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Vandersteen 2CE Signature fix

I was recently working on an amp and foolishly used my speakers rather than dummy loads, and fried my mid bass. It'll take weeks to repair, so I picked up some Vandersteen speakers. Vandersteen speakers have been the speakers I always wanted to love, but just couldn't. I describe them as sounding like a perfect pair of speakers with a pair of blankets tossed over them. So, you know I'm going to look under the hood, don't you!

Well, on the upper right hand side of the crossover I saw where there was an electrolytic capacitor connected to one of those red WIMA(so?) caps, and then that was connected to a Wonder cap. 3 caps in series, boy there is no way that's good! So, I bypassed them all with a .1uF Teflon cap.

At first they were a bit bright, I suspected it was the metal dome tweeter, but over a few hours that issue went away. What I now have is one of the most accurate sounding speakers I have ever heard. They seem to image a bit less perfectly than I would prefer, but that seems to be source related as they can image wonderfully on some music. There is also the space issue, Vandersteens are said to need lots of space and I have them shoehorned in.

The point is that if you have the Signatures, and very good upstream gear, this might be a very good modification for you. It seems to leave all the good attributes of Vandersteens in place, while removing the blankets! If your gear is less than good the blankets may be a good thing, but if you have a good system and want to hear what you have been missing, this modification will accomplish that for you. If Teflon is a bridge too far, Multi cap RTX's would be a close second. If you have Teflon money, but want some sparkle, Mundorf Gold/Silvers or Gold/Silver/Oils might be worth consideration.

Best Regards,

Lou


Edits: 11/18/14
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Topic - Vandersteen 2CE Signature fix - Lou S 00:27:13 11/18/14 (58)
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