how they look under the grills?? good price,grills look nice. These would be good with tube amp or low wattage reciever from the time era.They will give decent bass and good highs.Waiting to hear your thoughts???
Those look fantastic! Dont be to critical at first, put some power to em and let them loosen up some.
I had a set of those for a couple of months on a Pioneer SX-950 and I found the low frequency response to be weak.
I recapped them, and got no improvement.
They were in heavy walnut-veneered cabinets and gave every indication of being well built.
Well finished and attractive speakers.
I hope mine were an aberration, and that you have better luck with yours.
I really wanted to like them.
Note that the veneer bondline on mine was very brittle over the entire surface.
Once a bit broke loose it wanted to peel off in sheets.
Handle them carefully, especially at the edges.
Hi Spark,
I am no expert.
I am just a guy willing to make mistakes and learn.
But this is what I would do.
Buy identical replacements. Nothing fancy, just basic bipolar electrolytic caps. It's an inexpensive speaker.
Parts Express is an easy place to find some of the odd-sized caps found in speakers.
Mouser will have them too.
Pull the woofer and move whatever you need to in order to access the crossover components.
Nip out the old caps one at a time with some dikes, leaving some of the lead in place.
After removing the first cap:
Bend the old lead back over itself to form a loop.
Connect the new cap in its place to the old leads thru the loop and twist/crimp things together gently.
Solder conservatively and cut away excess wire.
Done. Remove the next one. Repeat.
Should not take much more than hour.
I forget if this speaker had an L-pad.
If so, flush it out well with contact cleaner and exercise it thoroughly.
Consider making sure that the perimeters of all speakers are well sealed, especially the woofer.
people forget that what was available in budget bookshelf speakers back then didn't have the bass response we would expect today.
Lafayette had a large line of speakers over their lifetime as a company and stretched from very good to quite mediocre. the 3 and 4x where good for those days, comparable to the better radio shack at the time imo.
Sounds like a plan. I will replace the caps like for like. I haven't pulled a woofer yet so haven't viewed the crossover. There are two pots here, one each for mids and highs, and I will be cleaning these. Currently powering these speakers with a fairly modern, and powerful, Onkyo TX-8511 receiver. I recently aquired a Scott 350R receiver, 40 watts per channel, of 70's vintage. If the cleans up well, it may be a better match and I'll probably use it to power these Criterion 3X speakers.
Scott also made radios for the military in ww2: they new what the were doing and had top notch tuners. Glad you like it I love my 73 387B which was top of the line at 55wpc. It can almost keep up with my 100 wpc receiver volume wise. Then you get in to that whole mathematical formula about how much more you need to be twice as loud kind of thing. Glad you are enjoying your new gear!Powering the Criterion 3X with my recently aquired Scott 350R which I spent the day cleaning and blowing out the pots on. Set the Scott up with the Criterions and a couple of things jump out at me. The Scott has a lot of swat for its 40 watts/channel rating, a much better tuner than my more modern receivers, and I am blown away with how fine the phono section of the Scott is, vinyl sounds excellent! Criterion 3X speakers sound better with the vintage receiver. So now I've got two keepers, the Criterions and a nice Scott 350R receiver.