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Re: Spendor BC-1 crossover and capacitors

152.163.197.48

Posted by Joe Rosen on June 17, 2002 at 00:03:32

In Reply to: Spendor BC-1 crossover and capacitors posted by Carl Jones on June 15, 2002 at 07:15:13:

The BC1 is a truly GREAT loudspeaker, my personal favourite dynamic speaker of all time. And yes, I've heard the overrated Wilson Audio Tiny Titt in its various mediocre incarnations, the lovely but rather too coloured Sonus Faber Extremas and lots of hilariously overpriced and utterly inferior drivel from B&W, JM Labs, Infinity (loud & stupid!!!), Genesis (more of the same...)and...well, I think you might get the point...
The Audio Joke crapacitors are for people using lousy single-ended gear with even lousier horn-loaded megaphones that belong in train-stations and Indy racetracks, none of these things are at all suitable for any semblance of what I'd call "High Fidelity".
I use WIMA & Solen for all my speaker projects. In fact, I use them for all my preamp & power amp projects that I care about, too! I used to use Philips, and with excellent results, when they made a full line of all-polypropylene capacitors and higher-value polystyrene ones. They don't seem to anymore, so I long ago switched to WIMA. Never looked back, either...
The BC1 is not some crummy old Altec shoutspeaker, it deserves better than Crayola colours to define instrumental timbres on its remarkable sonic palette. It is incredibly QUAD ESL-like (original model) in its midrange, a feat that no other electro-dynamic speaker I've yet to hear can match. No aluminum domes, no foam-surround garbage woofers (hello! Calling Infinity!), no ferrofluid (YECH!), no protection circuitry...just music! Other speakers play louder, go lower, are more efficient...and all cost much more and sound that much crappier, too...
My point is, COOL IT! Be VERY CAREFUL with this speaker, my own personal experience is that the crossover does not appear to require upgrading to anywhere near the extent of other vintage speakers, if at all!
It is safer to replace just the resistors than the capacitors. Metal film resistors are very rarely used in loudspeakers, as they can't handle the power, continuous OR peak! Ditto carbon, which are JUNK, and should only be used for the sake of maintaining vintage authenticity in equipment where sound is considered utterly & totally unimportant! In other words, not in any "Hi-Fi" equipment!
That leaves the wirewounds, which are the best of all possible types, anyways. However...there are LOUSY wirewounds, and lots of 'em. Chances are, the Spendor uses some of those lousy ones, as Monitor Audio and B&W sure did! Lousy wirewounds have crimped connections from the lead-in wires to the resistive element. This is inside the resistor body, so you can't see it. You'd need a resistor spec sheet with a description of how they're manufactured to know exactly what you were getting. Examples of these lousy resistors typically include any rectangular white (usually Asian) or Beige (usually American or English) resistors that have an inlay of cement in them to hold the resistive core in place. If you smash the cheapies open, you usually find a fibreglass strand core, with a wirewound element woven around it. On either end there is a steel ring, usually just crimped to the wire that comes through the body from the outside.
Good wirewounds meet the military MIL-R-26 specification, like Dale RS & CW series. These are invariably cylindrical in construction. The Dale & RCD resistors have a straight-forward black "conformal" coating, you can see the outline of the resistive wire element & ceramic core right through the paint! Ohmmite Brown Devils are harder to judge, they have a heavy brown coating of vitreous enamel glaze on them. Good resistors will clean up the sound, tighten the bass, tame the highs, sweeten the mids and add depth, detail & clarity that weren't there before. Kiwame resistors will do none of these things, and they may burn out on you, as well. Remember: Film resistors are for amplifiers, wirewound POWER resistors are for speakers AND whatever else you want!
As the BC1 is a neutral & highly accurate device, sticking a high dielectric-distortion piece of junk won't do anything to enhance the virtues of this already very fine speaker. In other junk, perhaps mated to some old Sony receiver or your typical SE amplifier, the Audio Joke capacitors may indeed make some slightly more interesting & funky noises. But if it is "interesting & funky noises" you want, then you picked absolutely the wrong speaker to get it from in the BC1.
Celestion SL6/600/700's anyone? Acoustic Agony AE-1's? Mid 80's and 90's B&W budget bookshelfs? Vintage Celestion Dittons? BIC Venturis? LS3/5a's???
THIS junk might work with paper-in-toxic-waste crapacitors. And why not? It's all so bad that you'd have nothing to loose, but you'd be wise to do that to this particular lot of speakers!
Carl, in no uncertain terms: You've been doing the right thing with capacitors, stick to it!

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