I recently heard Richard Vandersteen talk about his speakers and afterwards I asked him about replacing the batteries. He made a comment that if a mistake was made you could send 9 VDC into the amplifier which would cause, shall we say, serious problems! I thought about that and it would seem you would have to be very sloppy to do that, but just the same it’s something for the beginning solderer to keep in mind. Further, soldering a battery is a delicate operation, especially a lithium battery. One other thing, I checked my amplifier high pass filters recently (the previous owner replaced them about seven years ago) and I noticed a soldering iron had touched a couple of the red capacitors on the side of the board. Richard said that was not a problem, but if a soldering iron touches the silver capacitors it’s bad! I haven’t reopened the crossover to check for that, but another thing to consider. One last thing, Richard said the battery should be restrained, on my low pass filters there was a tie wrap through the board that had been cut but not replaced or even removed. His point was movement of the battery could cause an intermittent circuit.
With respect to the cost, Richard did mention it was $90, but I’not sure if that would cover just the amplifier crossovers or both the amplifier crossovers and the speaker crossovers. You provide the batteries, so might as well get the best ones. I’m right at the seven year point, so this will be a summer project when I’m not listening near as often.
