Malcolm

Any solder you would typically use for electronics is rosin core. Rosin is a flux that cleans the metal you are soldering so that the solder will make a good bond to it and to some extent shields the molten metal from atmospheric gases. The solder is rosin core because there is one or more cores of rosin running through the solder so that you don't have to add the flux separately. The alternative to rosin core is acid core. Acid core is intended for things like plumbing and will damage electronics. There are also solders with no flux core at all. With those, you have to add the flux (rosin, acid, or something else) separately. Actually, the 4% silver solder at Radio Shack might buy you one thing if it is important to you. IIRC it is a leadless solder. So, if you are paranoid about using a product with lead in it, it gives you an alternative. The down side is that it melts at a higher temperature than the old fashioned tin/lead solders. So, you are more likely to damaged whatever you are working on if you are not careful. The stuff you linked to is standard 60/40 solder. It would work fine and costs a lot less per ounce than the alternatives.

Regular 60/40 or 63/37 solder will do fine. "Silver" solder won't do a thing for you, particularly when it is only 4%.

Nice argument, but it is still a stupid thing to do.

Yes, although a screw with high permeability will affect the way the circuit works, PWK almost certainly would say it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference. And he would say that of most of the changes we make. FWIW you were the one who brought up stainless steel screws. And it is obvious you did not use one to make your network pretty.

Good move. Don't do it.

FWIW for anyone considering using a stainless hardware to hold down an inductor, you need to use one of the austenitic alloys (300 series, 18/8, etc.). The other alloys have relatively high permeability and won't be much better than mild steel. For that matter, the permeability of even the austenitic alloys can be increased by working the material, as in upsetting the head or rolling the threads. If you have any doubt, use brass or plastic.

A 40 watt soldering iron and 60/40 or 63/37 solder would be fine.

Look at the rating plate on each component. It should tell you the maximum power consumption in W. Assuming you have 120V AC, just add them all up and divide by 120 for the total amps. This assumes a power factor of 1. There is a difference between W and VA if the power factor of the device is not 1. But for your purpose, it should be fine unless you have something that uses lots of power and has a switching power supply.

Plexiglass is acrylic. It is just a trade name. Heed the soap and water advice above for normal cleaning. Many cleaners have solvents in them that attack acrylic. If soap and water doesn't solve the problem, you need to polish the acrylic. There are products made for this purpose. You can find some of them at your local autoparts store. I use MicroMesh, the same thing I use on aircraft windows. It is comprised of a set of increasingly fine abrasive sheets, up to about 32000 grit IIRC, and a polish to be used at the end.

A Brown Soun

Gotta love the Peoples Republic of California. I pay less than half the property taxes my next door neighbor does for basically the same lot and house thanks to Proposition 13.

FWIW I have seen Heresys with K-55-Ms. And from what I know of the ones I have seen, it is likely that they came that way from the factory. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me a bit that Klipsch would put K-55-Ms in Heresys if they had product to ship and didn't have K-55-Vs. And I can certainly imagine it during the change from the K-55-V ultimately to the K-53-K during the last couple years or so.

You might want to check out the reviews first next time... Cannot speak to the sound because I haven't heard it and you won't catch me dead going to it. You said the manager didn't offer you rain checks. Did you ask? Remember, everything in life is negotiable. From your description, he sounds like the typical brain dead college student most theaters use as managers. He was probably clueless that rain checks might be a good idea. It probably would have better to propose a solution he could answer yes or no to than to expect him to actually think.

Pretty! Bad things can happen with any method. I have used all the common ones. Regardless of the method you choose, you have to know what can cause failures, and how to prevent them. FWIW I usually use contact cement (the traditional stuff, not the water based stuff). If this is your first project, get a good book on veneering and practice before doing the real thing.

Sounds like he is the white van guy to me...

You bought a nice house for $122,000? You are lucky. Where I live, that would not get you a gutted out crib in the ghetto.

Possible downsides include the fact that even if you specify money order or cashier's check, it may be no good. These things are forged every day. Another possible downside is refusal of delivery or inability to deliver. You eat all the costs. If you want to avoid trouble, get payment up front in a reliable form. Don't ship until the deposit has cleared. Even then it might come back. If the buyer doesn't want to play your way, find another buyer.

Yes, you have Heresys. With that date, they likely have a K-53-K (or maybe a K-52-H) squawker driver which is the same as used in the Heresy II.

Everything tastes like chicken... Paper in oil capacitors may use aluminum, copper or even silver foil. Oil capacitors may use dielectrics other than paper, like polypropylene. The oil damps mechanical vibrations and conducts heat to the can. There are many other technologies used to manufacture capacitors. The most common seen in crossovers involve some form or other of metallized film, or film and foil, and for large values electrolytic. Each technology has its pluses and minuses. The differences in technology manifest themselves in differences in things like linearity within the frequency range they are being applied to, efficiency (equivalent series resistance), and lifetime. In general, the more linear and more efficient, the better. Different folks have different prefences for audio uses. There is much more to the story than I have time to cover here. Check the archives and internet. There is more information and opinion that you will ever need out there.

Yes, a 68 uF polypropylene cap is pretty big. But I could certainly find a way to make one fit somehow. The 33 uF cap on the E2 in the late model Heresys is a snap. There are other modern capacitors that take up less room than polypropylene if size is an issue. Of course, if PWK was still alive, I am sure he would say "It doesn't make a dime's worth of difference!" And frankly, using something other than an electrolytic to replace that particular capacitor might not make an audible difference, at least not until the electrolytic degraded sufficiently . But electrolytics are definitely time limited components. I cannot count how many electronic devices I have worked on where the culprit was an electrolytic. If I am going through a network replacing other components, I will replace any electrolytics I can where feasible.

The caps in all the Heresys I have had up through the mid seventies or so were all originally PIO, just about every make, and every voltage between 50V and 200V. The later E and all the E2 networks had metallized film of some sort. FWIW I replaced all the caps in my Heresys with Solen metallized polypropelene caps. As to "any" nonpolarized cap, I don't think going to a nonpolarized electrolytic for the woofer cap would be a good idea. Even if there is no initial sonic difference with a better cap, electrolytics have a nasty habit of degrading significantly over time. Really no reason to replace the autotransformer. If it is the same T2A used in many of the other Heritage series, you can try ALK's version. It has additional taps that give you more options for balancing the levels of the woofer, squawker and tweeter. The coils appear to be air core wound on a plastic bobbin. There is really no reason to replace them. If you go to a coil with larger wire but the same value, you will wind up reducing the resistance and possibly changing the sound a bit because you altered the relative signal levels going to the woofer, tweeter and squawker. But it won't "improve" the sound per se. If the coils were iron core, replacing them with air core would at least be a theoretical improvement in terms of hysteresis and saturation. OTHO I don't think it woild yield an audible result in the case of Heresy or Heresy II.

The most obvious change to the H2 network would be replace the electrolytic with something better. The other capacitors are metallized film and IMHO much better than the paper in oil motor caps used in the older Heresys. You could replace them with polypropylene caps, or whatever "audiophile" caps you like. Values should be printed on the current ones. Same comments apply to E2. You could also replace the iron core inductor with an air core one, but I don't think it will make much different.

Early Heresy 700s had a Type C network and a 16 ohm woofer. When first the Heresys with 8 ohm woofers came out, they had a Type D network. Basically, the taps used on the autotransformer changed, and the value of the capacitor feeding the autotransformed changed. Everything else stayed the same. Shortly after releasing them, Klipsch figured out that the new Heresys sounded better with the polarity reversed on one of the components, the squawker IIRC. That was reflected in the Type E network and the article in Dope from Hope.

Just what is wrong with eBay doing everything they can to help sellers get the highest price (and therefore earn the highest fees)? That is the whole idea of an auction. It certainly is not to let you get something at the lowest price. eBay's customer is the seller, not the buyer. As far as things not showing up in searches when they are supposed to, or showing up when they are not supposed to, as a database administrator, I can tell you that corrupted indexes will do just that. And corrupted indexes can, and do, happen in any database system.

Just get a decent sub...