changed and added anti-vibe stuff to all internal walls.  Call me crazy if you like but it's been a hobby of mine for over fifty years.

Expectation bias is real.

@lrlacosse that’s a cool upgrade story.  Goes to show, even a nice pair of SVS Ultra can be upgraded too.  The whole conversation about how "these products are all built to a price point" is something a few buddies and I have discussed with others who did not want to believe that on what they felt was "a lot of money for what they paid already", peeking inside, not always the case, as we’ve both found in ours. Found the same in more than a few of my own amplifiers, and the actual upgrades are not overly expensive, or not so compared to the price paid for the products initially.  

@roadcykler Expectation bias is real.

Absolutely can be. 

And focusing solely on "expectation bias" as a reason for not trying something is a form of passive avoidance that can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy and learned helplessness.