Elac B6 Modification

The B6 is a great speaker. Hands down a bargain. I agree with the philosophy that once you change the values of the original design, you're not really listening to the speaker anymore but if you simply upgrade the parts quality and reinforce the cabinet your'e doing what Andrew Jones probably would like to have done but didn't make sense to meet the price point. That's just economics. Keep the same values, I'm going with Mundorf caps and Ohmite and better inductors (I measure the stock ones and make sure I match the replacements exactly). That way I know I'm listening to what was designed by the designer, I'm just getting a better quality version. It's funny how so many folks on audio threads feel that they just can't bring themselves to like a product that gets great reviews and is popular. It's like they have something to prove. Here's my take- don't buy it if you don't want to but I celebrate when someone hits a benchmark at a price point because that's what a designer's biggest challenge is when designing in the lower regions of true quality hifi. Of course there's the other end where price is literally not an object, just performance.

To be honest, I've changed my mind on modding the B6. As my pair breaks in I'm quite happy with it and although I tend to mod just about everything I have in my chain, some things like the B6 which is sleighted to become a classic, deserve being left alone. I did, however, remove the tweeter grill because that tweet is one of the coolest eyeball looking things I've ever seen on a speaker. I might end up going with Mundorf Evo Oil on the tweeter cap (same value) once I've gotten used to the speaker enough to know exactly what the mod did but I really don't feel like there's a whole lot missing from this speaker that wouldn't be better gotten by switching to a completely different speaker up the chain. You can take a Volkswagen bug and hot rod it to hell but somehow the stock bug is such a classic that it's cool just in its original design. A lot of older tube amps like Altecs also retain far more value if they are stock although I'm not claiming that the B6 will ever have that happen. Speakers are probably the one piece of the hifi chain where technology advances at the fastest rate and it's pretty cool to hear speakers getting better all the time while the affordability becomes better for the average guy.