Speaker Crossover Rebuild (Spendor SP2 mk1)

Second stage was the full rebuild using Mundorf Supreme capacitors to replace the existing metallised polyester industrial type pulse capacitors.

(For our American friends, the coin is a 50p piece, it's a little larger than a quarter.)

Nice rebuild. Are all of the components available from Maplin or should I ferret around?

The main objective was to improve the 'resolution' of the speakers.

When I was building amplifies, I noted that, in general, polypropylene capacitors (which were then a fairly recent innovation) almost universally sounded a lot 'cleaner' than the more easily available polyester or polycarbonate capacitors (probably because of the dramatically lower dielectric absorption - it's 10x lower for PP); and specialist MKPs such as the Sidereal Cap (now Auricap) improved matters still further, but at a cost!

Well, it worked.  I was expecting some improvement, probably not huge, but a useful improvement.

What I got was a considerable improvement; not just to simple resolution, but additionally and unexpectedly a very considerable improvement to differentiation of instrumental timbres, a substantial improvement in the readability of vocals, and a general improvement in the presentation of subtle nuances of a performance.  There's also an improvement to representation of depth in the stereo image, a general improvement at lower volumes, and even a small improvement to the system dynamics.

I would liken the changes to a that obtained by using much higher quality interconnect or speaker cables.  I've lost nothing of their best points of the speakers, but gained big improvements in the areas that were the specific limitations.

But above all the ability to understand more of what's going on in complex passages and the greater sense of involvement in the music make the relatively small cost (~£150) and substantial amount of work involved most worthwhile.

I can thoroughly recommend the Mundorf Supreme MKP capacitors.

Nice and tidy!

Minh Nguyen posted:

Nice rebuild. Are all of the components available from Maplin or should I ferret around?

NONE of the components are available from Maplin.  You would need to get them from HiFi Collective.

All the capacitors are Mundorf Supreme MKP and the resistors are Janzen 5W Wire Wound 1%.

Oh, I forgot to mention, all fasteners are non-magnetic: the wood screws are brass and the nuts, bolts and washers are Austenitic steel.

The connectors are CuZn5 for the sockets (aka re-purposed spade connectors), and the plugs are CuBe.

The wire between the crossover components is DNM Resolution, the flexible cable to the drive units is Audioquest 14AWG.

Huge posted:

Second stage was the full rebuild using Mundorf Supreme capacitors to replace the existing metallised polyester industrial type pulse capacitors.

(For our American friends, the coin is a 50p piece, it's a little larger than a quarter.)

Nice work Huge