Reynold's Advance A2 crossover confusion

pcrosewood

Active Member
Hello All,
I recently picked up a pair of Advance A2 speakers in a trade. They just don't sound right. At first I thought they may have been out of phase but that turned out not to be the case. They have very little bass and weak mids. very little soundstage or separation. I removed the woofers to look inside and found a very complicated and confusing crossover. I compared it to a crossover photo I found on an AK thread from 2013. I'll attempt to post the photos. I would like to know if my crossover is a factory upgrade or if someone replaced to crossovers with something they thought would be better than the originals. I'd like to get them back to original if that's the case. Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated. Perhaps the speakers aren't worth putting the effort in to get them working properly, I don't know.


 
Did you look at the internal wiring of both speakers, to ensure it matched one another? Double check that too, as one speaker may be wired differently from the other. That would cause phase issues too.
 
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Well, I checked the internal wiring of the speakers and they are wired the same. However, one speaker has a 15uf cap and in the same location in the other speaker there ia a 10uf cap. The y both have a 2.2 cap also. Now, I'm always under the assumption that the crossover only affects the tweeter and not the woofers. However in these speakers, there is a resistor and a 2.2 cap in line between the speaker connectors and the red wire going to the woofer. In the left photo,the radial cap is the 15uf. The red and yellow wires go to the woofer.



Advance Speaker Wiring 002.JPG Advance Speaker Wiring 003.JPG Advance Speaker Wiring 001.JPG
 
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OK, just looked like a neg band on the top of the 15µf radial cap. Both XO's need to be the same, caps, resistors, inductors.
 
I would make drawing up then disconnect the caps and resistors and test for within spec. I would also remove that Radial cap and install a 10µf non polarized axial cap like the other one, actually, change them both out to match or just do a re-cap on them, cheap investment. Also check the drivers nominal ohm resistance, maybe do a battery test on woofers only to double check +/- side. Use AAA battery and connect battery - to - of woofer, and battery + and touch woofer + (don't hold on woofer) to see if it pushes or pulls. If push, polarity is correct. Maybe woofer was mis-marked, probably reaching on this but would guarantee correct connection.
 
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I thought if you hooked the terminals up to a battery + and - and it pushed the woofer outward, the polarity was correct. I did that and speakers pushed. Actually, the wire to speaker connection can only go on one way. One side is male and the other female.
 
There is very little info to be found on these speakers. However, I did read from a post here on AK that these speakers originally came with 15uf caps. Knowing this, I'll match with 15uf in the other speaker and try it out.
 
What I have been told is that Reynolds Advance was started by an EPI or Genesis salesman. Certainly their speakers looked very much like EPIs and Genesis speakers, but with Peerless tweeters rather than the inverted dome of the original designs. The Peerless couldn't take the same amount of power as the inverted dome, and the company had to repair a lot of speakers under warrantee, which probably had something to do with the eventual demise of the company. The added components of the cross over are probably an attempt protect the tweeter - that part that looks like (and is, I believe) an overhead lamp bulb from a car is used to limit current to the tweeter - the hotter it gets, the higher its resistance. Bozak and Bose and others have used the same thing. I suspect the other components were to give a steeper slope to the woofer roll off, which would help protect the tweeter.
If used sensibly, backing off when distortion occurs, the Advance speakers are excellent for their price points. but consumers don't necessarily care about being careful, especially when the speakers are under warrantee.
 
If the Peerless tweeter is that fragile, it might be worthwhile to keep the 10uF caps in place. That would improve power handling, by slightly raising the crossover to the tweeter. Plus, EPI used 10uF caps as well. So, if EPI influenced the Reynold's design, maybe a 10uF cap is the correct part?
 
'Influenced' is too mild - the original series of Advance speakers are essentially EPI/Genesis speakers, but with different tweeters and grills. I assume that something along the lines of the split between EPI and Genesis was the case with Reynolds - everyone seemed to use the same designs without suing the hell out of each other. Then along comes Boston Acoustics, more of the same, at least at first...
 
Well, I'll tell you what I did. I took the 2.2uf caps and the resistors tied to the woofer out of the speakers. I then added a 5uf cap to the one speaker with the 10uf cap. Thus both speakers now have 15uf capacitance.. The speakers came alive. great midrange and much more bass. I don't like an overly bass heavy speaker but these seem now to be very balanced. Still, the old, tired caps need to go and be replaced by fresh caps. I'm thinking of using 10uf caps because of the reasons given in post 17. Now, there's a resistor in line with the 15uf cap and would this need to be changed also if I use 10uf caps? Also, I don't believe the EPI and Genesis speakers had a coil in line with the woofers as the Advance speakers do. Do I remove the coil also?
 
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