Recapping a recap

[Mazeppa]

I'm not a complete noob at the vintage speaker game, but not nearly an old salt, either. My first go at this game is a pair of AR2a that were obtained with the usual corroded pots so no working mids or tweets. Woofers are cloth surround,

alnico mag type. Overall condition quite good.

Jumpered the pots to check drivers for function. Firing on all cylinders. Pulled pots for cleaning, replaced rock wool stuffing with fiberglass per guidance from this forum. Buttoned 'em up, acoustic seal ok, hooked 'em up. Saaaay, these sound pretty darn good! The more I listened, the better I liked them.

3-4 months pass. Kept coming across threads covering capacitor replacement. Lots of arguements pro, but a few con fearing a loss of the original "voicing" of the speaker, logical enough to give pause. My 2a's were enjoyable as is, so I vacillated on recap for a while, but finally decide to give it a go. One could always put the old ones back in, right?

By the by, date stamp inside cabinet is JUN 1961. Wax block cap.s stamped NOV8 1961.

Appropriate cap.s from PartsExpress went in 2 weeks ago. At first I wasn't impressed, nor dissapointed. After a couple of hours play time, I started grinning a little. After about 6 hours of play I was wondering why the heck I waited so long. All aspects of SQ of the mids and tweets are way up. In short my 2a's went from good to at least very good overall and are just a joy to listen to.

For the data minded, old cap.s were measured at 1khz. Block #1; 6uf=7.4uf/4uf=5.3uf Block #2; 6uf=7.2uf/4uf=5.3uf.

Values are not way out of line, but new cap.s ouperform the old ones by a long ways in circuit. Wished I'd a thought to measure the new ones before they went in.

Having also read much about the superiority of manufacturing techniques used for newer cap.s vs. older ones and about cloth surround woofers exhibiting lower Fs after years of use "loosening" the surrounds makes me wonder how my 2a's would stack up against a new set "time warped" to me for comparison. Right now I'd say the line would be even money on the results a head to head comparo.