Speaker crossover mod. Your advice?

'Bypass' caps have a following, too.
Caps in parallel add value, so if you need 3.6, you can use a 2.7, a 0.82 and a 0.1 equalling 3.62 which is 'over' but well within the tolerance.
The stock caps are probably 10% and the Clarity MR are 5% which puts you within design intent, even 'worst case'.

Looking at the picture of the board, the inductors are not in the best configuration.
ALL inductors should be at right angles to one another.....never parallel or coplanar.

The new caps will be GIGANTIC compared to the stock caps, so be ready. Look at the data sheets to get an idea how large the new caps really are and be ready to work with layout. Good idea going external, 'cause frankly, you probably don't have room IN the enclosure for the mods you have in mind.

Custom made caps? Not a bad idea, but I'll bet they cost $$$$

I believe custom MR's will have to be purchased in bulk, 10 or more. On the other hand, I don't believe Duelund requires a minimum.

Having tried bypasses and mixing values of caps(MR's, Duelund, Mundorf, etc...) to attain a specific value, I would not recommend it for the HF pass. Either use the correct value(within tolerance) or split the value in half as advised earlier.

Best of luck with your upgrade, sounds like a fun project!

Bryon,

I had missed your crossover pictures and apologize for my oversight. Magfan is absolutely right, there's certainly not going to be room on that board for any of the caps I've been discussing, and most likely not in the speaker enclosure either as he also mentioned.

If you do go outboard with your crossover, Google "inductor-coil-crosstalk-basics". There's also a good picture on the Parts-Express board showing good and bad inductor orientations.

John

Thanks to all for the valuable input.

John - No sweat. I was about to send them to you when I saw your last post.

RE: Outboard crossover. Unfortunately, that's not in the cards. The room is not dedicated. Plus wife, pets, kids, etc.

RE: The size of the new caps. I was hoping to have the new caps "float" off the board a little, as in the following sketch:

FLOATING CAP

At least two problems that would need to be overcome in order to make this work:

1. Finding a cap with leads that are long enough to reach the board.
2. Finding a way to stabilize the cap.

Thoughts?

Bryon

Bryon--of course you're free to take this advice--or not--as you wish, but--
1. Stay away from Clarity Caps. That's what I removed from my Avanti tweeter filters. 'Clarity' my a...er...eye. I've been playing with caps for about 40 years. The SoniCap Gen.1 is the overall-best-sounding affordable cap there is.
2. Build the correct values with 2 caps. I believe you'll be thrilled with the results of using SoniCap Gen.1s paralleled with MultiCap RTXs, or, if you choose to afford them, SoniCap Platinums. The higher proportion of higher-quality cap, the cleaner/quicker/smoother the sound will be; I learned that dramatically in my TWO upgrades of tweeter caps.
3. Piggyback the 2 caps. If the larger of the 2 caps won't fit on the board, put the smaller on the board with the larger above it. I use 3M double-side self-adhesive foam tape. That plus the leads will hold the caps in place forever.
4. Replace the resistors in series with Mills MRA-12s, noninductive wirewounds.
5. Unless it takes hours to get to the x-over boards, do your upgrades in stages, with the tweeter section first.

The new caps in my x-overs made the treble so much better sounding that I now listen at around 5dB higher treble levels. You can tweek your treble balance by changing the value of R1.
.