It's been a week since upgrading the crossovers. I wanted everything to settle and get enough run in to put my thoughts in print. Let me get this out of the way first: I'm actually disappointed in Klipsch. If they would offer a Cornwall with Dynamat damped drivers and speaker floor, decent feet, and a quality crossover people would pay good money for that. I am glad they were easy to modify but it was really time consuming and looking inside the Cornwalls you see they cheaped out every chance they could. The good part is they are truly all easy to fix(relatively).
A pet peeve of mine is when people use percentages to describe improvement...Saying an upgrade was a 20% improvement is really meaningless to me so I will avoid using that description. What I can say with confidence is that if you are making the Cornwalls your long term reference, it's time to get to work. Leaving them stock really gives you a fun and engaging speaker that has brightness you will always fight to tame, watercolor imaging, and tone/timbre that is decent but not truly convincing. I don't mean to disparage the stock Cornwall as I truly enjoyed it but I found listening fatigue would creep in after about an hour and I would find myself walking away to do other things.
With the crossover upgrade that nagging background brightness is absolutely gone. The speaker now has a relaxed and muscular confidence that is absolutely enthralling. High efficiency speakers can have a tendency to trade relaxation and tonal saturation for speed/dynamics. Now you get them both which almost seems like an oxymoron. Instrument tone/timbre is so much more convincing it's hard to believe and voices are scary real. The ultimate compliment I can give the Cornwalls is that over the last 20 years I tend to listen with my eyes closed...I think I now know why. For various reasons there were things missing in the music that my mind was unconsciously rectifying to make it sound convincing. Since the upgrade I listen with my eyes open. My mind does not have to "connect the dots" of the sins of omission and commission. It is so much more relaxing and I can just sit back for hours with jaws unclenched and shoulders loose rifling through any and all genres of music.
I would consider the crossover mod an absolute necessity as an upgraded, burned in Cornwall is night and day different to a stock pair. Do not leave that much improvement untapped. If you don't feel comfortable doing the upgrade, pay someone to do it for you. That is money well spent.
