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Crossover health analysis

Longaevus

Longaevus

Active Member
I am trying to restore a pair of Cadenza's from KEF which I bought with rotten passive radiators foam surrounds, as is common with the earlier version of these speakers.

Other than the obvious I decided to check the health of the B200 midrange driver and the T27 tweeter but after plugging them the sound that comes out is merely residual, barely audible, both do work but very, very quitely.

I guess the next step is to look at the crossover and I have by no means any kind o experience with electronics therefore I would need you guys help on judging the condition of a KEF's Cadenza's crossover in order to decide to having them refurbished or not:



So, are these worth getting reccaped?
 
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Longaevus said:
I decided to check the health of the B200 midrange driver and the T27 tweeter but after plugging them the sound that comes out is merely residual, barely audible, both do work but very, very quitely.
...I have by no means any kind o experience with electronics
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How do you know midrange drivers and tweeters are faulty? You will get surprising little out of them even when they're working perfectly because most of music's sound energy is in the low frequencies.
Crossovers rarely go bad, so they're quite possibly ok too if there's no sign of any burning.
 
rothwellaudio said:
How do you know midrange drivers and tweeters are faulty? You will get surprising little out of them even when they're working perfectly because most of music's sound energy is in the low frequencies.
Crossovers rarely go bad, so they're quite possibly ok too if there's no sign of any burning.
Click to expand...

Wow! That would be the ultimate f*ck up from my part I mean...
Now that I think of it, I actually did the listening test with the passive radiator already disassembled which means there was a big hole on each of the speakers, could that affect the ability of the other drivers to properly produce sound so much that they are barely audible?

The thing is I am trying to assess is if it makes sense, money-wise, to restore the speakers. For what I paid for them I can just sell the two tweeters and two midranges and get my money back almost 4 times over. If I restore them though, I don't even know how these Cadenza's are valued this side of the pond and the passive units alone will come at a cost.

So, just by looking at the crossovers there are no signs of it requiring an overall?
 
Falcon Acoustics has good replacements for those ELCAPS and will match them to 2% tolerance for you.

You're talking 6 capacitors - probably under $30 shipped.

I just did these KEF 105.2 crossovers. 22 capacitors in total and they made a noticeable difference. The biggest difference was before the recap the soundstage was leaning up and over my left shoulder. I was thinking it was the room. Recapping centered the soundstage. They also play noticeably louder. I.e, the volume knob doesn't have to be set as high.

Anyway, here's the before and after.
IMG_5725.JPG IMG_5728.JPG
 
My main concern now is to properly test the speakers I mean, should I have covered the hole left by the ABR before assuming they were playing very low? How can I assess if the B200 and T27 are not damaged?
 
One--they either work or they don't. If they produce sound (at any level), they are working. To determine if they might be "damaged", just use a DMM to measure DCR (DC voltage resistance) and see if they match up.
 
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