Completed XO Rebuild/Upgrade on First Pair of 10B's

StantonZ

...and it was a b*tch (picture attached)! Swapping the parts out wasn't so bad (even thought there's some creativity involved in cramming the huge SoniCaps onto a small board), but detaching/re-attaching the XO board onto the backing structure was basically a 2 man job (that's why we have kids, right?). I have one more pair to go, and to my amazement the second pair is VERY different (my 2 pairs of 10B's were bought 4 years apart); however, it looks like the removal/replacement of the XO board won't be quite as bad on the second pair.

Long story short, when I hooked them up, one speaker came up fine and the other didn't (lacked bass). I discovered I had lifted one of the pads for the inductor and ended up soldering that lead to the (+) lead (good thing there were multiple connections on that node). The "muddiness" I was experiencing in one of my speakers is gone and they already sound "tighter" than what I had. I can only hope they'll last for the $$ I put into them (I replaced the tweets with RDO-194's a few months ago). BTW, the suggestion to replace the polyswitch with a .5 Ohm resistor was a good one: both polyswitches measured about .7 Ohms after removal, and I like how my high-end sounds now.

PolkieMan

Good job that vertical cap looks like a beast.

Drenis

What kind of wire did you use to connect the cap with the board? Looks like a piece of 24awg Cat5/6.

canadianicon25

half of pair 1?

thsmith

looks like the WHite blue side of telephone wire.

StantonZ

Drenis wrote: »

What kind of wire did you use to connect the cap with the board? Looks like a piece of 24awg Cat5/6.

That's funny: I think you nailed it! I removed a few strands from cable laying around the lab because I wanted some solid wire to replace the polyfuse; once I saw it measured out @ 0.7 Ohm I figured I couldn't go wrong replacing it with a 0.5 Ohm resistor (Mills). When I realized I couldn't fit that 34 uF cap anywhere, I was glad I had the extra wire.

StantonZ

Finished the other set (of 2): COMPLETELY different PCB mounted in a COMPLETELY different way. I would say this set was slightly easier to remove/replace, but it still took me an entire day. There were no markings/etchings for ANYTHING, so I did one and used the other as a guide; I also had to mark the PCB with +/-/etc so I would know where to re-attach everything. Got all 4 speakers pumping on the "Star Wars: A Musical Journey" and they sound great! I'll probably watch a movie tonight.

I'm not touching my center channel Monitor 4's (w/peerless tweets) in any way.