Figuring Out Crossover

BWilberg266

So I picked up an old pair of Precise Acoustic BL200's from craigslist and I'm trying to make the most of them as a gift for my father in law. From what I've been able to gather they were produced for one year back in 1990 by Onkyo in collaboration with Keith Johnson as an attempt at doing HiFi speakers.

My question is what would be worth while upgrades on a crossover like this? I couldn't find any exact specs on what the crossover is set to, simply that it suggests 30-150 watts. You can also clearly see that it is a two stage crossover. It has a 1" silk tweeter and a 5 1/4" paper cone that recently was refoamed.

I am brand new to the whole crossover game and ready and willing to learn as much as I can. Any and all input is greatly appreciated. I'll do my best to answer any questions anyone has.

I have included a few pictures for you guys to look at an analyze.

zingo

If you want to upgrade them, do the resistors and capacitors. Simply figure out the values of the components you want to replace, order new ones, then desolder and solder them in one by one. Just scrape off some of that glue and read the values if you can.

BWilberg266

For what it's worth I went and replaced all of the caps with Carli Caps from Madisound. I am more than pleased with the outcome. I haven't had a chance to run Audysee with them yet but running music Pure Direct is giving me a wide open sound with a very tight and punchy bass. Before I replaced the caps the mid to treble was restricted by about 6db across the board with muddy bass response. Couldn't be happier with the result. Only cost me about $20 after shipping.

Here are a few pics.

Rev. Hayes

Looks great!

If you have a hot glue gun you may want to add a dab to hold each of the caps tight down to the board. (and i'm sure you wouldn't be as messy as the original application was )

BWilberg266

Thanks for the tip!

They did go a bit nuts with the hot glue in production. Have to say I am very pleased with how great these things sound. For a total of $105 I have no complaints.

Speakers - $65 (Craiglist)
Dampening Roll+Foam Liner - $20 (Thanks to Home Depot)
Capacitors - $20 (Madisound)

Total=$105 for a beautiful sounding bookshelf

Face

Nice job!

FTGV

I remember seeing these tested in Speaker Builder mag back in the day.I'll see if I can find the issue and scan you a copy if interested.


I must say the quality of the stock xover parts are about as bad as I have seen in a product that was touted as high performance.

BWilberg266

I would love to read that. I think there was an interview with Kieth back in June of 89 or something.

I was expecting to find much better components in the crossover as well. It seems as though it was designed well and then Onkyo cheapened the components to make it more affordable to produce. I would like to replace all the components to see just how good they can sound, just don't want to put more than what their worth into them.

BWilberg266

Oh, and the woofer is 6.5 not 5 1/4. Not sure where I came up with 5 1/4. Both the tweeter and woofer are 4.5 ohms.