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Crossover problem, or bad tweeter?

JCLAY85

JCLAY85

New Member
Hi all,
I recently picked up a pair of Realistic Optimus 4's - the funky danish modern looking 3 way speakers with a tweeter on one side, and a tweeter and woofer on the other. Upon hooking them up, there is something going on. One of the speakers sounds a little muddy/distorted in the high register. It seems to be coming mostly from the front facing tweeter.

My question is, would this be caused by a blown tweeter, or a crossover needing rebuilding?

If its most likely a blown tweeter, do you guys have any recommendations for a suitable replacement?

Thanks!

Here's a picture for you reference:
 

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Crossovers are an easy fix - just solder-in some new caps. If you have a crossover switch I recommend serious cleaning with de-oxit and a small brush as these switches tend to get carbonized and ruin sound output. If that isn't the case, I'd open the back and isolate each speaker for test - it's time consuming but necessary to isolate each pathway and tweeter, woofer, etc. If you need a new tweeter, just find something new that roughly matches the specs of the original. New stuff is generally well built so you shouldn't have a problem with performance.
 
That tweeter looks like the Foster I just replaced in my Criterion 310 rebuild... Got one from a guy on the bay, "make an offer" he's got a couple more, if you're interested...
They sound very good, by the way!
 
knockbill said:
That tweeter looks like the Foster I just replaced in my Criterion 310 rebuild... Got one from a guy on the bay, "make an offer" he's got a couple more, if you're interested...
They sound very good, by the way!
Click to expand...


Sounds good. There isn't a crossover switch, but ill go ahead and open them up and order the caps just to rule that out.

Do you have the model of the speakers you got? Or a keyword I could search in ebay to pull them up? (as i know its probably agains TOS to link to ebay...)
 
This is the search... Trying not to break rules!! I think you know where to look for it...
My tweeters had Foster/Japan on them, sellers numbers matched mine...
However the CTS seem to be the same, compare yours to theirs...
"Vintage CTS 3" Mid Range Tweeter Drivers Paper Cone Speaker 8 Ohm - 3 Available"
Good luck...
 
I'd wire them in bypassing the crossover just to see if they sound good (clear) or not before ordering caps.
 
That works OK with woofers but you don't want full range signal going into a tweeter.

If they're attached with spade lugs, check that the connections aren't corroded. If they aren't just wired in series or parallel - i.e. if each has its own cap for example - you could swap the wiring to the tweeters and see if the problem follows. Of they're wired in series or parallel and one sounds good, it's most likely the tweeter.
 
toxcrusadr said:
That works OK with woofers but you don't want full range signal going into a tweeter.

If they're attached with spade lugs, check that the connections aren't corroded. If they aren't just wired in series or parallel - i.e. if each has its own cap for example - you could swap the wiring to the tweeters and see if the problem follows. Of they're wired in series or parallel and one sounds good, it's most likely the tweeter.
Click to expand...

No, but bad tweeters don't sound "muddy" either, as the op described.
 
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