Silverline SR17.5 crossover modifications?


Does anyone have experience with crossover modifications for the Silverline SR17.5 monitors? I'm considering changing to higher quality parts and would like your input: Dueland resistors, Mundorf silver-in-oil caps, Alpha core inductors, and silver wire. Or should I just leave them alone? I don't want to change the overall sonic character of the speakers, just improve what's already there.
pmboyd
Rieff, Thanks, I did talk to Bill and he settled the issue for me. "If you like what you hear, don't mess with it. More expensive parts doesn't mean better sound. Good speaker manufacturers like Silverline carefully voice their speakers and changing crossover parts will change the character of their sound. They probably spent many months if not years experimenting and tweaking to get it just right." Enough said. I am now disabused of the notion of touching the crossovers!
A good crossover with cheap part will never sound as good as a good crossover with high quality parts.

Tim
I have a pair of 17.5's that I acquired this past December. I had been building my system around a pair of Merlin TSM-SE speakers, but when I brought the Siverlines home and did a side-by-side comparison, it was no contest and I moved to the Silverlines. The stock speakers were so good that after listening to them for a while, and hearing how well they handled everything I threw at them, they just made me chuckle.

After having them for a couple of weeks I replaced the capacitors with Mundorf silver/gold/oil. I replaced the resistor with Mundorf Supreme resistors. I did not replace the inductor. The value for the capacitor is 3.3microfarads. The resistor was 2-ohms. The Mundorf Supreme resistor does not come in 2-ohms, so I used two 1-ohm resistors in series.

Also, there is not enough room on the board as-is in the speaker to accommodate the big Mundorf capacitor. So, I went to the hardware store and got a sheet of MDF and made a little mounting platform that spans two of the binding posts and mounted the capacitor to it. Also, I used Kimber Kable TCX to make any additional connections required.

If you send me an email I'll send you a picture of what I did.

Where before we all thought the speakers sounded great (several of the guys from the shop have heard the before and after), now the sound has been described as "addictive." The depth of the sound, the leading edge of notes, the decay, the liquidity (I guess I'd call it a very fast liquid!)... I'm a very happy camper! The caps needed about 50 hours before they started to settle in. I'd guess that they have a few hundred hours on them now. Every couple of weeks the guys who own the shop come by my house to listen to some tunes and have a few drinks after we've gone out to dinner. Where I hear the system more continuously, they hear it every few weeks and are each time struck by how it's settling in and just getting better and better.

Also, I had been wondering about the Mundorf silver/oil and asked the technician where I bought them how they compared to the silver/gold/oil. He said that (1) the s/o was more colored, and (2) the s/g/o was more transparent. I got the capacitors from a place in Wisconsin. However, they don't sell the Mundorf resistors, so I got them from a place in Canada.

I don't have any experience with the Duelands, but from what I read in the comparison on humble homemade hifi capacitor test web page, if I had a chance to compare the two I may have leaned toward the depth of the s/g/o. But for me the point is moot: I am very happy with the s/g/o and am not looking for anything else.

Also, you asked about silver wiring. As I mentioned before, I went with Kimber TCX for the crossover tinkering I did. It is made of their highest purity copper. They call it "hyper-pure." I refer to is simply as their "TC-grade" because it is what is in their TC line of speaker cables. I have their PR cables on my home theater. I've never hooked them up to my audio system. In the audio system the speaker cables I've auditioned:

Kimber 8VS
Kimber 8TC
Kimber 12TC
Kimber Monocle-X (hybrid using VS and TC copper)
Kimber Select KS-3033 (all TC copper)
Kimber Select KS-3035 (a hybrid cable using one strand of their hyper-pure (Black Pearl) silver and two strands of their hyper-pure (TC) copper – and the speaker cable I bought)
Cardas Cross
Audio Magic Sorcerer (all silver – and I was auditioning an older vintage of the model - a lot of silver!)
Another Audio Magic cable, the model of which I don't recall

To me the VS copper sounded a little grainier compared to the TC copper. To me the TC copper is as grainless as I can imagine. Based on that, I didn't hesitate to use the TCX wire in my crossover modification. If I had been considering silver, I suppose like everything else in my system, I would have ended up with Kimber, but that’s not to say that the Audio Magic wire isn’t great. It is really is. But for my system my instincts were to stay with all copper (except for the hybrid KS3035’s). I also was not inclined to do any auditioning of wire for this application. I know I like the TC copper from my speaker cable auditions; the TCX is what the guys at the shop use when they rework crossovers and they have a bunch of it, so I got about a foot of it, installed it and haven’t looked back.

But, I want to add that everything is system dependent. My system:

Rogue 99-Magnum preamp with NOS RCA 5692 tubes
Rogue M180 monoblocks with NOS RCA 5751 in the 12AX7 position, and NOS RCA 12AU7’s
Kimber Select interconnects and the KS3035 speaker cable I mentioned above.

I mounted the 17.5’s on Sound Anchors that I had made. Also, Ed Soler is a local to our shop and made me some really nice Soler points for the Sound Anchors. The Soler points I got are 2” diameter at the top, so the Sound Anchor folks moved the holes for the spikes inward ¼” to accommodate the big spikes. The speakers, stand and Soler points ended up weighing about 100lbs each.
Anyway, please send me an email and I’ll be happy to send you a picture of the modified crossover.