klipsch cornwall iv upgraded crossovers

@larryi well said. Changes are not guaranteed to be improvements and there certainly seems to be a tendency towards more is better. That’s kind of where I was going with bringing cognitive dissonance into the conversation, it provides a behavioral explanation as to why a rational person might go down that path and then vehemently justify their choices.
@rajugsw’s video is a perfect illustration. He took a wonderful sounding speaker, dampened it every way imaginable, and then rebuilt the crossovers that were recently updated for that generation. Fortunately the dampening is reversible, and if the upgraded crossover parts are the same spec as the oem design I don’t think there’s any harm done. If anything the durability should be improved. Would still love to hear a demo since the dampening effects should be apparent on YT audio.

Personally I tend to “trust the chef” but I get why people like to tinker and modify, it’s a fun part of the hobby. Every room is different so it’s not like you can expect everything to be optimized straight from the factory. My mods tend to come through positioning and amplification. I don’t even like to use tone controls, but I see value in them along w advanced room correcting software.  Mostly though I get annoyed when industry people overstate the value of these mods and the assumption that they will result in a noticeable improvement.  

Sorry to chime in late wasn't able to post because my address wasn't on file. But I dampen my IV's a year ago. I used Dynamat 1/4 inch tape .The sound  improvement was clear and very obvious Warmer less squawking much easier to listen to I used to get tired of listening and yawning after 20 mins. The first thing I noticed, was I could listen for an hour without squirming. I stopped yawning and enjoyed favorite cuts with new enthusiasm. Damping involves 35$ and 2 hours of work .It's easy to do and I highly recommend it. And best of all if you don't like, it takes 20 mins. to reverse. I've seen the negativity on some post a lot goes in to good sound. Equipment decent wires room size and acoustics. But  above all quality of recordings.  Naysayers can say what they want but my IV's sound like Six's now.

I looked into the upgraded crossovers . There's a store on ebay with good reviews. The problem was you had to take your crossovers out and ship them to him. He also had a long turnaround do to backlog of work. If I could have bought them outright, I would have taken a chance. But without the original  crossovers to go back to NO.

Perkadin,

I agree with you that listeners tend to be biased to favor the “improvement” they invested in and may go overboard in a particular direction.  You rarely hear someone say that a particular tweak made the sound worse when any such change should have a fair chance at being for worse.  
When it comes to vibration damping, I’ve experienced where some additional damping was an improvement, but more than that sounds bad; it is NOT the case that more of something good is always better.  I heard a demonstration by a representative from Symposium who put a vibration damping shelf under a CD player and it improved the sound (everyone in attendance agreed).  The next level up in their product line slightly improved the sound.  But, the flagship shelf made the sound too dry and unpleasant; even the Symposium guy agreed the sound got worse.  How could better damping worsen the sound?  I don’t know, but I heard it.

If you found the CW IVs to be bright, hard to listen to, and basically fatiguing after 20 minutes why did you buy them in the first place?