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Forte II crossover midrange tap on BEC 3636


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 I recently purchased a nice pair of Klipsch Forte II's.  I decided to upgrade the crossovers with the Bob Crites upgraded ones along with the Titanium Tweeters.

 I found the midrange to be a bit too  forward for my taste and room acoustics.  So I looked at the autoformer info and switched to the 0-Y , 0-1 tap,  for an additional 1 db reduction. It seems to have worked well and I am much pleased with the results. Should I have changed any other Caps or Resistor?  It really does sound much better to my ears.

 

 Has anyone else done such a thing? Is it my imagination ?

 

 I am really liking these speakers now.

 

 Billy Z

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I can't answer your question but also find the squaker just a tad forward on my forte II's. I would love to have a definitive answer from the more knowledgeable members.  I'm sure a phone call to Bob Crites could clear this up but maybe a member here has already worked this out?

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Have you tried moving the autoformer taps? Assuming you have the crites 3636.

I now have them slightly tipped back , facing straight forward. They sound great. The imaging is very real.

I was practicing with my bass player and could not tell the difference when it was him playing or the forte's .

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I'm still using the factory crossovers at this point. I began replacing capacitors today starting with a 1.5uf Russian k75-10 hybrid pio on the squaker. I am hoping to smooth out the mids a little. I will replace the other caps soon, just wanted to try one at a time to get a good idea what each is contributing. I will probably build new boards to have room for the new caps so I may get Bob's autoformer at the same time and try moving the taps. I think there is huge potential in the forte's with some minor modifications.

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I think Bob has some info on his site as to the tap settings but can't recall if he provides what changes should be made to the cap on the mid when you move taps.  Shouldn't be that much if any since you only decreased output by 1db.  Good luck

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Thanks longdrive.

I can't believe how much better they sound just moving the mids down 1db.

I am enjoying them too much apparently. After installing the crites crossovers I kept turning them down , now after redoing the autoformer setting I keep turning them up.

And my wife has noticed :)

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  • 1 month later...

I actually asked Bob Crites this exact question as I was looking to change the balance of the mids and hi's in relation to the woofer and here is his answer....

 

"Bass is the fundamental thing to measure when you build a speaker with a certain woofer and certain porting (or passive radiator in the case of the Forte II).  The amount with these is not really changeable.  What the crossover does is balance the midrange and tweeter to have equal output in their frequency ranges as the woofer does in it’s frequency range.  So, you could give yourself more "apparent” bass by cutting back the output of the midrange and tweeter.  

 

Now doing that would take a new crossover design.  You can’t just attenuate the midrange more with a different autotransformer without changing  other parts to compensate and keep the crossover frequencies right.

 

My suggestion would be to just change the crossovers capacitors to get the crossovers back into spec, and change the tweeter diaphragms to the titanium and then see if the speakers perform like you want.  With the cheap worn out caps in there now, you have never heard the speaker perform like it is meant to perform."

 

 

I would love to know what changes would need to be made, so if anyone follows up wiht Bob about this please post what you find. It doesn't seem to me that you would need need to change the value of caps behind the autoformer?  In the schematic pics I've seen the autoformer is the last piece of circuitry before the driver so it would seem as thought by changing the tap you are just lowering the power going to that driver. I do understand where lowering the power to a driver will change the overall balance of the speaker, but in this case that is the desired effect. I am not an electrical engineer nor a speaker designer but I dont see how it would change the actual frequency content of what is fed to that driver or what that driver is reproducing only the level of what it is producing.

 

I hope someone with more knowledge picks up on this thread. I would love to know if what the OP did is a valid option as I had the exact same thought.

 

maybe set21 will find this discussion or if anyone knows him they can turn him onto this thread as he has done a lot of forte crossover tweeking from what i've read on here.

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In my case two changes really helped even out my Forte 2's frequency response.

1. Changed amplification from Musical Fidelity A5 integrated to McIntosh MX113/MC2100 combo. The Mc combo really brings out the bass in these speakers. As many of us have learned over and over, system synergy is key.

2. Replaced caps in crossovers. Initially, I only replaced the mids because I hadn't decided on the other caps yet. A fresh capacitor on the mid just made the problem worse. After replacing the remaining caps the speakers are now very even handed and I am happy with the balance. I used now Russian k75 caps for the mid, sonicap gen 1's for the tweeter, and a Mundorf electrolytic for the woofer.

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