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Where to buy good-enough-for-crossover caps?

J

jrsh92

Well-Known Member
I just picked up some oldish, although not quite "vintage" RCA speakers... probably 15 years old max. They're stained black wood three-ways with one bass port, and pretty light magnets. Haven't opened them up, but the front of the woofer looks suspiciously like the Radioshack woofer in the Epi 100v's I couldn't really afford to fix up (yeah, if anyone wants a set sans woofers, contact me! You deal with transport of said speakers). But for $10 for a pair. So, I'm happy about the whole deal, as the mid range and bass sound good-- not overly bassy, but with a little equalization, they will definitely not need a subwoofer. But they need new capacitors... badly. The highs sound like there's a thick pillow strapped over the tweeters. Not just lacking in treble, but muffled sounding and overall just crappy. Cranking the treble kind of cancels this out but with the Lafayette LR-2020 I am using right now, that also happens to leave a dead spot in the higher mid frequencies (lowest sound the tweeter does) that also sounds bad.
So, time for new caps, from what I hear.

What should I use? I heard the name MCM Electronics tossed around in another thread. But really, I don't know what I need... I am assuming film caps that don't have a polarity.
I know ANYTHING will make an improvement over what's in there now. But how much would you recommend spending on crossovers for a $10 pair of speakers, and where will I get the best deal for that money?
 
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Looks like PartsExpress bipolar electrolytics are the way to go in terms of price. Just searching capacitors comes up with the crossover capacitor page, so I guess they are suitable for that use... I'm still wondering how this guy toasted the caps in apparently not way too long. He was all but deaf, I suspect he just put too much power through them for too long, the drivers are okay, but the caps might have worn faster.

Thanks for the quick response.
 
The regular Dayton metalized poly film caps (yellow ends) at Parts Express are also non-polar, will work just fine, and won't cost an arm and a leg.
 
Yeah, I ran this test on the speakers to find their response:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/hearing.html
My hearing is pretty flat in general, not perfect, but a few 3 dB maximum differences.
They have a 18 dB spike at 3-4 khz, and -15 dB at 30 hz. They roll off below 90 and the woofer sounds like paper being shredded below there, too. It apparently hates bass.
187 hz, 750 hz, and everything above 8 khz are all the same. That's what I'm using for 0 dB.
The tweeter isn't as dead as I thought it would be compared to everything else. But the midrange seems to have taken it upon itself to drown out everything but 3-4 khz, a particularly harsh frequency that could probably be toned down without damage-- but not up.
Getting new speakers ASAP, I guess they might suck because they suck, not because of the caps.
 
Geez Louise, do you realize that your 15 year old speakers were made way back in 1992?????????

I usually don't buy much stuff newer than the later 1970s...........
 
I honestly don't know how old they are, but they aren't too old. Just not brand new. They had a LOT of dust on them.
 
Okay, the speakers aren't all that bad with a new receiver. I just got a Sansui 7900z. Besides being BIG, loud, and lighting up well, it apparently sounds much, much better. The speakers no longer sound like someone strapped a pillow over the tweeters. It turns out the 3-4 khz spike was in fact the old Lafayette's treble control. Yes, I forgot to center the tone controls before testing for frequency response. I had the treble cranked ALL the way up to compensate for the fact that apparently the Lafayette receiver had nothing above 10 khz. At all.
The new Sansui makes these actually sound somewhat flat. Not too great, but very, very much listenable to. They aren't the Epi's, but I'm not going to run one effectively 8 ohm and one 4 ohm speaker on this. I'd rather not risk damaging it by having such different loads on each side-- plus, although I've heard some of these are rated at 4 ohms while it's technically the same circuitry, this is rated at 8 ohms and the Epi's take enough power I'd rather find 8 ohm nice speakers.
So, now I'm feeling they are worth the $10.
But I am still going to get better ones.
 
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