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Modifying Philharmonic 3 crossovers

Hi, everyone I'm new to modding so I'm going to need a bit of help. I have a pair of Philharmonic 3 speakers and I see that they have Claritycap PX capacitors and I'd like to  change them out with Claritycap's new CMR line up although I'm not sure how to start. I see that two of the capacitors are rated at 20uf & 250Vdc although there aren't any CMR caps that are rated at 20uf only 18 and 22uf and 400Vdc. I'd like to upgrade the capacitors although I'm not sure how I would proceed. I would very much appreciate advice on this topic. Thanks!
jonny1080
jonny1080's avatar
jonny1080 OP
11 posts
 
Thanks Erik for your help so far in choosing capacitor. Right now I'm getting all the new Clarity CMRs setup in the crossover and I was wondering about resistors. I looked at Duelund cast resistors because they're not as terribly expensive as their capacitors, although I noticed people saying that it sounds bright(and it uses silver) so I think I'll stay away from those. I heard really good reviews from audio path, vishay, audio note and mills, although I'm not entirely sure which to choose. What I want from the resistors I'm going to buy is for them to be as neutral/natural as possible with lots of resolution & dynamics and won't add brightness/hardness to the sound. Do you have any suggestions Erik? Also, when going through the forums I always see people talking about bypassing with certain caps(ie. jupiter). What do they mean?
erik_squires
16,560 posts
 
Resistors: Mills
Inexpensive, very good, dead accurate and thermally stable. I'm not a fan of Duelund's as they are deliberately not thermally stable. No thank you. :)

As for bypassing,that's what I was discussing with CMR caps above 5 uF. Use a 0.1uF jupiter or Audyn TrueCopper ($20) to bypass them, in other words, put in parallel with the main cap.

What I do while testing is I use alligator clips to attach the Audyn where I think it may make a difference and listen.
invictus005
597 posts
 
Use Mills. Use same value CMR caps (although Reliable Capacitor Theta are my personal favorites). Don’t bypass.


jonny1080's avatar
jonny1080 OP
11 posts
 
Hi, thanks guys for your responses. I'm seeing varying opinions regarding bypassing. Are there down sides to bypassing?
jonny1080's avatar
jonny1080 OP
11 posts
 
So I just soldered all the Clarity CMRs and CSA capacitor and the Phil 3 speaker sounds fantastic! The speakers sound a lot more 3 dimensional and much more atmospheric and organic. Thank you everyone for the advice and especially to Eric! This would have been much more difficult without you guys' help. I did receive the mills non-inductive resistors and plan on replacing the ones in the speaker this weekend. I hope you guys have a bit more patience but I wanted to know more about inductors. Do they make a big difference like the capacitors? Do you guys have a certain brand that you guys would recommend? From the way that the inductors in my speaker look like, I believe I have ERSE inductors. Are the a good brand?
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