Advent Prodigy Tower Crossovers

[nxs450]

I agree that its not worth sticking a bunch of money into this ; however, the upgrades mentioned aren't expensive.

Here is a picture of an upgraded crossover from a Prodigy (its the one sitting behind the blown Prodigy crossover - I guess someone had cranked up their Lawrence Welk too loud). I used Solens, but You can do this with Daytons for about $12 per speaker for the caps. Inductors are more, it you change out the woofer inductor only; that would add $3.25 per speaker - I didn't see a big change in upgrading the inductor in the tweeter circuit but if you did figure another $3.

Keep in mind that the electrolytic caps used are over 20 years old (electrolytics have a limited life) and the least expensive poly cap will out perform any of these electrolytics.

Do you have a diagram and values for rebuilding the crossovers. I have a pair I'm working on now

 

[WillMeyer]

 

[nxs450]

View attachment 3297542

I found a 5uf at parts express but no 13uf, would a 12uf work? I don't really want to build new ones just replace caps

 

[WillMeyer]

It would work, but it's not optimal.

The Advent 13uF Capacitor has a tolerance of +/- 20%, that means it could be theoretically anywhere between 15.6uF to 10.4uF.
In reality they will be much closer to nominal than that, but that tolerance band is a typical of NPE Caps.

I'm guessing the metalized polypropylene cap you are looking at is +/- 5%, the 12uF would be between 12.6uF to 11.4uF - again it should be closer to nominal.

When I did my Prodigies, I had the same issue.
I purchased a 12uF and a 1uF and wired them in parallel.

A couple of 1uF Daytons will be very inexpensive.

The thought behind this is the closer you get to the design intent, the better they'll sound.

BTW, Poly caps take some time to break in.
You'll notice that after playing for 3 hours, they will sound better.
I often leave my speaker recaps running overnight (at very small volumes).
The idea is to allow the cap to charge and discharge - it doesn't need a lot of volume as the caps are often rated at 250, 400, or 600 volts and you'll never come up to those voltages (Film caps are rated much higher than the NPEs which are often 50 or 100 volts).

 

[WillMeyer]

Here is a pic of the schematic for the modified Prodigies.
You can ignore the fuse as I had a set of Advent Heritage Terminal blocks and they have a fuse build it so I used it.

 

[Minty602]

View attachment 3297542

I am new to taking things apart and picked up the bookshelf version to explore with. Does the Prodigy 2 bookshelf version use the same inductor values? I am guessing the board number being the same means, likely?