Millercarbon's Mega Moab Mod Meander


One of the all time great automotive engineers, Norbert Singer, was a key player in every one of the 16 Porsche LeMans victories from 1970 to 1998. His dominance was such that at one point Porsche had won LeMans more than all other marques combined. This was all accomplished by building on the already solid foundation of Porsche production models. The air cooled flat 12 in the 917 was really two flat sixes combined to make 12. This car so dominated motorsport the rules had to be changed to stop it!  

So Norbert Singer modified Porsche production technology to extract the absolute most for racing. His legacy is today’s Singer Vehicle Design https://singervehicledesign.com Norbert doesn’t make for a very good car name so they called it Singer. What is a Singer? It is a modified Porsche. It is in essence a hot rod. What Norbert Singer did was make the most hot rod racing Porsche. What Singer does is take that to the next level, capturing every aspect of Porsche right down to excellence of design and aesthetics.  

I am not anywhere near the level of Singer. But that is the spirit of what we are doing: taking an already world-class design and hot-rodding it to be even better. Well, better for me anyway- or so we hope!

The early modders started with substituting off the shelf parts to get more power or less weight. That is pretty much all we are doing here. Would be cool if some day people are doing this with a lot more sophisticated approach. Maybe they will. Maybe even I will. For now though we have the current crossover project.

My approach is pretty simple: better parts sound better.  

This lesson was learned back in the late 90’s with Linaeum Model 10 speakers. The designer had a new tweeter and told me how to modify the crossover for it. Simple mod, one cap, one resistor. Bought the parts from Radio Shack, put it together, sounded like crap. Absolute horrid crap! Called him up, he said those parts are crap. Said Musicap, Vishay. But they measure the same? Just do it. I did. It worked. Even though they measure exactly the same, the sound difference is off the charts.  

Even though they measure exactly the same. There is a lesson here. For those willing to learn.

So this is the essence of it: Eric Alexander has made a speaker the equivalent of a Porsche 911. Even better: an affordable Porsche 911! But after a while with my 911, after learning what makes it drive and feel the way it does, it was only natural to change the shocks and torsion bar and other items to bring out even more of what I like so much about the 911.  

That is what we are doing here. Hot-rodding a speaker. Thank you Rick for the metaphor!  

The parts are on order. Next week the fun begins!
128x128millercarbon
This should be a fun thread. I put high quality caps in a few vintage mid-fi amps and the result was unbelievable. For a couple hundred dollars these things awakened. Looking forward to your journey. 
That was one of my first too, caps and diodes in my Aronov integrated. More recently, caps and diodes in the Synergistic Active Shielding MPC. These all brought big improvements in detail and liquidity. So I am sure inductors, resistors and caps will do the same here.
If I thought the punchline had a > 20% chance of being something other than “have transformed these $X,000 speakers that sound like $XX,000 speakers out of the box into $XXX,000 speakers”, I’d be keenly interested. As it stands, well, reputations precede. Good luck. 
Already said they sound better than some $100k speakers. Please do try and keep up. It is embarrassing when the snark lags behind.

Seriously though, considering how everyone knows that just as there are components that underperform for what they cost there are also those that over perform. If wise value choices are made at every level, including wise value choices in mods and tweaks, then is it really so unexpected? I mean, if you even understand what is going on in the first place.

As for reputations, people can decide for themselves.    https://forum.audiogon.com/users/coys21

First paragraph: sounds like snark. 
Second paragraph: last sentence aside, totally agreed. 
Third paragraph: I am as represented. 
Indeed, people can decide for themselves.