The Klipsch resurrection
- Thread starter Tin
- Start date
Tin
Club Member
I apologize about the delays. Between school, work, and lazy, I havent had time to catch up here :lol: Whats about to follow is the good old fashioned art of point to point wiring, a triple bypass on a well worn crossover. In the old days, and presently, speaker manufacturers almost always use bottom of the barrel components in the crossover. Whatever they can get the most of for the least amount of money. On older speakers, chances are some components in these crossovers have drifted out of spec...giving them a woolly sound as well as crossover points beyond what the driver is capable of. When you get all that, you start missing out on some frequency ranges, because theyre filtered out by the inferior components. This particular pair is about 35 years old, with old motor-run caps. Motor-run caps are meant for continuous duty, but they go bad over time. They, like electrolytic capacitors drift from its printed value. On Marcs speakers, I chose Dayton polypropylene caps, which are plastic and have a much longer life, as in decades longer. The Dayton caps are good all-rounders, not great for any particular thing, but good to replace factory parts. The price was right, and Marc wanted his speakers back to factory spec.
This is the layout. The stock layout was nice and neat, so all I had to do was mount a few retainers for the capacitors. These will help keep things nice and tidy, just as PWK intended.
Check and make sure the cap is snug, we want things to be in there good.
Using my grandpas old needle nose pliers. Taking a guess, Id have to say theyre close to 70 years old...or more.
All laid out, now its time to booger weld
This is a 1uF Solen capacitor. This needs to be paralleled with the 12uF Dayton in order to get the factory 13uF rating.
Bend the leads, and hang it over the 12uF momentarily.
Now we have to cut and strip the wire to length. This is just plain old 18AWG hookup wire. Same as stock, with a thinner jacket.
Now its time to solder. First things first, gotta tin the tip. Tinning helps solder flow over the components
This is the wire that connects the mid to the terminal block, where it will be wired to the mid-horn. The 2uF tweeter cap filters signals lower than 4500Hz, while everything lower will go to the mid-horn.
These are the mid-range caps, whose values were chosen to filter out frequencies lower than 400Hz. Humans are most sensitive in the midband, or telephone band as its known. 300Hz to 3000Hz.
Now we have to trim off the excess leads...they arent needed, and just plain old look bad.
Mount the woofer inductor, autotransformer, and solder up the zener diodes. These diodes protect the tweeter. If more than 5W hits them, they close to save the tweeter. Klipsch speakers dont need big power. 5W will blow you out of the room.
These fork terminals are needed to wire the crossover to the terminal block.
Make sure everythings nice and snug.
All done, now its time to test them and make sure everything checks out
This is the layout. The stock layout was nice and neat, so all I had to do was mount a few retainers for the capacitors. These will help keep things nice and tidy, just as PWK intended.
Check and make sure the cap is snug, we want things to be in there good.
Using my grandpas old needle nose pliers. Taking a guess, Id have to say theyre close to 70 years old...or more.
All laid out, now its time to booger weld
This is a 1uF Solen capacitor. This needs to be paralleled with the 12uF Dayton in order to get the factory 13uF rating.
Bend the leads, and hang it over the 12uF momentarily.
Now we have to cut and strip the wire to length. This is just plain old 18AWG hookup wire. Same as stock, with a thinner jacket.
Now its time to solder. First things first, gotta tin the tip. Tinning helps solder flow over the components
This is the wire that connects the mid to the terminal block, where it will be wired to the mid-horn. The 2uF tweeter cap filters signals lower than 4500Hz, while everything lower will go to the mid-horn.
These are the mid-range caps, whose values were chosen to filter out frequencies lower than 400Hz. Humans are most sensitive in the midband, or telephone band as its known. 300Hz to 3000Hz.
Now we have to trim off the excess leads...they arent needed, and just plain old look bad.
Mount the woofer inductor, autotransformer, and solder up the zener diodes. These diodes protect the tweeter. If more than 5W hits them, they close to save the tweeter. Klipsch speakers dont need big power. 5W will blow you out of the room.
These fork terminals are needed to wire the crossover to the terminal block.
Make sure everythings nice and snug.
All done, now its time to test them and make sure everything checks out
Last edited:
Tin
Club Member
Now for the testing. As I said in the post above, these particular speakers need caps that measure 2uF for the tweeters, and 13uF for the mid-range. Lets see how things measure up.
This is the old mid-range. The multimeter says 14.88uF, which is well beyond factory spec. Too high capacitance, and it makes the mid-horn play well below its intended frequency, causing a subdued upper bass and lower mid-range.
The new ones measure up spot-on. These Dayton caps have a pretty good tolerance of +/-5%, there right where we want them to be.
The old tweet measured 1.7uF...which is pretty well below spec. Too low a capacitance brings the crossover frequency higher, but we want it to stock.
The new tweeter network, buzzing along at 1.96uF, right where we need it.
Lastly, I check for continuity...have to make sure everything is working. Especially this part, which shows me testing for a complete circuit on the tweeter. Specifically, Im testing the air-core inductor at the upper left side of the board. The air-core has varnish on the wire, and this needs to be burned away so the wire is exposed. When a circuit is made, the multimeter beeps, and this one did exactly that. Rehab is almost complete...Marc has been working on the cabinets. I cant wait to see what he comes up with.
This is the old mid-range. The multimeter says 14.88uF, which is well beyond factory spec. Too high capacitance, and it makes the mid-horn play well below its intended frequency, causing a subdued upper bass and lower mid-range.
The new ones measure up spot-on. These Dayton caps have a pretty good tolerance of +/-5%, there right where we want them to be.
The old tweet measured 1.7uF...which is pretty well below spec. Too low a capacitance brings the crossover frequency higher, but we want it to stock.
The new tweeter network, buzzing along at 1.96uF, right where we need it.
Lastly, I check for continuity...have to make sure everything is working. Especially this part, which shows me testing for a complete circuit on the tweeter. Specifically, Im testing the air-core inductor at the upper left side of the board. The air-core has varnish on the wire, and this needs to be burned away so the wire is exposed. When a circuit is made, the multimeter beeps, and this one did exactly that. Rehab is almost complete...Marc has been working on the cabinets. I cant wait to see what he comes up with.
Marc@AutoLavish
Club Sponsor
Bob did a great job and I'm 100% pleased. The sound difference is MASSIVE. Amazing how experiencing music is when the speakers are working in the manner they were designed to. I look forward to getting some pics up of refinishing the cabinets to a much more acceptable look so you can see the other massive difference made: their looks.
Tin
Club Member
Glad youre enjoying the sound of them. New caps can go a long way. I think next time around we will do modular crossovers, where terminal blocks will be used for the capacitors instead of solder connections. This way, we can roll caps on the fly and see which sound signature you like best. Im a big fan of paper-in-oil caps, they have a very smooth, holographic sound.