Rctilinear III crossover question.

[prfry]

Greetings all,
I am looking at a pair of Rectilinear III highboys which are in generally good condition with the most notable exception being noisy tweeter & mid pots. Has anyone here rebuilt or recapped the Rectilinear III crossover without the pots? The crossovers seem to be simple first order crossovers (thank to this resource!) - do they NEED the pots? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[GordonW]

Unless the speakers sound their best with all the pots turned all the way up, then yes, they do need them.

It's rare that all the drivers in a system are exactly the same efficiency, without adjustment from some sort of L-pads... without the controls, or some sort of fixed resistor L-pads, they likely won't have balanced response...

Regards,
Gordon.

 

[kirk57]

Greetings all,
I am looking at a pair of Rectilinear III highboys which are in generally good condition with the most notable exception being noisy tweeter & mid pots. Has anyone here rebuilt or recapped the Rectilinear III crossover without the pots? The crossovers seem to be simple first order crossovers (thank to this resource!) - do they NEED the pots? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I have done this recently. My strategy was to first listen to them for a bit and decide what level setting for the pots is best. Once you are SURE of that, take the speaker apart and measure the resistance of the pot at that setting. Then substitute an equivalent power resistor (I used Mills units) for the pot.

Turned all the way up is relatively bright (if bright can be used to describe these speakers) and maybe closer to a modern speaker tonal balance.

Edit: if you are going to recap the speakers, I'd recommend giving the new caps some time to settle in before you make the final choice on the settings...

 

[prfry]

Thank you all

Thanks for the speedy responses,
I kind of thought that I should just set them where they sounded best, and then make that setting permanent. I am toying with the idea of building up some new, equivalent crossovers, with fixed levels for the mids & tweeters. Thanks again for your input. Paul

 

[Dave1027]

Be sure to use 5 watt resistors at the minimum. 10 watt is even better.