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Rebuilding Crossovers


twk123

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Hey guys I am thinking about rebuilding my KG 5.5 Crossovers. Ideally I would like to purchase the Crites kit for $75 and solder everything myself. Anyway, I have no soldering experience but am pretty crafty. How difficult is a project like this and is there a good way to check my work before hooking everything back up? Also, Crites looks like he uses pretty good capacitors, would it be worth trying to buy my own to fine tune the sound or just go with the Sonicaps he provides?

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caps can easily be damaged so I suggest that you practice soldering on some old dead boards til you are confident in your ability. Take photos of the boards so you know where parts go. cut the caps off at the body of the cap will make it much easier to remove the legs. You will also need a solder sucker to clean up the solder from the holes. some flux will help you to solder in new cps but does require you clean up after. bob uses good parts. fine tuning is fine if you know what sound you like/want. Only you know what you like and different caps sound different in different locations so setting up to be able to quickly and easily swap out a single part in a specific spot is worth while or you will destroy your boards they are not designed for a lot of swaps. You should have a good iron with variable temp control like a Weller or Hakko minimum quality. A soldapullit is what you need to remove solder, use a quality rosin solder do not use silver solders. good luck.

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Hey guys I am thinking about rebuilding my KG 5.5 Crossovers. Ideally I would like to purchase the Crites kit for $75 and solder everything myself. Anyway, I have no soldering experience but am pretty crafty. How difficult is a project like this and is there a good way to check my work before hooking everything back up? Also, Crites looks like he uses pretty good capacitors, would it be worth trying to buy my own to fine tune the sound or just go with the Sonicaps he provides?

 

 

For caps out of spec, kits are great. If you want an improvement over stock, you can do much better than Sonicaps for the same price.

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Capacitors can be damaged by too much heat being conducted by the leads into the body of the cap. A simple trick is to clip a small metal alligator clip to the lead between the solder point and the cap. Heat will get conducted into the clip before it gets to the cap.

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Hey guys I am thinking about rebuilding my KG 5.5 Crossovers. Ideally I would like to purchase the Crites kit for $75 and solder everything myself. Anyway, I have no soldering experience but am pretty crafty. How difficult is a project like this and is there a good way to check my work before hooking everything back up? Also, Crites looks like he uses pretty good capacitors, would it be worth trying to buy my own to fine tune the sound or just go with the Sonicaps he provides?

 

 

For caps out of spec, kits are great. If you want an improvement over stock, you can do much better than Sonicaps for the same price.

 

 

Thanks for the heads up, do you know what a good resource is on different caps and some good ones? I imagine they are like tubes where they each have a different sonic 'signature'?

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yes there are better caps than Sonicaps but remember that they are a lot better sounding than the stock caps in your Klipsch. Yes they (caps) all sound different and you can search and read all you want but you are only going to be reading opinions of others. Your speakers are old enough that new caps would be a welcome upgrade for you and Bob's kit is a one shot deal with all the right values and only one shipping cost. Further they will all drop into your boards and fit. Start shopping around and find who has what where along with some of the scary prices and factor shipping from each vendor and you can get yourself into a spending spree. Further most of the fancy caps are not going to fit your boards so now you have a project on your hands building a board or cutting a plank and mounting all the parts and wiring it up. Ask yourself what you really want to spend and start to look at the cost of boutique caps. I think that you would be best off going with Bob and then and as I suggested set up a system where you can audition different caps in a circuit location and see what you think of the sound. Remember that caps don't drop in and sound perfect they do take time to settle some of them a lot of time so you are back to the project aspect. I recently installed some Silmic caps to bypass some filter caps in my amp at four weeks I was ready to pull them out, only the fact that they had sounded glorious for the first hour or so kept them in and it was another week or so til they started to really come around. They sound great now but that was one of the longer hauls for sound that I have had to endure. I knew they were good and I had heard them in other very similar circuits so I knew they would do what I wanted but they were very slow to come around. Not all caps are like this but you have to be aware. Throwing a cap into a circuit for an hour might not tell you much and could cost you a lot if you knee jerk your way through a bunch of very expensive parts. This kind of project is NOT for most folks and voicing a bunch of part to sound as a whole is more than most with good ears ever want to consider doing. Not trying to discourage you just want to make sure your eyes are open. Having your crossover outside of your speaker to do this kind of evaluation work is the way to go so you don't waste time pulling your speakers apart repeatedly. Good luck have fun.

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/graphite.htm

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/158029-upgraded-the-crossovers-in-my-diy-speakers/

Or you could have Dean build yo a set https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/157816-rf-7-point-to-point-soldered-crossovers-with-audiocap-ppt-thetas/

Edited by moray james
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Moray nailed it. I would talk to Dean as he will get it done without any slip ups and he creates the best networks around. If you're good with an iron you can always hit parts express, but in the long run Dean won't cost much more and it will be tested and right without any guessing games. I started with upgraded Sonicaps, but once you hear some quality foil caps, you will be a believer and never go back.

 

 

http://www.aletheiaaudio.com

Edited by Max2
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