What caps are you guys using with your Realistic super tweets? I never thought about using them open? They radiate from the rear too?
No, they shouldn't (radiate from the rear if the enclosures are removed). They're 'sealed back' drivers, to the best of my recollection.
Any decent capacitor would be an improvement over the stock NP electrolytic.
FWIW (and I may well be wrong!) I think I remember that at least some of the 40-1310 'supertweeters' had
second-order XOs in them (cap plus inductor). If yours are so equipped, I'd (
ahem) humbly suggest bypassing/removing
both elements of the stock XO and just swapping in a
good capacitor at a
very high nominal XO frequency (10kHz or even higher "knee"). For testing purposes, I'd
further encourage you to consider installing a variable L-pad to 'dial in' the supertweeters (by ear or with the aid of a FFT spectrum analysis gizmo). In principle
the series and parallel resistances for the "best case" attenuation may be measured, and the variable L-pad replaced by a fixed L-pad consisting of two decent quality resistors. Alternatively, one may choose to experiment with fixed L-pad attenuation from the get-go; calculators are available on line (e.g.,
http://www.erseaudio.com/CrossoverCalculators/L-Pad-Attenuation)
My apologies if this is
utterly irrelevant to the questions asked!
In my own defense, I
do have a pair of 40-1310s, NIB, down in the basement, someplace.