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DeanG RF-7ii (From Start to Finish)


Youthman

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You'd be surprised at the number of people who don't care about how things look

When I worked construction plumbing years ago the old school journeymen plumbers took great pride in everything that went in the walls. Everything HAD to be plumb and level. They're thought was that if you took pride in what you couldn't see, you'd take pride in everything.

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Thank you for checking into it Amy. You have always been such a blessing to the Klipsch organization and to the Klipsch Community. A forum member sent me a photo of the crossovers to his original RF-7's and the do not have any glue on them whatsoever. They are very clean looking.

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Thank you for checking into it Amy. You have always been such a blessing to the Klipsch organization and to the Klipsch Community.

You're welcome, and thank you!

The plant manager looked at the photos and did say that was excessive, but won't hurt anything. It's better to have more rather than less to prevent buzzing from the board. He will address it, though!

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I have a question , I understand that the up grade will in prove on sound, But to what point ? Highs more high lows more low ? And if you upgrade your Rf-7ii do you have to upgrade your RC-64 ? And surrounds ? How much would this upgrade cost? For me to have this upgrade done would mean weeks for my system down , being im in Canada. Would it be worth it ?

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Hi All,

Sorry, I've been a little under the weather. I was going to wait to take my crossovers out until Dean tells us what parts to use. Because I too do not want my family room HT down any longer than necessary. But since this glue question came up and YM said I don't have unhook speakers just to look at the crossover I just went ahead and took one out. Mine has glue on it also but not to the extent of YM's. Just FYI.

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The RC 64 has the tappered array xo system. That may be a bit more difficult to make.

The RC-7 was a tapered array also. Dean had no issues with those. Really, if all you're doing is using higher quality parts than the stock crossovers, there's no design work involved. I don't believe he's planning on moving the crossover point or re-engineering anything on the 7II's

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The glue isn't any big deal, I've used far more, and it doesn't always go where you want it to. Since the air cores aren't tied down, I hope they used a lot. Every RC-7 I ever worked on had capacitors hanging by their leads because enough adhesive wasn't applied. PCB work is a little different than point-to-point work on a board. Still, there should at least be an attempt made at keeping it where it belongs.

I know my website isn't great, but I do wish more people would read the information that I put out there. I will probably post a handful of pictures of what I do, but it won't be a step by step, and I won't be listing the values. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was listing the values and parts for the RF-7 upgrade. For every guy who is qualified to do the work, there are a hundred who aren't. Since I listed the values, or gave them up in email, many felt I was somehow obligated to walk them through the process, or to tell them what to do when they screwed something up. If your first question is: "what are the values", then that tells me that you don't know how to read what's clearly written on the part. Looking at it from my point of view, do you think a question like that makes me think you're qualified to do this kind of work? Here is a short list of the nightmare stuff I've had to put up with over the years.

1) Running a screwdriver into the high pass coils while trying to remove the red/orange oval epoxy coated capacitors.

2) Using too much heat and lifting the foil off of the board.

3) Not using enough heat, and staying on the pad so long that they ruined the part.

4) Not being able figure out where to put the parts. My personal favorite is not situating a part correctly, and then finding that the top board no longer drops down correctly.

5) After telling me they were an EE and could solder the space shuttle together, they emailed several days later and told me they couldn't get the solder to flow.

6) Should I use a 15 watt soldering iron or a soldering gun that has two settings (a zillion watts and a gazillion) watts.

7) I know you said not to mess with the coils, but I bought bigger ones -- where do you think I should put them (I couldn't bring myself to typing the answer).

8) I bought a solder sucker, and it doesn't work.

9) The leads won't reach. With several (RF-5, RB-75, etc), you have to drill holes though the board, scratch through the coating down to the foil, and create a new solder pad).

On and on it goes. Keep in mind that while these emails are coming in, I'm supposed to be in the workroom doing stuff for people who are actually paying me for my time. And yes, I'm the reason Al took down is DIY section. He started running into issues of his own and I told him the only way to avoid them is to pull his designs. He had a secondary motivation that I won't go into.

Buying the right tools alone approaches the cost of most of the work I do.

Can you tell that this is sore spot with me? I was burned so many times by this stuff that I just decided I would no longer support the DIY efforts of others. OTOH, Bob Crites has had great sucess with his kits, but like I said, the point-to-point stuff is a bit different than PCB work.

Here's what I love about all of this: a person will freak out over the thought of having a professional do it, but won't think twice about whipping out the old soldering gun and going at it wearing a blindfold.

End rant. Sorry.

Edited by DeanG
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What dominates "timbre" is the design and the type of drivers that are used. For example, phenolic and titanium diaphagms sound really different, so you wouldn't want to mix those together. I always tell people that because of the amount of information the center channel carries, they should include it if they can afford it -- or at least catch later when funds permit. I used to use the "timbre" reasoning, but over time I've just decided that it doesn't fly.

This work inhabits the world of distortion artifacts and "noise". We are cleaning up the signal path -- and it's "BS" until they get their crossovers back. A lot of people do this for the same reason I did it -- simple curiosity. They don't have $3000 laying around to go to a "better" loudspeaker, but they do have $150 - $350, so they figure, "why not". I get a lot of that kind of work, and it's the most fun. I'm doing DC biased crossovers now for the Heritage stuff, and the kind of feedback that I'm getting used to surprise me, but not anymore.

You hear more of what is "good", and less of what is "bad".

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I used to use the "timbre" reasoning, but over time I've just decided that it doesn't fly.

I may have used the wrong word. Maybe I should have used the word "matching" but honestly if 2 speakers are cleaned up and one isn't, I thought the timbre would be off.

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I honestly don't know Carl. With the RF-7/RC-7, there is also the issue with the resistor modification. But even with that, can you honestly say, "it changed the sonic signature of the speaker"? When I did mine, I was like, "crap, that's pretty cool" -- but I didn't feel like I wasn't listening to RF-7s anymore.

I'm not really an HT guy, so, how do you guys define "timbre"?

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can you honestly say, "it changed the sonic signature of the speaker"? When I did mine, I was like, "crap, that's pretty cool" -- but I didn't feel like I wasn't listening to RF-7s anymore.

Sounds like you're contradicting yourself but it's probably just the way I'm reading it.

Can I say it changed the sonic signature? Depending on your definition, my answer would be yes. I think anything that changes what you hear from a speaker is changing it's sonic signature. Did it make it sound like a Heritage or Synergy series? No. Did it sound different? Yes. If you're using different words to describe the sound that the speaker is producing then I would think you're changing the sonic signature. It also may just be my issue with semantics.

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