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Advent Laureate-Cross Over?

Ishmael

Ishmael

Super Member
Well yesterday I pulled the trigger after finding that a Pair of Advent Laureate speakers were still available at the local thrift store, so $13.00 lighter they came home with me.

This will be a nice project as they are intact, already ordered foam for the surrounds which are going/gone, have one bit of grill cloth to re-glue, and the sure sign of their vintage status there's drips and drabs of paint here and there so I will sand and restore the cabinets. The cabinet side walls have thick black vinyl on them and there are marks/streaks, can these be touched up with a close matching modeling paint, or, are there other ways to blend in such marks? Suggestions welcome.

Checking out the cross over was a simple matter of four wood screws and then gently easing the speaker cable connector plate out with the cross over neaty screwed to its back.

P1050499.JPG P1050503.JPG

As you can see the cross over parts look to be in excellent condition, which is my question, am I missing anything concerning the parts making up this cross over unit as to condition? I know they are +/- 10% capacitors which can be improved on, but given their condition I don't see a pressing need to upgrade them?

Again your thoughts are welcome.

I will post more on the restore as I move things along.

P.S. Sorry for the multiple pictures of the same shot, just getting first cup of coffee and missed the multiplication.
 
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Caps look like nonpolar electrolytics so they are probably OK at the apparent age (they don't look decades old - when were these made anyway?). I would play them first. If there is any harshness or dullness in the mid and treble, you might consider changing out the caps in the mid/tweeter circuits for some fresh audio grade film caps. They certainly don't look like "Oh god change those immediately" caps to me.
 
Tox, from a Chicago Tribune review of these speakers dated January 3, 1992, I would guess that these speakers are from 1992 or thereafter, thus about 24 years old. I am going to hold off until after I've re-foamed the woofer/mid-range speakers and then listen as the final test. Thanks for comment.
 
Hi Nice score on the Advent Laureate. I have a pair i saved from a flea market. i had to pay more $25 needing new surrounds that i fixed in 2 weeks.

have enjoyed them now 7 years.

enjoy your Advent Laureate after you get them finished.

by the way where your speakers 8ohm or 4ohm, mine are 4ohm and my magnavox 9302 amp loves them.

good luck Don
 
Ishmael i have owned a pair of Advent Laureate for 7 years now my main speaker on my Magnavox 9302 pp amp.

here is what i know about them. First they are 4ohm speakers, if you are running a tube amp and need 4ohm speakers you just hit a home run.
the spl is calmed to be 90 to 91 spl work well for bigger tube amps.
the crossovers are a 3rd order butterworth, still trying to find the crossover freq. about 1900hz +- a 100 or 2

now after you you re foam the surrounds and play them for a bit your going to think ok another set of ok cheap speakers,. NOT SO little one.
open them up and remove the 15watt 2ohm and the 5watt 1.3ohm resister. put wire jumpers in there place and get ready to be amazed. ugly duckling into a swan WOW

when i did mine i was reading about crossovers, so i open them up to find a nice 3rd order butterworth crossover with RESISTER? what the $#%^$% did someone put resisters in my 3rd order butterworth crossover! got to go lol. so what you have left is a clean 3rd order butterworth crossover to enjoy. and if you have tube amp you get the pure sound of glass. i never knew how sweet 6bq5's tubes could sound till i did this mod to mine.

the 5 watt resister is to cut power down to the tweeter. it dose that but being a cheap radio shack type it distorts the highs coming through the audio path to the tweeter. every thing has a muddiness to it, get rid of it. if the tweeter is to loud fix it the right way with an L-Pad

now the 15 watt resister is some kind of Z something or another to level out inductions.
remove it and install a jumper. what it dose is cut the bass bad. Z = NO Bass.
now you will have bass, real bass coming from two 6.5 woofers YEP don't need a sub

Remember i am running a 10 watt tube amp on them now have not hooked the up to solid state amp. so test test test

that is hot glue on the crossovers,a hair dryer works well to remove the glue for cap replacement

The Drivers and Tweeters in the Laureate are top notch drivers. from the 90's? jbl owned them i think?

so enjoy your new treasurer you have found for $13.00 plus parts and your time.

Your friends will be amazed.

you sure can't build it for $13.00

Don
 
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Don P, thx for the tip. I took out the 15w resistor for the woofer, and tested it with my Adcom solid state 100w amp. It is much louder and thumps better. I used a RS db analog meter, and compared it with the other pair that still has the resistor connected. The meter kept on resulting about a 3-4 db loudness. Ftw. Yey. Thx again.
 
At 24 years old I would not hesitate to replace those electrolytic caps. You cannot judge the electrical condition of caps from their appearance unless they have exploded. In that case, they would definitely be bad. :D I have replaced caps in similar vintage Advent Legacy II and Baby III speakers. Both pairs sounded much better after replacing the caps. Old electrolytic caps are subject to having the capacitance drift, causing a change in the crossover frequency, and having the ESR change, causing the sensitivity of the driver to decrease.

As for a resistor in the crossover circuit, generally the resister is used to match the sensitivity between drivers if it is wired in series with the driver. Removing that resistor will cause the SPL of that driver to increase. Some may think the speaker sounds better, but the speaker's frequency response will be affected by the removed resistor. Other resistors may be used for impedance leveling of the speaker of its frequency range. Removing that resistor can possibly adversely impact the load on the amp and will most likely make the speaker sound a lot different.
 
Old thread but yes, I agree about that woofer resistor.

"now the 15 watt resister is some kind of Z something or another to level out inductions.
remove it and install a jumper. what it dose is cut the bass bad. Z = NO Bass."

All depends on where that resistor is as, you say RT. The 'Z something' being referred to is a Zobel network, which isn't intended to reduce bass response, but to level out the impedance of the woofer section across the bass frequency range so that the amp does not see a dangerously low impedance at some point. Bass being the place that half or more of the power goes in average music, this can really stress an amp.

Of course w/o a schematic we're just guessing. But I would not start removing components from a crossover without fully understanding what they do first.
 
toxcrusadr said:
Old thread but yes, I agree about that woofer resistor.
Click to expand...

LOL. I did not notice the age of the thread. But I hate coming across bad information on the web. So I would have posted the correct info even if I knew the thread was old. At least the next person coming along has a chance of getting good instead of mis-information.
 
Absotutely. :thumbsup: I do the same thing. Just wanted to make sure everyone knew that the original poster may not see the response. But yeah, other people do read threads, and you are a good citizen to do that. :angel:

I looked a bit on the web and did not find a Laureate schematic. Not hard to draw one out if you have the xover in front of you. As a public service. [Looking at you crispa1 :biggrin:]
 
When I rebuilt my Laureates like 10 years ago ($10/pair at a thrift, rotted foam, one torn grill), I refinished the pecan wood, refoamed and installed polypropylene caps in the crossover. They are quite balanced and get plenty of SPL with just an 80watt receiver. Nice moderate speaker, but no matter what, dual 6" woofers will not compete with a single 10" for the lowest bass. They just don't have the throw. Changing those resistors out (I bypassed them with a jumper to test) only made them "punchy" but absolutely did not extend the lowest bass response at all. I returned the resistors to service. I notice no high frequency distortion difference, either, they just got brighter..I actually like the Laureates more than the Legacys that I did the same treatment to too, except for the bass. I would like to get my hands a set of Heritages.
 
I am working on a pair of laureates. I am going in a slightly different direction, so I need a bit of help. I am replacing the woofers with a different set. The whole surrounds etc etc, I might do later but I also believe these are vastly superior woofers that I happen to have.
So as a quick get it on the system and enjoy while sourcing foam etc etc also is at play here. Now these woofers are 4 ohm a piece. What was the impedance of the original woofer ? If they were 8 ohm wired in parallel for 4ohm I'm gonna end up with 2 ohm, and I might wire these in series then and get 8 ohm nominal, I prefer that to 2 ohm.
 
Don P said:
Ishmael

the 5 watt resister is to cut power down to the tweeter. it dose that but being a cheap radio shack type it distorts the highs coming through the audio path to the tweeter. every thing has a muddiness to it, get rid of it. if the tweeter is to loud fix it the right way with an L-Pad

now the 15 watt resister is some kind of Z something or another to level out inductions.
remove it and install a jumper. what it dose is cut the bass bad. Z = NO Bass.
now you will have bass, real bass coming from two 6.5 woofers YEP don't need a sub

Don
Click to expand...

Do I remove the 5 watt 1.3 ohm resistor or just bypass it with a jumper. You weren't specific, but I think its best jumpered across because 1.3 ohm is far too low to be in parallel with the tweeter, tweeter will get no power.
I'm pretty sure the 2 ohm 15w is jumpered across. But confirm if you could.
 
I shorted across both resistors. This crossover of mine is the absolute clown car of hot glue. Looked like it was on the lucy show with lucy running the hot glue gun. Then I wired my woofers in series for 8 ohm. The result ??? The advent has no chance of sounding this good. There's more bass, there's more treble and even more mid range. Its keeping up well with the infinity 5.1 XO 3 ways with 8" car woofer, 3" soft dome mid and 1" hard dome tweeter. I'll have to try a freq sweep sometime.
 
srinath said:
Do I remove the 5 watt 1.3 ohm resistor or just bypass it with a jumper. You weren't specific, but I think its best jumpered across because 1.3 ohm is far too low to be in parallel with the tweeter, tweeter will get no power.
I'm pretty sure the 2 ohm 15w is jumpered across. But confirm if you could.
Click to expand...

I would NOT do the changes mentioned higher up in the thread.

As mentioned, this "Advice" was most likely not the best information to go by.
Find an actual schematic first and SEE for sure what the resistors do, before just blindly removing them.

I remember FOR SURE, hearing them back in the day and STOCK they sounded just fine as is. HIGHLY doubtful changing resistors TODAY will make some minor or huge improvement, or Advent would have done that immediately......:yikes:
 
srinath said:
I am working on a pair of laureates. I am going in a slightly different direction, so I need a bit of help. I am replacing the woofers with a different set. The whole surrounds etc etc, I might do later but I also believe these are vastly superior woofers that I happen to have.
So as a quick get it on the system and enjoy while sourcing foam etc etc also is at play here. Now these woofers are 4 ohm a piece. What was the impedance of the original woofer ? If they were 8 ohm wired in parallel for 4ohm I'm gonna end up with 2 ohm, and I might wire these in series then and get 8 ohm nominal, I prefer that to 2 ohm.
Click to expand...


What woofers are you using??
The original Advent ones are Acoustic suspension, and were designed to work well in the small box they use.

Most likely anything else will not work as well, as the Volume of the box will NOT be ideal.

Not saying your new woofers are not better, but simply not optimized FOR the box size, or crossover as is.
 
Thanks for the XO schematic. Now atleast I know what I did. I have dynaudio 6" woofers out of a car. I actually think the cabinet needs more stuffing. However, the woofers are such higher quality, advent didn't have that quality available at the time they made it. I have shorted both resistors and run the 2 woofers which are 4 ohm in my case in series. The speaker is likely down in the midrange compared to original. I have the original needing foam and sometime I'll get to it, then reverse my modifications and test a vs b. In some cases the manufacturers tried to smoothen out the sound, they wanted to make it enjoyable, because that was back in the day before the ricers set up systems in cars that blew out everyone's ear drums. They intended to make speakers for sounding musical, not the "all about that bass" crowd. Lets just say its rubbed off on me too a little. Harsh - maybe, but definitely has great punch.

PS: This new harbor fright cheapo DMM read 9.5 DCR for the tweeter. It also read 8 ohm for the woofer that's got a sticker on it that says 4 ohm. Like WTF, this bugger is going back to the store tomorrow, but assuming its reading 2X, that makes the tweeter ~4.75 ohm. So it is a 6 ohm tweeter ?
 
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