Recaping Wharfedale W70's. Beginners guide please

Where to look. What to get. How to replace.
Thanks for the help in advance.

anyone? 12mfd
Solens
Dayton's
Bennic's
Any of these good?

just got some wharfedale 70s, too. do yours have no way to take off the grill? i'm an audio novice, so i can't answer your question, sorry. they are the best speakers i have; how do they compare to the rest of yours?

Cap choices

All of the brands mentioned would be satisfactory . Personally, I've used Solens almost exclusively on AR's, Bozaks, KLH's and Wharfedales. In every case there was an improvement in mid & hi range clarity & definition. You also are insuring against overload because the old aged caps may have changed value.

The Solens aren't the cheapest, and certainly not the priciest, but have excellent technical specs.
I've used Madisound as a source 'cause the're only a few miles away. You can call in an order toll free 866-883-1488

Dave

I've recapped a pair of Wharfedale W70Es with Solens. I plan to use Daytons to recap my W60s and some other speakers. I don't think there is much difference to my ears. I get my caps from Parts Express. You can Google their site and read their tutorial on capacitors.

I think the upgrade in caps alone is worth the time. As for the time and money spent, it's about 1/2 hour and under 10 bucks, well worth it ever if you only imagine the speakers to sound better. Having said that I only recap speakers I plan on keeping and using, and are 25 years old and older.

inductor said:

i im thinking this recaping is a waste if effort, the caps are not subject to heat and will keep the rated valus for years, unless they are faulty or the frequency range needs altering i wouldnt bother ?

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So am I right in believing that you haven't recapped some old speakers before?
I have recapped several pairs and there is a difference in sound quality. A couple were huge improvements but most were just easily audible improvements. One pair that I did was only a small audible improvement but they weren't more than 15 YO. I've used mostly daytons, and Solens but have also used hovland and auricaps. I think the the daytons and solens are the best deal. I've always felt that I got my money's worth on the recap. Parts Express, madisound or tubesandmore are good places for caps.

Never JCMJRT. Not even crossed my mind until wandering over into AK land. A learning process indeed. So, my reason for asking is due to the intermitent cutting in and out of the highs. Turning the tone control up corrects the problem for only a short burst then back to mids and lows. I would assume this is a cross over problem, hence the recapping idea.

If they are the W70 and not the D or E the problem may be the control that feels like a wirewound and hence would have the same issues as is common with early ARs. On my W70s I shot a load of control cleaner in them as they are well sealed before the controls worked and did nto cause cutout. The gave a good shot of cleaner with silicone. About 3 months later they have again started to sound scratch but do not cutout. I really don't care about the scratchy sound as I don't play with them.

As for the caps, 1 of mine was completely shot and the tweeter did not work so hit the local shop and picked up a set of polypropolene nonpolarized generics for about $1.90 each just to se what I had gotten myslf into. I think thay may actually be Auricaps as they look the same as the photos. I figured if the units showed promise, I'd maybe replace them with something esoteric. The only issue was it took about 100 hours to burn them in and get them to settle. Truthfully, after getting the speakers set up and the tweeter controls set, they sounded good enough that I've not thoguht about experimenting further.

Brian said:

the problem may be the control that feels like a wirewound and hence would have the same issues as is common with early ARs. On my W70s I shot a load of control cleaner in them as they are well sealed before the controls worked and did nto cause cutout. The gave a good shot of cleaner with silicone. About 3 months later they have again started to sound scratch but do not cutout. I really don't care about the scratchy sound as I don't play with them.

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I think Brian's right that it could very well be the control that is the problem. That doesn't mean that the speakers wouldn't benefit from a recap as well. You can try cleaning the control or replace it. Parts express carries replacement L pads.

Inductor, always an interesting challenge. To make spomething sound better first you need to establish a baseline to compare against. I did that with the caps I bought which surprisingly mated very well. From there and after quite a few hours of listening after the 100 housr of break-in, I could now sit and create a checklist of items related to comparisons and some kind of rating system for each criteria. This would involve also a creating of a standard to head to or meet. For me it is the Koss ESP9b headphone that comes in very closely to my all-time favorite speaker, the KLH Nine.

Then there is the need NOT to change any componet in the system, the time to burn in each new cap and go through the critical listening. From there based on the written notes and ratings, probably a second series of tests to further compare at an even deeper level of listening criteria.

An estimate would be it will take about a year on average to go through 4 possibly caps.

Am I smoking something, no as this is the process that some of the manufacturers go through in evaluating designs except that they can create multiple mules for the 1st go around and second. Then form there do a sampling based on average production runs of drivers for the final evaluation and tuning.

Oh, also will need a sound pressure meter to assure that you are listening at the same levels at each stage of testing.

A daunting task if you plan to really do it correctly.