Capacitors

[luvtolisten]

Thanks, Joe.

[twc644]

The price depends on certain factors....the quality of the capacitor,capacitance value and voltage rating.Old or new speakers-I take out the cheapo electrolytics and replace them with Solens(affordable) bypassed with either Jantzen Z-Superior or Audio Theta ppt from Parts Express.

For instance one of my speakers has an 18uf 50 volt on the crossover. Well,an 18uf Jantzen Z-Superior would cost for that one cap = $70.00 bucks. So I'd use a 17uf Solen and bypass it with a 1uf affordable higher end Jantzen.this makes it much easier on the wallet and still sounds damn good ! Or get an 18uf Solen and use a .18uf to .22uf Z-Superior..your only going .22uf higher so thats not gonna mess up the frequency response in a crossover and this is a much more tangible method financially.

I use the formula for bypassing: 1/1000= .....another words a 470uf electrolytic bypassed would go like this: 470/1000 = .47....so a good quality .47uf polypropylene is what you need.
This formula is not set in stone,however,it's a good measure to prevent any form of time smear messing up the sound in the amp,preamp,cd player,and/or speaker.If this is done in an amp or preamp the largest gain from this are using the really good caps in the signal path of the circuit.Thats where this can get frustrating if one does not have the schematics.



There are many variations for this method . Of course if the cap is a small 1uf or less I'd use a single cap....but larger values might require a cheaper Poly bypassed with a very good quality smaller value poly.

I friggin love those Z-Superiors..man those are some extremely musical caps.

Aside from swapping out parts in my speakers another huge difference was in my 1986 Adcom gfp555 preamp. God. changing out every electrolytic and bypassing those in the signal path made that component sing like the angels...I'm not kidding and i'm not very fond of Adcom(dont curse me please lol ). The engineers back then did a wonderful job designing it but they had to cut corners and put crappy Jamicon caps in it.

Swap those out for Rubycon za/zl's from Standard Reference Audio Mods and bypass the 4 in the signal path..let it burn in..sit back and enjoy the music.

Remember,if your equipment is older...it is wise to first change out the caps in the power supply circuit. Depending on the size and values Panasonic fc's from Digikey are an excellent choice and very affordable.

If your speaker are older and funds are limited..just usinf Solens will still yield great results in a speaker crossover.I bypass those just to remove that little bit of harshness in sound from them.

Whew...yea, I know I sound like a 45 year old capacitor nut..lol

I'm tellin' ya guys,if you can solder try it out sometime.As others earlier have mentioned to obtain any of these caps:

Solen, Jantzen(crosscaps,z-standard,z-superior,z-silver),Kimber,Audio Theta PPT
http://www.parts-express.com/home.cf...TOKEN=56551868

Mundorf,Solen,Clarity cap
http://www.madisound.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=404_5

Multiple good brands from
http://www.soniccraft.com/products/capacitors/film.htm

More multiple good ones from
http://www.percyaudio.com/

Just to name a few

apologies for such a verbose post to everyone.Once I get started I cant stop.Audio is my blood since I was a little kid but living on a maintenance mans $39-41k salary with a family to support limits my funding for much higher end stuff.Still, beautiful music from rock,punk,jazz etc... can be obtained in tweaking mid fi equipment for a very modest sum vs. paying thousands of dollars more just for the equipment.

JoeE- I need to try that out sometime with the mortite and internal bracing.

[JoeE SP9]

luvtolisten;
The upgraded cap tweak is what I would do first.

twc644;
I have done the mortite tweak on several inexpensive speakers. It is especially effective on speakers that have a stamped metal basket. A horizontal brace in the middle and the auto sound deadening sheets (Fat Mat $45 for 25Sq Ft) really make a difference with respect to cabinet vibrations. Getting rid of cabinet vibration is a significant upgrade. Many high end speaker manufacturers use 2 and 3 inch thick front baffles to help fight vibration. A large part of the cost of Wilson Audio's speakers is tied up in the material they use to construct their cabinets. You don't want cabinets to vibrate!

That's one of the many reasons I love my ESL's, no cabinet and no crossovers. I do use electronic crossovers at 75Hz for my subs.

The great thing about these tweaks is they are cheap to implement. $10 will get you 90Ft. of Mortite rope caulk. When you apply it to the stamped basket just firmly press it down and cover the entire metal basket. You should end up with a 1/4 to 3/8 inch thick coating. If the coating is too thick it will change the cabinets internal volume. The harder you press the thinner the coating. When I do this I try to keep the thickness consistant. I have not tried this with speakers that have cast baskets. I don't see how it could hurt and it may help them also.
If you do this you might as well replace the stuffing with Polyfil pillow stuffing. It's another very small upgrade. It only costs a couple of bucks.
If your speakers have those spring loaded connectors get rid of them also. Proper binding posts are cheap. The horizontal brace is just a piece of wood (really cheap).

Several years ago my brother and I put together a modest system for our mother. The EPI's we got her were the first speakers I tried these tweaks on. She commented that the speakers sound smoother (her words) after the tweaks. I thought so too.

BTW I did the cap replacement on them also. Not Solen's or Jantzens but decent ones from Parts Express

[luvtolisten]

For instance one of my speakers has an 18uf 50 volt on the crossover. Well,an 18uf Jantzen Z-Superior would cost for that one cap = $70.00 bucks. So I'd use a 17uf Solen and bypass it with a 1uf affordable higher end Jantzen.this makes it much easier on the wallet and still sounds damn good ! Or get an 18uf Solen and use a .18uf to .22uf Z-Superior..your only going .22uf higher so thats not gonna mess up the frequency response in a crossover and this is a much more tangible method financially.

I'm tellin' ya guys,if you can solder try it out sometime.As others earlier have mentioned to obtain any of these caps:

Solen, Jantzen(crosscaps,z-standard,z-superior,z-silver),Kimber,Audio Theta PPT
http://www.parts-express.com/home.cf...TOKEN=56551868

TWC,
you've got me psyched! I have a good candidate I'd like to try, I have a pair of
Insignia N S 2111's
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1138085354138.
It's a nice looking speaker, but sounds, like a $75/pr speaker which is what I paid for it. The question I have, is the crossover has a 1.5 uf and 2.2 uf in parallel. I was thinking of replacing the 1.5 uf with a Kimber Kap, and the 2.2uf with a Jantzen Superior. Sound right?
Also Parts Express has Viper coaxial drivers, which would fit with little or no modifications to the cabinet for $22, which I may buy also.

[twc644]

TWC,
you've got me psyched! I have a good candidate I'd like to try, I have a pair of
Insignia N S 2111's
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1138085354138.
It's a nice looking speaker, but sounds, like a $75/pr speaker which is what I paid for it. The question I have, is the crossover has a 1.5 uf and 2.2 uf in parallel. I was thinking of replacing the 1.5 uf with a Kimber Kap, and the 2.2uf with a Jantzen Superior. Sound right?
Also Parts Express has Viper coaxial drivers, which would fit with little or no modifications to the cabinet for $22, which I may buy also.

Absolutely give it a shot.I would go for the Jantzen Z-Standards myself on those speakers from Parts Express. A little more affordable but if you can spare the extra bucks by all means try the Z-Superiors. Just remember please, those Jantzens are huge in size okay. Make sure you can fit them on the crossover boards.They give the dimensions of the caps in the description.The Kimbers are polar caps so be SURE you install them with proper orientation just like the electrolytics regarding positive/negative..this is why they have a separate black and red leads okay.

The Audio Theta PPT caps they offer are a good sub for the Jantzen Z-Superior if you need a slightly smaller size to fit on the circuti board.Good Luck and keep us informed

Be sure to give some time to burn in before you make any judgements to the sound.Dont know anything about the Viper coaxial drivers. I'll have to look at that sometime.I'd try the cap swap for the time being if I was you unless those Insignia drivers are very poor in performance.

[luvtolisten]

Thanks, TWC, I didn't realize the Kimbers were polarized. Maybe I'll just use the Jantzen Standard's instead, with the Jantzen Superior, unless you think I should just use all Standards, that the Superiors won't make much difference. I'll try the caps first, as you say.
The drivers,are very cheap, but when this speaker came out they were only $45 a pair too. Most of the cost I'm sure was on the cabinet, not the driver or crossover..
Here is the Vifa driver I was thinking of:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=299-274

I don't know much about crossovers, (I couldn't find the crossover frequency for the Insignia's) I could try the original Insigna crossover (with the new caps) with the Vifa driver.
Looks like here they just put a 2.2uf on the tweeter. But I would guess whichever way I did it,the Vifa driver would sound better than the Insignia driver. Vifa, I thought, is a decent driver.
Worse case, I could always stick a Jantzen cap on it and see what happens. Any advice/opinions you would like to offer, I would appreciate.

[twc644]

Go for the caps first.Since these are lower end speakers I'd first try not too expensive caps,however, this is up to you.I'd really stick with the Z-Standards myself.I've got some of those on order for my Monitor 40 Polks. I used Solens and Z-Superior on the monitor 30's-those were $100.00 a pair(have two pairs for 2 channel stereo).

Might be best to take this in steps. First try the caps. Jantzen also has the "crosscaps" which is their lowest end poly cap. I'm sure these still would yield an improvement.If your gonna go for the z-superior then use it torwards the 1.5uf.

As stated earlier by someone else it is possible to leave the original caps and parallel them with Z-Superior.That way you'd need a very small value like .15 uf for the 1.5uf original,then use a .22 for the 2.2uf original. This will save some bucks being a smaller value for the Z-Superior but keep in mind these values will be 1200 volt rated and huge in size.


You can use the Kimbers.Use a sharpie pen and put a black dot on the circuit board for the negative side .This way you'll know which hole to put the black lead in from the Kimber cap.The negative side of the original capacitor is the one with the stripe on the side okay.You do not want to install it backwards.It could lead to very bad results.

[luvtolisten]

Thanks for getting back TWC, I understand what your saying (no sense putting a Ferrari transmission in a Yugo). I'll go with the less expensive caps, and as you say, step by step. I've cooled on the Vifa driver. I received a flyer Monday, saying they were on sale, $22, COMPARE to $60! When actually on the Parts Express website, the usual price is $26, so it's not as great a deal as I first thought. I'll go ahead, and order the caps, and let you know how I make out. I think I can make the larger caps fit,one way or the other. Thanks again for all your help, I really appreciate it. Here's what the crossover looks like: