From this.....
(http://www.precisioncomputer.com/ocean/MagUp/xo.jpg)
To this...
(http://www.integracoustics.com/MUG/MUG/tweaks/green_lantern/SCHEMATIC.jpg)
Lost my virginity doing the fuse bypass so gaining a bit of self confidence.
Of course the fuse will be bypassed. The Hovlands Ive found are quite expensive ( I actually had no idea what good caps cost) Priced at about $300 from either Part Connection or Michael Percy.
The inductor from Alphacore at about $100 bucks the pair and good binding post at about $200.
So far a total of $600!
Not sure what a shunt is.
In plain english, so a caveman would understand, what a cap, inductor and shunt are? It would be good to know before I proceed.
Any comments. suggestions or changes?
Thanks
For Maggies. seriously lookat Autoformers, especially if you're looking at tube amps.
Bryan
A shunt is a connection to ground. Often with a resistor to create a filter that acts as a damper for the signal in the positive conductor to flatten the Q of any resonance. But it could be used 1000 other ways. Magnetic circuits can have a shunt too, usually a piece of iron to concentrate the magnetism to do work. Shunt can also mean a crash of a race car.
A cap is a capacitor, it can store a charge and release it very fast. In this case it uses its charging speed and discharge in the time domain as a frequency filter, to prevent low frequencies from getting to the tweeter which would damage it.
An inductor is similar, but stores magnetic energy instead of electric potential. In a crossover filter it works in the opposite way of a cap. It prevents the bass driver from trying to play treble info.
An autoformer increases the impedance of the speaker to make it an easier load for the amplifier. Maggies are a relatively low impedance, but very flat around 4 ohms. So an autoformer can raise that up to 8 ohms or whatever sounds best with your amp. Often a SS amp will sound best with 4 ohm load, but tube amps can sometimes do better with higher impedance load because their output impedance is much higher than a transistor. They have output transformers already, but some tube amps can use even more. The most important thing to t a tube amp is the flatness of the impedance curve, not the average value, within limits. Most tube amps these days have 4 ohm taps. But they might not sound as good as the 8 ohm tap. Using a autoformer can be a way to find the right combination. I have a pair of Zeroformers for sale if you're interested.
http://www.zeroimpedance.com/products.html
You could also just put a resistor across the speaker inputs to see if it helps, but it has to be big enough to take the amps full power and it will waste power and get very hot. An autoformer does it without wasting power.
That crossover looks like simple 1st order filters. The simplest kind of crossover. No phase error. Simply replacing the components with those of better value is all you really need to do. The iron core inductor might be good enough for the bass driver. Upgrades would be aircore wire, or flat foil inductor. You can dump some major quan on crossover upgrades. Finding the right balance of "I want perfection" audio lust and "good enough for Maggies" is the challenge. A 1st order crossover is much cheaper to upgrade than one like Carls with 4 4rth ordr filters. Your has only 2 1st order filters. Much cheaper.
HMMMMMMMMM!!!. Well Emil you can do all that or buy my 3As with the 3.6 ribbons [ new] for $900. Crossovers redone by Larry Smith.
charles