Knadles

Thanks!!

Hi, Glad to have one person at least back up my gut instinct! Since the original caps are gone, I'll need to find a pic online or something to verify what they originally were, so I can swap them out again. If I do sell, I'd at least prefer to have the speakers acting like their original selves. Seems only fair. All of the drivers are still Allisons. One of those glorious midranges got a small ding in it when a friend was moving the speaker and rested the grill on his shoulder, but John was able to pop that out. I didn't even ask him to; he just took care of it. I have a pair of CD6s as well that definitely need a refoam :). If I take those to John, I'll make sure the original caps stay in place. Unfortunately, I can't use the CD6s as a guide, since the two-way crossover would almost certainly have different values from the three-way. Thanks! Pete

Hi, New to this forum. Hoping to get some advice from some Allison fans about what to do with my CD8s. Here's my story: I have a pair that I purchased new back in...I dunno...1990 or so? Over time, the rubber surrounds on the woofers decayed, so I brought them to a very well-regarded local speaker shop (Van L Speakerworks). John, the owner (who does all the repair work and also designs his own speakers), replaced the surrounds and the capacitors. On my own, I also replaced the grills, a couple of which had cracks from being bumped over the years. There is (or was) as seller on Etsy who makes drop-in replacements that are shockingly close to identical. If anything, I actually think they're even a little higher quality, as they feel a little less brittle. So aside from the woofer surrounds, the capacitors, and the grills, the speakers are mostly original. My issue is that they just don't seem to have the same "magic midrange" they did when I bought them. It might be my ears, which are much older; or my memory; or it might be the capacitors, which (I assume) are the factory value, but definitely upgraded; or it might be the woofer surrounds, but I doubt this since the bass response doesn't seem to have been affected. (Note: please understand I am NOT impugning the quality of John's work. He knows his stuff; at worst I think maybe the capacitors were TOO upgraded.) Whatever the cause, I'm thinking of selling, but I don't want to "over pitch" them to a buyer. On the one hand, to my memory, they sound a little different than I remember. On the other, they are certainly Allison CD8s, a somewhat rare and desirable speaker. And they still sound good, just not the same. My options are: Keep them as-is, but I recently picked up a good deal on a pair of Focals that I'm pretty happy with. Replace the capacitors (as the most likely non-my-own-ears culprits in the altered sound), then sell. Sell them as-is. Any thoughts? And if anyone here has replaced the caps in CD8s, maybe tell me what model/value the originals were so I can verify my next step if I choose to go with Option 2...? Thank you, Pete