Sansui SP-5500 Restoration
jozeppy26
Active Member
The replacement capacitors came yesterday evening, and they’re the correct values this time! Part Express was great, although I did feel they could have expedited shipping. Anyway, one crossover is done.
Now comes the listening test.
Speaker with OLD CAPS:
Clear with better bass than I was expecting given my previous Sansui speaker experience. The midrange wasn’t singing like it did on my set of SP-3200s. I took a closer look and noticed significantly reduced audio output from the 2 midrange cones (midrange horn was fine). On closer inspection I noticed the glue holding the cone to the basket was giving way, allowing me to lift the cone off with ease. Both will require readhering, no biggie.
Speaker with NEW CAPS:
Something major was immediately obvious.. no woofer output! Took out my multimeter and removed the woofer to find that the connection is dead. I’m not sure what the problem is yet whether it’s open voicecoil or a tinsel lead that just needs to be resoldered to the voicecoil. I’ve had to do the latter on a prior pair of Sansuis with great success. I’ll likely pull a working woofer from one of the other 2 speakers I have just to get a set done sooner. The midrange cones on this speaker also needs re-glued to the basket. Looks like I’m not quite done yet!
Now comes the listening test.
Speaker with OLD CAPS:
Clear with better bass than I was expecting given my previous Sansui speaker experience. The midrange wasn’t singing like it did on my set of SP-3200s. I took a closer look and noticed significantly reduced audio output from the 2 midrange cones (midrange horn was fine). On closer inspection I noticed the glue holding the cone to the basket was giving way, allowing me to lift the cone off with ease. Both will require readhering, no biggie.
Speaker with NEW CAPS:
Something major was immediately obvious.. no woofer output! Took out my multimeter and removed the woofer to find that the connection is dead. I’m not sure what the problem is yet whether it’s open voicecoil or a tinsel lead that just needs to be resoldered to the voicecoil. I’ve had to do the latter on a prior pair of Sansuis with great success. I’ll likely pull a working woofer from one of the other 2 speakers I have just to get a set done sooner. The midrange cones on this speaker also needs re-glued to the basket. Looks like I’m not quite done yet!
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jozeppy26
Active Member
Switches have been cleaned and worked with DeOXit. ;-)
jozeppy26
Active Member
A functioning woofer from one of the other speakers I haven’t yet restored has been cleaned up and placed in the cabinet. Midrange cones have been reglued and centered carefully to avoid voice coil rub.
Recapping impressions (compared to old caps):
Vocals are much cleaner. The separation of vocals and instrumentation is very obvious to me across a wide range of material: from China Cat Sunflower to Kool & The Gang to Logic. Highs may be a bit more present but it’s hard to tell if I’m just making that up. Bass is much tighter and a bit punchier. Bass just sounds less bogged down, which is interesting to me bc I thought the frequencies played by the woofer are filtered by the woofer design itself and not the crossover.
General listening impressions: (with both adjustment dials set to normal and at comfortable listening levels)
FYI these sound best to me and significantly better than what I stated above when midrange adjustment is set to “soft” and high adjustment is set to “clear”.
EDIT: I just listened to some jazz and wow that saxophone on these speakers. I’m a sax player myself and on the 5500s It’s very very beautiful and blows the HPMs out of the water. To me, the sax just sounds hollow and cold on the HPMs now. Wow. That clear warm velvet, I nearly teared up. If you’re a Coltrane fan, BUY THESE SPEAKERS. BUT the trumpet lacks significant bite and doesn’t grab you like it should at times and my HPMs do a significantly better job at grabbing you. Overall though, for jazz, these speakers destroy my HPMs. Wow wow wow.
Recapping impressions (compared to old caps):
Vocals are much cleaner. The separation of vocals and instrumentation is very obvious to me across a wide range of material: from China Cat Sunflower to Kool & The Gang to Logic. Highs may be a bit more present but it’s hard to tell if I’m just making that up. Bass is much tighter and a bit punchier. Bass just sounds less bogged down, which is interesting to me bc I thought the frequencies played by the woofer are filtered by the woofer design itself and not the crossover.
General listening impressions: (with both adjustment dials set to normal and at comfortable listening levels)
- That midrange though... it’s UP FRONT and dies out fast if that horn isn’t at ear level (so don’t stand up). It’s clear and very pretty though and just beautiful to listen to. I do wish that horn was less aggressive, perhaps dialing back on the midrange adjustment dial can improve things.
- Highs are calm and not aggressive making the overall sound seem much warmer and in no way fatiguing (but I’m used to my bright HPM-100s). Maybe it’s me but highs still feel a bit too rolled off for my taste.
- Bass surprised me a bit; I really began to just assume Sansui speakers have big woofers that don’t do anything. Interesting to note that these cabinets do what other SP models do and close off the top section reducing the woofer’s cabinet volume to work with (the dual woofer ports are also stuffed with rolled insulation). These have pretty good low mid bass without sounding “boomy” which does just ok with funk and electric pop. It doesn’t go as deep as my HPM-100s, and it really just has more well done mid bass than other SP models making a subwoofer far far less of a requirement.
- The soundstage is pretty impressive and to me sounds maybe a bit more lateral than my HPMs. It wraps around you, BUT midrange sound like it’s in your face which at times ruins the illusion. Highs and lows sound a tad recessed to me (highs more than the lows) which makes some music selections sound a tad awkward. Picture a stage with the lead singer out in the audience and the rest of the band a bit further back and spread out over a wide area left and right, but still in the audience.
- Details are pretty good and very enjoyable, better than other SP models I’ve heard (but not as good as my HPMs). You hear those small sounds and details from the sides and it makes these speakers really enjoyable.
FYI these sound best to me and significantly better than what I stated above when midrange adjustment is set to “soft” and high adjustment is set to “clear”.
EDIT: I just listened to some jazz and wow that saxophone on these speakers. I’m a sax player myself and on the 5500s It’s very very beautiful and blows the HPMs out of the water. To me, the sax just sounds hollow and cold on the HPMs now. Wow. That clear warm velvet, I nearly teared up. If you’re a Coltrane fan, BUY THESE SPEAKERS. BUT the trumpet lacks significant bite and doesn’t grab you like it should at times and my HPMs do a significantly better job at grabbing you. Overall though, for jazz, these speakers destroy my HPMs. Wow wow wow.
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gdmoore28
Super Member
Hi Jo!
What a darned-good review. Rather than trying to express your observations with the flowery, oblique vagueries that are stock in trade for the "professional" reviewers, you succeeded in nicely describing the indescribable: sound. Kudos!
May I now offer some observations on your observations?
1. ". . . big woofers that don’t do anything." And not just in Sansuis of the era. I remember when my wife and I were shopping for our first real audio gear at the Air Force Audio Club in Germany, 1975. We just could not understand why the Japanese companies could produce such incredible electronics, yet such horrible speakers. (Generalities, yes, for there were a few exceptions.) We ended up buying what almost all my comrades bought: Japanese electronics and American speakers. We weren't technical enough to understand why the disparities between speakers existed, but we knew what we needed to know: one type of speaker sucked; the others sounded great. We just used our ears to judge.
(In truth, we wanted to like the Japanese speakers with huge, brown woofers. It just didn't make sense to us: cabinets with a half-dozen + drivers that were bested by American 2/3-ways with woofers half the size of their competition? What the . . . . ?)
2.&3. Ahhhhhhhhhhh! The mid range. This is where an entire book could be written. While in no stretch of the imagination am I an expert at anything audio, it wasn't until I began to get a thread of understanding of the importance of mid range frequencies and their effect on the overall presentation of a speaker "system" that my understanding of that system finally "clicked."
When I still worked in ProSound as an installer and service man, it wasn't uncommon (especially in the realm of nightclubs) to encounter customers who wanted (who would have guessed?) more prominent bass and treble. One's first inclination, of course, would be to resort to the "smiley faced" graphic eq curve. But my dear friend and fellow service man insisted otherwise. "If the customer wants more bass and treble, do not boost the bass and treble; instead, CUT the mid range!" That simple technique revealed to me one of the most important characteristics of the central frequencies - the mid range's ability to "mask," or "hide" the bass and treble frequencies.
(Again, my ramblings here are those of a non-technician, so take them as just that: my personal observations. And those observations have served me well in setting up professional and the personal sound systems for both myself and friends.)
As a rule of thumb, let's consider 1500Hz as the "center" of the middle frequencies, which just happens to be the frequencies where our ears are the most sensitive. As the frequencies increase or decrease, our ears become less sensitive. That's why the "loudness" feature on our audio gear exists: to boost the bass and treble at lower volumes.
Problems come into play when those mid range frequencies - to which we are most sensitive - are allowed to dominate the frequency balance in our speakers. That imbalance is what we perceive as "nasal, boxy, clinical," and a range of other descriptors. But the worst perception is of a perceived lack of bass and treble. (Let's be sure to keep in mind that we are assuming that a particular speaker system is capable of delivering good bass and treble response, but just does not seem to be doing so.)
Just as you have described, some of the most obvious and memorable offenders seem to be those systems that incorporate horns for mid range reproduction, and has led to such statements as yours, ie - "I really think I just despise horns, at least for the midrange." This opinion is widely held, and (in my opinion) perfectly justifiable for two reasons:
1. Horns are extremely efficient at reproducing mid range frequencies. That efficiency should be compensated for by being carefully attenuated to match the levels of the other drivers in the speaker "system." I.e., the mid range horn is by nature too loud in comparison to the other drivers and should be turned down so that it does not stand out in the overall frequency presentation. The very fact that in your system - and too many others - you are drawn to point out the mid range horn's performance and dominance in comparison to the other drivers makes it all too obvious that the horn is too loud.
And that brings me to what I consider an equally important matter. Sometimes (or maybe a lot of the time?) even a mid range horn that is properly attenuated persists in performing poorly and sounding "horny." So that leads us to the second reason that poor horn performance is noted:
2. Almost all mid range horns must be passively or actively equalized. Take a look at the FR graphs of some of the classic JBL and Altec horn drivers and you will note that in some of them there can be as much as 12dB accentuation between the lower mid range and lower high frequencies. If left unequalized, the tone of that driver can be the definition of obnoxious mid range presentation.
JBL and Altec addressed the issue with their various attenuation/equalization schemes, but I dare say that one would be hard pressed to find any equalization at all instituted on non professional horn systems. That means that, unless a particular horn driver has been meticulously engineered to avoid/correct mid range horn anomalies, the listener is being bombarded with the very frequencies that can ruin the listening experience. No wonder so many hifi fans claim to "hate horns!"
"FYI these sound best to me and significantly better than what I stated above when mid range adjustment is set to 'soft' and high adjustment is set to 'clear'."
And that is the statement on which I will end my long-winded, highly-opinionated mini-essay. The settings you have specified are exactly the ones needed to - at least marginally - minimize the horn dilemma I outlined above. With those adjustments you have attenuated the offensive driver (the mid range horn) and given the high frequencies a chance to balance with the other drivers in the system. That has to be an improvement.
GeeDeeEmm
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jozeppy26
Active Member
Thanks! I was really feeling the music last night and what I was hearing just seemed so clear to me.
Your info regarding midrange frequencies and horns makes a ton of sense (and definitely makes sense why I’m not a Klipsch fan). I actually think cone tweeters sound better than horn tweeters too, but I’ve never really heard the resonance problem others describe.
I think when it comes down to it, a prominent midrange can sound very pleasing and nonfatiguing with clear details but a bit boring. I bet this can sound very dynamic and fun if low frequencies aren’t rolled off with the addition of an active sub crossed over at like 40Hz (plus then you’d get that chest thumb all those club owners want).
MannyE
Exterminate!
NAD80
Super Member
joezeppy26, now if you had a Marantz or a JVC , equalizer you could adjust the sound to better acoustics depending on the speakers used. But for the money spent on them got more than your money's worth. Enjoy the sound. Maybe the stuffing of the ports would raise the frequency of the bass output. See if unstuffing one or both would extend the frequency lower. As for the recapping of the crossover, now the midrange doesn't extend down into the range covered by the woofers. And the woofer doesn't reach into the lower midrange. Had a pair of CV R-10s. The lower range of the 10 inch Bass Reflex would drop down to 30 hz. Could shake all 3 floors of the house with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Only using a Nad 3140 (40W).
NAD80
Super Member
Found the specs on the sansui here on HiFiEngine.com. https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/sansui/sp-5500x.shtml. Crossover frequency used for woofer 1000hz, Midrange (cones), 6000hz Tweeter (horn), Super tweeter 10000hz. Range of the speakers 25hz to 20khz. Power capacity 120W. Like the caps you used in the crossover. Used Dayton caps in recapping my Mission 737Rs.
jozeppy26
Active Member
I believe the woofer is crossed over at 700Hz. That link is for the SP-5500x, not SP-5500. I usually go with the cheapest metalized polypropylene capacitors listed on Parts Express, keeping all caps used in a crossover pair the same brand and model of course. So far this has been the Audyn Q4 every time.
EDIT: it’s crossed over at 700Hz, 1kHz, and 6.5kHz
I tried to upload the PDF of the manual here but the way this forum manages file types and sizes is beyond terrible. It’s like I’m living in 1999.
EDIT: it’s crossed over at 700Hz, 1kHz, and 6.5kHz
I tried to upload the PDF of the manual here but the way this forum manages file types and sizes is beyond terrible. It’s like I’m living in 1999.
sal.monella
New Member
I know this is an old thread, but I'm about to recap a set my dad picked up in southeast Asia back in the early 70's. I don't like removing old wood screws more than necessary so I was wondering if you have the value of the two smaller caps. I was able to read the larger one. I'm sure the old caps are drier than a popcorn fart by now.
Thanks
jozeppy26
Active Member
