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Bypass Capacitor Question


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I am rebuilding a few pairs of crossovers (JBL & B&W).

Does anyone here use bypass caps? When I rebuilt my JBL L100T crossovers, I used 0.01 uF Audiocap Theta Film and Foil caps to parallel the other caps. This was the way that the factory did it and I read that it had something to do with smoothing out the transition on the sounds sine wave from pos to negative.

Does anyone here use them? My L100T's sound very good after the crossover rebuild, but them again, so did the all of the Klipsch crossovers that I rebuilt without using the bypass caps.

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When I rebuilt a particular pair of networks and opted to use slightly less expensive caps to save money....I wound up with a harsh sounding midrange and tweeter. The cap manufacturer recommended using a bypass cap on the tweeter. When I added it I definitely heard a difference. The harshness was tamed somewhat, but I still wasn't satisfied with the quality of what I heard.

I eventually, removed the caps and recapped a second time with more expensive better sounding caps and was satisfied immediately.

In trying to save money I actually spent more money than if I bought the premium caps in the first place. The moral of the story is that bypassing was audible in my case...but not acceptable...and I found that really good caps don't need bypassing.

Personally, I will never bypass again. I will just use better caps the first time.

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Normally use 5% of the value of the partner capacitor.  If the partner capacitor is 22uf, my by pass would be nearest value close to .11uf

0.01 uf is remarkbly small for a by pass capacitor, wondering if it is part of a tweeter supersonic filter to rolloff frequencies above the tweeters normal operating range.






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When I rebuilt a particular pair of networks and opted to use slightly less expensive caps to save money....I wound up with a harsh sounding midrange and tweeter. The cap manufacturer recommended using a bypass cap on the tweeter. When I added it I definitely heard a difference. The harshness was tamed somewhat, but I still wasn't satisfied with the quality of what I heard.

I eventually, removed the caps and recapped a second time with more expensive better sounding caps and was satisfied immediately.

In trying to save money I actually spent more money than if I bought the premium caps in the first place. The moral of the story is that bypassing was audible in my case...but not acceptable...and I found that really good caps don't need bypassing.

Personally, I will never bypass again. I will just use better caps the first time.

I used Daytons for the L100T's from a recommendation on the lansing heritage forums. They actually sound very good.

I always use Solens on other corssovers and have had very good results. They are proced well and, to me, sound good. My first ALK's sold me on Solens.

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