C-60 Sovereign restoration

[4313B]

Glad you're paying attention Grumpy!

[Caledon Ken]

Thank you all. I have taken the liberty to redraw this simple change on the wiring diagram from the library. The original owners maintain all their rights to the original wiring diagram and maintain any implied copyrights.

In my previous note I suggested 0.01uF Theta AudioCap which I borrowed from Baron030's post.

Could I ask that members look at this drawing and comment. If it is wrong I will remove and redraw. Thanks

[yggdrasil]

The drawing is correct. The values of the bypass caps are not important as long as it is less than ~1/10 the value of the capacitor it bypasses. Beware that the effect of bypassing in the N7000 is limited unless you do the same in LX-5. Reason : crossovers are daisy chained.

Picking up on your question in another thread:

(There were actually lots of items in this thread that peaked my interest, the horn discussion between 500-1200Hz and the better crossovers)

If there is a better cabinet that would produce a better sound I would be interested in determining whether it would be easier to acquire rather than refinish.

There are many issues you could address in your speakers. However - if you want to take them all on - you need to ask yourself: Do I want to use these drivers? The point being - A complete rework with new cabinet and crossover design deserves a set of drivers that address the shortcomings in this driver combination.

That being said: The C60/S8R is more than good enough to be enjoyable for many years with modest crossover uprgades.

Sanding down the cabinets, staining and varnishing is not a small job on these cabinets with all the cabinet details. But then again it is nothing compared to designing new cabinets and building them from the ground up to furniture quality.

[Caledon Ken]

Thanks Johnny.

Re the LX5's. In another thread I learned these are potted in bee's wax and another member discussed how to melt and remove. This will allow me access to components.

I have two separate questions.....

In post #56 of this thread you posted an LX5 drawing. In post #58 I asked you about a question on the lime green in the drawing. This wiring diagram you provided was for the bypass of the LX5. Two red wire jumpers and I think the lime green is a capacitor. Could you confirm and provide values.

Given I'm going to by-pass the N7000 caps as per your recommendation and in keeping with your recommendation to bypass LX5 caps could you tell me which of the four caps need to be by-passed in the LX5. From by limited knowledge I assume it is just capacitor C4, with a value 16uF, which is part of the HF circuitry.

It could be the answers to the two questions are the same. Your lime green cap, or what I think is a lime green cap, between e6 and s12 in effect is a parallel bypass of C4 if I'm reading the drawing correct.

For these by-pass caps I saw your 1/10 recommendation of the cap being bypassed, thank you, but for voltage I assume anything will do, eg, 250v, 400v, 600v? The .01uF seem to have very high voltage ratings.

Thank you again for your help.

[yggdrasil]

The drawing is a simple wiring diagram showing the physical layout inside a LX-5.

The lime green is a capacitor. Just solder it in like the drawing. Solder in the red hard-wiring. Put the selector in middle position and leave it there. I believe I used 1.5uF bypass cap in the LX-5.

The voltage rating of polypropylenes are normally more than sufficient. 50V should do the trick, so any of the suggested ratings are good.

Johnny

[Caledon Ken]

Thank you sir. I really don't want to "Kill" the LX5's so I will just install the capacitor. I assume this will allow the signal through to the N7000 and I will put by-passes on each of these.

Thanks everyone for your help.

I'm going to start a new thread on the refinishing of cabinets.

[Mr. Widget]

Thank you sir. I really don't want to "Kill" the LX5's...

From your other threads, I think I have a handle on what you are after. I would seriously consider pulling the original crossovers out of the circuit and build new ones from the ground up. Even if yours are working properly, simply bypassing, cleaning etc. will not offer the best sonic performance the drivers are capable of. I had a ten year old pair of S7s back in the '70s. I realize they are not quite the same, but close enough... I had LX5s and N8000s and slots above my mids... they never sounded as good as I thought they should until I built entirely new crossovers. I just built textbook second order butterworth networks with higher quality parts and no autoformers and the sound improved markedly. With today's crossover design software a much more sophisticated design could be implemented and an even bigger improvement could be realized.


Widget

[Caledon Ken]

Mr. Widget, thanks.

I would build XO's right from scratch, if I had a design. I started down the path of reading about how to design but quickly got frustrated as I simply did not have the test gear or sound generation to sample the drivers as it was being outlined. Finding the individual driver specs on this old gear proved to be great practice for my internet skills but provided no usable data. I never got to software as I just figured it would be looking for values that I could not provide.

Is there a particular version of software you could recommend. I would be more than willing to research to see what is involved in designing. As I've stated I'm expecting issues with the LX5's and N7000's as they are all very old components, some of which have already failed. Even finding replacement parts that fit the boxes is proving a challenge, especially the inductors.

I got some bad news yesterday, from one of the members, that very little of the cabinets is solid wood so refinishing these cabinets may turn out to be a real challenge. I think you called them "furniture". Through the excellent knowledge in this forum I've learned about the sound gap of horn and overall elevation issues.

If the glass was half empty I would be looking at under performing XO's with dying parts, a missing sound band with difficult to refinish cabinets that have a very low center of gravity.

If the glass was half full, I enjoy these speakers, I like their sound and I would really like to make them even better.

If you could point me to the XO software or vendor name I can Google and explore XO design.

Thanks again for responding. I appreciate the help and wisdom everyone is sharing.