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Wharfedale Linton 3XP no highs

B

BeezyP

New Member
Hi all, this is my first post so ai hope I‘m posting at the right place. I‘m also a Hifi Newbie so please be gentle.

I recently bought a pair of Wharfedale Linton 3xp‘s on ebay. I just got to test them with a Sanyo DCX6000k and Pioneer PL12D.

I get no highs at all from them. The sound is super muffled and it doesn‘t bring any joy listening to them. I also tried AUX just to be sure my turntable didn‘t decide to malfunction suddenly, but same thing.

Now, the first thing I did was putting my ears next to all the drivers. The low and mid drivers sound just fine but there‘s next to nothing coming from the tweeters.

I decided to open the speakers up and found a lot of corrosion on the back of the drivers and the screws of the crossovers.
The solder joints of the crossover seem fine tho, I didn‘t see any corrosion. Also, the caps aren‘t blown or leaking and the resistor seems fine (at least visually).
I put some photos of everything in the thread.

I ordered a multimeter to measure the resistance of the tweeters to see if they‘re defective.

I‘m wondering what you guys think is the cause? Is it correct what I‘m doing so far?

Does it make sense to order replacement tweeters if they’re bad or do you think the low and mid drivers could also be impaired by the corrosion? In that case I‘d probably just sell the speakers again since getting replacements for all drivers wouldn‘t be economically viable.

If you think repairing makes sense; would you recap the crossovers eventhough they look fine visually? If so, what replacement caps/resistors (foil, electrolyte, etc.) should I use?

I‘d really appreciate any form of help. Thanks in advance!
 

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Test the tweeters separately. You should be able to remove the leads from the crossover board and set your meter to ohms . Measure the resistance of the individual tweeters. If it measure open, then they are probably bad. If you get a resistance of a few ohms , like 6, 8 or 12 etc. They are probably good.
Clean all the contacts and switches if any. Would not be surprised if it was bad capacitors. You should replace them anyway. I would use a good Film capacitor. Daytons are fine. Go 1% if you want better imaging.
 
Hey, quick update @billyz . The resistance of the tweeters was fine and matched the one from ones offered on ebay, so I figured I‘d check the original caps. All caps were 30-40% off their rated capacity (measured with them desoldered). Also, the resistors were a bit off from their rating. I then ordered Jantzen Cross Caps and MOX resistors as replacements. I couldn‘t get a 4uF cap anywhere so I opted for a 3.9uF, hoping it won‘t be far off the original. Just now, I placed the caps and resistors on the board (didn‘t solder them in yet). In comparison to the old ones, the new caps are HUGE. I did manage to get them on the OG board, but they‘re rather close to the inductors (esp. the big 25uF). I‘m worried about induction with them being so close together. Do you think that could cause issues or am I good to go to solder them in? If not, what could I do? Oh yeah and I was planning to fix the caps in place with some hot glue so they won‘t rattle. IMG_3987.jpeg
 
I think 3.9uf will be fine. Probably closer to spec than your old caps ever were. If you are concerned about the inductors affecting the crossover, you could move the caps to outer edge of the board, use some hotmelt glue to secure them. I think the two smaller ones can easily be moved to the edge. The large one , you might have to mount it off the board.
 
I have read that coupling from the inductors to the Capacitor is not really an issue. I know an Inductor value can be affected by magnetic materials to close to them. Like screwing a coil down with a steel screw, use brass or stainless instead.

I think your caps are fine where they are.
 
Thanks for the confirmation. I just saw this demonstration: YouTube
At around half the video, he picks up interferance from resistors/caps when placed too near to the inductors. However if I look at some commercial crossovers, they also pack the caps up against the inductor coils. I think I‘ll just try moving them as far away as possible. I don‘t really want to solder them to a second board and use jumper wires to connect them to the original one or so. Might be overkill for these speakers anyways
 
BeezyP said:
Sure
Click to expand...

Oh, those are yummy!

I think you have already answered your own question. But if ever you need to test tweeters, just connect them to your speaker wires with a 4uF capacitor in series with them. For midranges, you can increase that to around 25-40uF. That will show if the problem is with the driver or the crossover.
 
I hope your tweeters will sound fine, hope they are OK.

These are nice speakers !

enjoy !
 
New caps have fixed muffled highs in a number of vintage speakers I've restored. Hope it does for you too.
 
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