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DeanG RF-7ii (From Start to Finish)


Youthman

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Click Here for Step by Step Instructions on Removing the Crossovers in the RF-7II

 

Click Here for Step by Step Instructions on Installing the DeanG Crossovers in the RF-7II

 

I spoke with DeanG this evening and we are considering having him DeanG his first pair of RF-7ii. I thought I would start a thread that will document the process and the journey.

In talking with Dean, we discovered that the RF-7ii could be slightly more difficult to remove the stock crossover.

Unlike the original RF-7's, the Terminal cup on the RF-7ii is on the very bottom of the speaker as opposed to being in the middle of the RF-7. This means we will not be able to remove the speaker wires from each speaker through the Terminal Cup hole. It will require the removal of at least one woofer to be able to remove the speaker wires from each speaker.

The first step was to remove the Terminal Cup from the RF-7ii. There are 4 T20 Tork Screws that needed to be removed from the Terminal Cup. I was able to gently remove the crossover far enough to take some pics of it.

Klipsch-RF-7ii-Crossover-1.jpg

Klipsch-RF-7ii-Crossover-2.jpg

Klipsch-RF-7ii-Crossover-3.jpg

Klipsch-RF-7ii-Crossover-4.jpg

Klipsch-RF-7ii-Crossover-5.jpg

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Youth, is there room inside the speaker for him to make the networks taller? He'll need to know.

There is plenty of depth but he will not be able to make it taller due to the fact that the xover board was cut in the shape of the hole where the terminal cup mounts to.

Yes, there is plenty of room behind the crossover. I was able to put my hand inside the hole and reach to the other side without any obstruction. He just can't make the xover wider or taller due to the hole being the exact size of the crossover.

Edited by Youthman
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Youth, is there room inside the speaker for him to make the networks taller? He'll need to know.

There is plenty of depth but he will not be able to make it taller due to the fact that the xover board was cut in the shape of the hole where the terminal cup mounts to.

Yes, there is plenty of room behind the crossover. I was able to put my hand inside the hole and reach to the other side without any obstruction. He just can't make the xover wider or taller due to the hole being the exact size of the crossover.

He'll have to think more "inside the box" for the new xover.=P Edited by cviper
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Youth, is there room inside the speaker for him to make the networks taller? He'll need to know.

There is plenty of depth but he will not be able to make it taller due to the fact that the xover board was cut in the shape of the hole where the terminal cup mounts to.

Yes, there is plenty of room behind the crossover. I was able to put my hand inside the hole and reach to the other side without any obstruction. He just can't make the xover wider or taller due to the hole being the exact size of the crossover.

The bottom port would be obtrusive for a taller board. Plenty of room for a wider board tho.

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You guys are a trip.

The coils are nice.

We'll only deal with the top board, which is the high pass section of the network.

The two resistors will be replaced with Mills non-inductive types, and I'll be moving those to the bottom of the board -- this will free up some room on top.

I have nothing nice to say about oval shaped capacitors. I'm pretty sure those are oval polyesters, which is worse. Now keep in mind these things are relative, okay? Just like the RF-7s, these already sound great right out of the box, so it's not like the stock caps and resistors are so terrible that they send you out of the room covering your ears. Klipsch stuff sounds great to begin with, which is why they respond so favorably to these tweaks/upgrades.

Youthman is worried that he'll forget what they sound like while I have the networks, and then won't be able to know if there's a difference or not. That's a legitimate concern. I wish some of my old Reference customers were still around to help out with this one. I suggest using a CD you're very familiar with, and has a song or maybe two that tends to grate on your nerves a little. Everyone also has their favorite CDs they like to use to showcase their system, pick one of those too. Start listening. Trust me, it won't be hard to remember what you heard when you get the networks back. Do what I did -- tell yourself it's all nonsense and that you won't hear a difference.

My preferred capacitor for this kind of work is the Audyn Plus, and I really hope there's enough real estate to use it. They are double wrapped and 800Vdc, so they are pretty big. This is the capacitor I use in the high pass section of the Universal. I was using the Mundorf Supremes, but when I read that Audyn was using a blind layer in the Plus series, I dumped the Mundorfs. The Supreme is an amazing product, but if I can get the same performance for less than half the money, I'm going for it. I tested the Audyn Plus cap in my RB-61s -- the ones gifted to me by Michael Colter. As suspected, the cap is killer. Crystal clear and silky smooth, with no grain or hash.

Bob Stout's page on capacitors from the old LDSG site has been saved and archived. Worth a read, even if you don't understand every single word.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080308210050/http://ldsg.snippets.org/appdx-ec.php

Edited by DeanG
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Too bad Chris Munson (aka popbumper) is not still around his K-stack PC boards would have given ole' DeanO more flexibility for larger crossover components. His K-Stack Academy and Forte' II networks were very nice. I no longer own any of the extended Heritage models, and Dean's networks are still performing stellar in my Cornwall's, center La Scala and La Scala main's.

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Youthman is worried that he'll forget what they sound like while I have the networks, and then won't be able to know if there's a difference or not. That's a legitimate concern. I wish some of my old Reference customers were still around to help out with this one.
I haven't checked but shouldn't our old threads be around somewhere. Several of us did write-ups.

I think mine was Deang'd RF-7's. Sorry about starting that term.....some seem confused by it.

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I have my RF7s upgraded by Dean. I don't quite remember how it sounded before the mod because it sounded great already to begin with. However, I love how they sound now.

It would be nice to be able to hear the side-by-side comparison of the modded RF7s against unmodded RF7iis, and then modded RF7s against modded RF7iis.

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I never had a reference speaker from Klipsch so I really don't know how they sound. But I have to say those networks actually look pretty respectable.

I know Dean knows all this stuff, but when I tried to simply upgrade the parts of stock Klipsch networks I hated the results. Sounded like crap. Now we are talking old AK-3s and such in Khorns and AL-3s in lascalas. The only upgrades to networks that got me happy was when the the whole circuit was changed to an ALK design. That was a marked difference.

Maybe these are different, I don't know. I just remembering tossing $500 worth of Auricaps into my AK-3s and feeling pretty lousy about it afterward.

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