Swaler61
New Member
Hey all,
Found a pair these at a local Savers (similar to a Goodwill) a week or so ago, and have been working on getting them back into shape. I've really enjoyed working on them!
As far as the drivers, only one was fried, one of the horn tweeters. I rewound it myself, first time for that! Used about 5 feet of 42awg wire, and it seems to work fine.
The squawkers and woofers were fine, the woofers just needed new dust covers, as it looked like a toddler punched them in.
The cabs were in pretty good shape overall, just did a very light sanding, stained over any scratches, and then added a coat of paste wax. Done.
Replaced all of the electrolytic caps in the crossovers with films. I'm a long-time fan of the use of film caps for cathode bypass caps in guitar amps, and have done a lot of reading about ESR differences for film vs electrolytics in general. For applications in the signal path, I generally prefer films.
Binding posts updated also, really like the new over the old.
To me, the tone of these is very clean and accurate, and they remind me of the Klipsch Heresy 2's a friend of mine had many years ago. Don't misread me here, I'm not claiming these are as good as Heresy's, but they again sure are reminding me of them! Like the Heresy, these have a 12" woofer, horn squawker and tweeter in a similar size in an acoustic suspension setup, so there you are.
I'm really liking the tone of them so far, and I have less than $150 into them.
As I mentioned in another post, I'm interested in seeing the difference in the crossovers used in the 801a's for comparison, so if anyone runs across an 801a manual, would love to see it.
Thanks overall to this forum for past posts from others working on these, it has been helpful!
Scottie
Found a pair these at a local Savers (similar to a Goodwill) a week or so ago, and have been working on getting them back into shape. I've really enjoyed working on them!
As far as the drivers, only one was fried, one of the horn tweeters. I rewound it myself, first time for that! Used about 5 feet of 42awg wire, and it seems to work fine.
The squawkers and woofers were fine, the woofers just needed new dust covers, as it looked like a toddler punched them in.
The cabs were in pretty good shape overall, just did a very light sanding, stained over any scratches, and then added a coat of paste wax. Done.
Replaced all of the electrolytic caps in the crossovers with films. I'm a long-time fan of the use of film caps for cathode bypass caps in guitar amps, and have done a lot of reading about ESR differences for film vs electrolytics in general. For applications in the signal path, I generally prefer films.
Binding posts updated also, really like the new over the old.
To me, the tone of these is very clean and accurate, and they remind me of the Klipsch Heresy 2's a friend of mine had many years ago. Don't misread me here, I'm not claiming these are as good as Heresy's, but they again sure are reminding me of them! Like the Heresy, these have a 12" woofer, horn squawker and tweeter in a similar size in an acoustic suspension setup, so there you are.
I'm really liking the tone of them so far, and I have less than $150 into them.
As I mentioned in another post, I'm interested in seeing the difference in the crossovers used in the 801a's for comparison, so if anyone runs across an 801a manual, would love to see it.
Thanks overall to this forum for past posts from others working on these, it has been helpful!
Scottie
