re capping crossovers / rough drivers units

[pm2097]

hi folks

im looking for a guy / girl who might be able vto help me with a problem i have with a vintage set of speakers. they have been recapped from electrolytics to polypropylene caps, the drive units (mid and tweeters) sound rough, vocals are 'lispy' and overall the sound is a little sore on the inner ear. anyone know of anyone who could come, lokk and listen, with a view to solving the issue. It would be a paying job, within reason. Im trying to identify whether is an electronics issue or a drive unit issue. it seems to equal across both speakers so i find it hard to believe that 2 tweeters and 2 mids could be 'rough' but again i could be wrong.

can anyone help? - i have 2 tweeters i can swop out, but i dont have the 10cm mid ranges to swap out

thanks

patrick

[Fran]

Sounds more like treble trouble - what about adjusting the cross over for the treble to bring it down a bit?

[pm2097]

Sounds more like treble trouble - what about adjusting the cross over for the treble to bring it down a bit?

hi fran - id probably agree with you there, as the mids are most definitely 'overpowering' the tweeters in terms of body, detail, volume. they are a 'subtle' sore on the ear listen at the min. i put the tweeters from my kef celeste 4 in yest eve, and the sounded a bit better. I read somewhere that lowering valiues slightly is recommended. im not sure how to do that myself, but im chatting to a lad who might be agle to look at them for me, and ill give him your piece of advice. it sounds right to me fran

[Fran]

These are 3 way right?

The other thing I thought of is maybe the crossover is not quite in the right place - treble crossed over too early or mid too late causing a rough region in the 7-10kHz region? You have to have a look at where that model of mid and tweet are specced for and hopefully stay well within both. You could also damp down the treble a bit with an extra few components, but you need to be careful or you suck the life (and soundstage and detail) out of it....

[Rob]

Changing from electrolytics to polypropylene caps in old speakers can sometimes be a bad move. Might be best to reverse the process to take stock of the sound characteristic and try some new electrolytics to see if there is any significant improvement - buy a few since there is a lot of variation in rated capacitance. If you really want to push out the boat with these speakers, then try some less pricey paper in oil caps which reputedly tend to have a less etched sound character.

[pm2097]

hi lads! many thanks for the replies. my goodmans are now safely in the hands of one of out tir na hi fi lads. its a crossover issue apparently as suspected by us, so hes gonna sort it over the next couple of weeks hopefully (:

thanks again - hopefully ill get to post what the actual issues were and what the solution employed was