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SF 2 Crossover Component Upgrade


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Here's a SF2 upgrade that improved the imagining, smoothed the high frequency output, increased the detail, increased the SPL, and made these speakers sound more life like. The changes were not dramatic, but noticable and I'd recommend to any SF2 owners.

I replaced the components on the attached (see below post) crossover schematic with components I bought from PartsExpress at a cost of $59 (both xo's).

Here's some photos of the crossovers installed.

http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/letsrodeo@sbcglobal.net/my_photos

SF-2.pdf

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No one really ever says anything bad about them except me -- but I sure haven't seen a decline in their use around here because of it.

They spec signifcantly better than stock, but don't sound that great to me. They work good for LF sections, but sound kind of scratchy in the tweeter circuits I've tried them in.

The leads aren't soldered to the foil.

The foil is really thin.

They're wound too tight.

http://ldsg.snippets.org/appdx-e.php3

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STL:

I'm very pleased with the performance of the Solen caps. It improved the high end allot, its not as shrill now. On the low end, the speakers are much faster. The percussive notes are sharper and the snap of the snare drum is better defined as with all the bass transients. Overall the sound stage is better, each instrument is more distinctive, everything is much more life like.

Back to the speaker caps, one of the high pass caps is a Dayton. I had to parallel a 1.5 uF Solen with a .22 uF Dayton for the 1.75 uF cap to match Klipsch crossover schematic.

I did try to reverse engineer the crossover design with out any success. I couldn't figure out how Klipsch came up with the crossover frequency of 2800 Hz by the component values list on the schematic.

I did price the crossovers using Hoveland Speaker Caps, but it would have doubled the price with just the caps alone. I don't have allot of money in these speakers and didn't want to invest much more than the $60 I spent. The money was well worth the improvements though.

After disassembling the SF2's, I will say I'm impressed with the build quality of these speakers. They are very well designed and the build quality is very, very good. I'm considering upgrading to the RF35's. I like the simplicity of the two way crossover design and not having to worry about the phasing shifting of a three way design. With the advent of powered sub woofers, I think the parallel woofers with a two way crossover design is an elegant solution.

That being said, I've tried my SF2's with a sub, but still prefer them by themselves for stereo listening. There low end is quite good when driven by my SC150 tube amp.

Lastly, I don't have allot of experience with different types of caps in speakers. This was my first speaker upgrade. I have used different caps with my tube amps, but I think circuit topology has a greater effect than cap selection, for tube amps that is.

Cheers!

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