Wharfdale W35 crossover rebuild

[Transmaster]

A number of years ago I rebuilt the crossovers on a pair of Wharfdale W35 speakers. Then I used Dayton flim cap’s. In the meantime one of these W35’s got Dc’ed by a failing Onkyo Amp. It took me 5 years to collect the parts to fix it. I landed a pair of crossovers that had the originsl circa 1970 Minerva NPE’s from Hong Kong.    I tested them on my capacitor tester and except for being out of spec μF wise they were not in bad shape. Their ESR’s, and Vloss were OK.  Knowing vastly more about this sort of thing I replaced them with Mundorf E-Cap plain NPE’s.  Everything I liked about the sound of these W35’s is there and so much better. These caps burnt in in just a few hours.  The total cost of these German made Mundorf  E-Cap’s was $23 Dollars.  It was so nice not having to figure out how to fit capacitors that were the size of a Red Bull pop can.  I had to parallel the capacitor on the Woofer side I needed a 12 μF the E-cap had a 10μf, than jumped to 15μF.  So I paralleled a 1.5μF E-Cap which resulted in a total value of 12.78μF close enough. These Mundorf E-Caps are the best quality electrolyics I have ever seen. 

 

Here is one of the rebuilt crossovers with the Mundorf E-Cap’s plains. Yellow common negative, Red Woofer, Blue tweeter, Black Midrange. 

 

[ra.ra]

2 hours ago, Transmaster said:

These Mundorf E-Caps are the best quality electrolyics I have ever seen. 

Very nice work on the crossover rebuild. I'm pleased to see this strong testimonial, as I have been very satisfied using these electrolytic caps on some projects, too. When the capacitance values get a little larger, the Mundorf E-cap is offered in both Plain and Raw versions, and I've been perfectly happy using the Raw option - - they are less expensive and dimensionally smaller, two characteristics that appeal to me.

[Transmaster]

I went perhaps a little overboard on a set of Polk Monitor 10B’s crossovers . I purchased a set of Unmodified 10B crossovers to rebuild and swap out the set I had modified a number of years ago with Sonic Cap Gen 1’s and Axon True Caps.  There are issues one speaker is out of phase I had to reverse the leads, and the other does not seen to play as loud as the other.  My equipment and experience are much better now. These replacements have been rebuilt as the Monitor 10A. The difference is the “A” model did not have the notorious Polyphaser resistance fuse. I used Mundorf M-Cap Aluminum flim cap’s. This time I mounted these capacitors on a daughter board made out of Lexan the M-Caps and fastened with hotglue.  It was interesting cutting out the daughter boards with a coping saw.  I used brass stand offs.  Vishay Miller 12 Watt non inductived were instalI also changed out the binding posts. One thing that has really helped is the Cardus paste solder flux. The Kester 44 eutectic I use does not have enough flux to work properly with most of the soldering I do. The Hakko 888D has made all the difference in the world. 

Here is a picture of one of the 10B crossovers with the Mundorf M-Caps.