Modification that has proved to be transformative


in a manner well beyond swapping out gear, tweaks, wire and the like. Ok Agoners I have owned and gone through lots of great gear as evidenced by my feedback:-)

However, over the past year I have learned something I want to share. Some of you will know all about this and others will have heard about it, but with doubts. Three words....

Duelund CAST capacitors

Sure, I have cap rolled and part rolled for a few years now. Fun stuff to do and sometimes I liked the change and other times not so much. However these CAST capacitors are an entirely different animal. I placed them in my tube preamp, hybrid amp and speakers. In each component the improvement was dramatic and a game changer in many ways. Universally, each component was greatly improved by a percentage easily exceeding 25 -30%. I can't understand why gear retailing for $10,000 or much more would skimp on a crossover or coupling cap. My hybrid amp used $30-$50 caps that sounded good, but not great. Same thing in my speakers for the midrange crossover caps. The Duelund CAST caps made these high dollar pieces sound the best they are capable of.

I picked these up at Parts Connextion at a great sale price recently. They are very expensive caps, but made more affordable due to the recent sale.
I cannot overstate how superior these are to all other boutique type caps often talked about in audio threads. This, at least in my experience, has been the case in my cap rolling endeavors. I say confidently they will greatly improve any component they are used in. No need to debate about synergy and the builders tuning with parts etc...as these CAST caps are just going to make good and great sounding gear much greater!

So if you have gear utilizing coupling caps in key circuit positions this is an upgrade that will deliver far more then their high cost. Spend your thousands here before any wire change or buying and selling gear. If your gear is of very high quality and the key circuit caps are good, but not Duelund CAST, consider a cap upgrade.

I purchased two .47 uf caps for $398 and four .22 uf caps for $800. I used these in my tube pre and hybrid amp. This is easily the best $1200 I have spent in my 30 plus years in audio. As much as wire and certain tweaks do improve the sound, these caps did even more. Other highly touted caps did not garner quite this reaction from me in my system.

Now, these caps would have cost me double this if not on sale. However, they would still have qualified as a best buy in terms of their impact on my music.
128x128grannyring
My current speaker project involves nine caps per speaker! Yikes! I wish I only had one. These speakers actually came with some very good parts mixed in with mid grade $30 caps. The crossover is hard wired to boards resting in the woofer chamber. All those caps were rocking with the bass line and that is not ideal.

I replaced 4 caps in each speaker to Mundorf silver, gold and oil caps. The other 4 caps were already Mundorf SGO's. I replaced some Clarity SA caps with the SGO's.

I am intrigued with a speaker that only uses one cap? Interesting indeed. Mine is a three way Nola speaker. Not sure if the Coincident is a two or three way? I assume a three way? My speakers are about 89bd efficient so I bet my crossover is to blame for that. They are wonderful sounding speakers (Viper Reference 1ax's) and only two sets were ever made. The builder has been most helpful in this instance and is sending me some of his special internal speaker wire plus helped me with several questions.

The upgrade is almost done and they are sounding like speakers 10 times the price they cost me.
Charles, I just finished reading several reviews of your fine speaker. I now remember they are three way with 5 drivers! Amazing how efficient they are with all those drivers? Funny thing is I have always wanted to own a Coincident speaker. My audio buddy has a set of the Total Victory V's. I have listened to them on several occasions and liked them.

I actually make an offer last month on a set of TV 4's , but the offer was declined. So instead, I have decided to make my speakers be all they can be. The results are amazing thus far.

The fact that your speaker has such a simple crossover makes upgrading them very simple indeed. I would be in there looking at the internal wire, cap and resistor. That is a speaker you can keep for many, many years indeed.
Grannyring,
Your comments are on the money. Since Israel confirmed there`s only one capacitor per speaker it seems to me that an improvement there should be quite obvious and effective. The speaker wire is the same ultra quality wire he uses for his cables and for wiring his amplifiers and preamps(6N copper,I won`t mess with that. My thought is to consider the Duelund caps(Cast or VSF and their best resistors). I have a friend who`s capable of doing the work and can tell me if it`a go or not.

Grannyring thanks for this thread, it really has me thinking.

fizzletop, do you get to the crossover via the bottom of the speaker?
Regards,
Grannyring,
I can understand your interest in other speakers even when you`re happy with what you have,there`re very good choices available(and you can`t own them all).In my case the Horning speakers and also the PHY driver Ocellia and Tonian Labs interest me. They `re all high efficiency,easy load and all have very simple crossovers.

I`ve own the Total Eclipse for 4 years and just love them.If a single capacitor and resistor swap can potentially improve an already very good speaker then why not give it a try? Worse case scenario, if I don`t like the change then it`s back to the original parts.My willingness to attempt this is increasing.The sound is already very open, transparent,emotionally involving and organic, if it gets better,wow!
Regards,
Charles, I think the Duelund upgrade took the Coincident SE III speakers from being "very good" to "great" status. I did the mods a couple of years ago and IIRC there are cap/s, inductor and resistors also for the bass drivers. As these aren't such a critical position I didn't upgrade anything for the bass drivers except swapping in Duelund resistors. To get to the treble/mid crossover on the SE III I took out the top side firing bass driver and used this as the access point. It was really a difficult process as the crossover is actually placed up high in the speaker behind internal bracing. I have next to no technical knowledge and not blessed with an abundance of patience...if I can do it, anyone can! In my view, like me...you don't really have anything to lose by giving it a go. Despite all this, I'm back to RMAF this year on a quest for my next speaker....based on auditions so far the contenders include Vandersteen 7, Nola Baby Grand or Verity Amadis....you can see that in my opinion you need to spend quite a lot more to improve on the upgraded Coincidents. I have heard that the Vandy 7's use Duelund in their crossovers....that's a plus! Cheers, Fizz