Hey Thiel Gonners! Just finished my last round of updates for my 3.6 XOs. My midranges came back from Rob a week ago: he replaced the voice coils and surrounds. He was even so thoughtful to included solder samples for me to ensure the proper termination. They sound fantastic by the way with more transparency and balance; just a slight forwardness to the upper midband which I feel is more settled now with this present round of XO updates. For this round I changed out the remaining Solens Caps and started replacing the ERSE 1uf bypass caps with ClarityCap CSAs: the quadruple treble bypass feed stage. Rob also send along some original 18 AWG twisted pair harness wire to extend my leads to the drivers which I was thankful to have. Before, I had to splice my runs (cringe). As an aside: what intersting discussions we're having about different wire runs Rob and Tom. Star quad runs sound like fun some day and always glad to have further insights and history. Anyway, I ran my summed mono A/B comparison tests yesterday and confirmed the results this afternoon In stereo. Over all the sound now has less forward upper midband and more controlled lower/mid bass than before. Threre is also more treble extention and presence. Vocals and solo instrument are more pronounced with greater clarity without being forward or unbalanced in the presentation. Kind of reminds me of a well implimented horn setup rig. Klipsch la Scalas come to mind but with all the attributes of well executed bass authority as well! It's also fun to hear new details, 3d imaging, and air now present. On the down side: the lack of lower and center midband is creating a just the slightest sense of sterility without as much warmth as before. Perhaps further break-in time will reveal more in time. I am to understand that more mid bass will show itself in a day or so hopefully warming things up a bit. I do feel that sound is more balanced and refined than with the original Solens/ERSE caps as I'm sure they must be showing there age with technology advances and such. It's well worth the effort and I'm learning so much along the journey! Many thanks again to all who have supported me thus far! Next up will be to replace the remaining "Thiel" resistors with more Mills MRA-12s and the final round will be replacing the remaining ERSE 1uf caps with CSAs as well. Afterward, I look forward to further tweeking as there'll certainly be voiceing down the line as well. What fun!!
