Well, I have completed the upgrade of my Tekton DI speakers. I purchased them used and they came with the $300 upgrade package. Before my upgrade I preferred my heavily modified Acoustic Zen Crescendo speakers. The Crescendo speakers had more bloom, sonic beauty and what I call refined maturity. I had to decide if I should just sell the DI speakers or take a chance on upgrading them and hopefully loving the outcome. I decided the “bones” of the DI design was so good that I could extract better performance in the areas important to me. I wanted more body, bloom, refinement and bass. I desired more meat on the bones and no hint of thinness at all. I wanted the upper mids presented with a tad more harmonic richness, bloom and flesh.
Make no mistake, the DI speaker is a fantastic speaker as is....period. However, this fantastic speaker needed to better suit me in the areas listed above. I love the dynamic impact and resolution of the speaker and really saw huge potential in these gems. So I sold my AZ speakers and started this 40 hour project that I will outline for all here.
Please know that I use a Lyngdorf 2170 and to my ears it has outperformed every other “system” I have had in my home. The 2170 is a system and works magically with the DI speaker. The combo is very, very special. I can confidently say the DI speaker will sound exactly as the builder intended with the 2170 in your listening space.
After some 40 hours of work and $1800, I can emphatically state the DI speaker, in my home, outperforms every speaker I have owned including my beloved AZ Crescendo speakers.
They best my Crescendo speakers in every sonic attribute I can think of post upgrade. So what was done to the mighty Tekton?
I did what each and every owner has been talking about in this thread. These speakers reveal what’s ahead of them and any small change is easily noticed and appreciated. Folks here are spending good money on amps, preamps, dacs and wire to extract nice gains in sound. The first place to look, in my DIY opinion, is under the hood of the DI speaker. These parts are greatly impacting performance folks. They, like all things, can make a big difference as the DI speaker will reveal their shortcomings or greatness. Yes, just like a nice amp......only far more so.
Your DI speaker use electrolytic capacitors in key crossover positions and are certainly keeping these speakers from sounding their best. Positions such as in series with the all important 6.5 inch midrange drivers. In a very important shunt position impacting the signal being sent to the outer ring 6 tweeters down the line. Sand cast resistors in series with the all important tweeter array. These are noisy and not as refined sounding as a good quality Mills MRA or Path Audio resistor. The internal wire is ok, nothing special. This speaker is the single best candidate I have run across for some DIY TLC. Eric’s design is amazing and brilliant. He really has no choice but to use electrolytic caps due to space and cost constraints that are real and understandable. The 220uf cap in series to the midrange drivers and the 68uf shunt cap just before the array are such big value caps that replacing them with film will cost a lot of money and take up a great deal of space. I had to place the highs/mids XO board externally as the capacitors were so large. The original board is just behind the tweeter array and 6.5 inch drivers. No way the new board would fit there or even in the bass cavity. Placing it in the bass cavity would stuff that area with too many parts reducing the internal bass cab space and exposing the XO components to too much vibration.
The link below is chock full of pictures of the upgrade and includes a diagram of the crossover network in my particular set of speakers. My set used different cap and resistor values compared to a set made several months earlier.My set also contained an additional inductor on the tweeter array not found in other DI speakers. Bottom line is your set may or may not match mine. These seem to be undergoing continual fine tuning which is somewhat understandable.
The top three tweeters are connected to the bottom three in series and out of phase. In my set some of the outer ring 6 tweeters-play slightly differing frequency loads. This was not true of another set made a couple of months earlier. I love the sound of the XO design in my set and the upgrade results are stellar.
Here is a parts list of the upgrade. The diagram included in the link below clearly shows where the parts go. You can certainly choose different parts and get amazing results. These parts were chosen to stay within budget and deliver the results I wanted.
New drivers. (These were purchased from Parts Express on sale and the driver baskets were damped with two layers of Soundcoat damping sheets available at Sound Craft. The pictures show this step.
Eminence Beta 10a woofers
Eminence Beta 6a 6.5 inch midrange drivers
Wire,
I used over 60 meters of Duelund stranded copper wire in oil impregnated cotton. 16 gauge on the woofers and mids and 20 gauge on the tweeter array. The speakers are tall and the XO board located externally, thus over 60 meters of wire was needed. The drivers are not wired in a daisy chain manner, but rather each 6.5 inch and 10 inch woofer are wired individually to the XO board. The builder did this right, but more wire is needed.
Crossover parts,
220uf cap - 3 Mundorf Evo Oil caps in parallel (100uf, 100uf, 22uf). These are 3 inches tall and expensive. This is the money cap position folks. This is a large value cap that is very important as it is in series with the 6.5 inch drivers. Money is required here to make these speakers sing more beautifully. Sonic Craft is the place to buy these.
68uf cap - two 34uf Sonic Craft Gen 1 capacitors in parallel. This is also a very important shunt cap position. Sonic Craft is where you buy these.
10 uf and 2.7uf capacitors in parallel and positioned in series with the 6 outer ring tweeters in the array. Here is where you need a good foil and paper cap to get the most resolution, rich tone, and refinement out of the tweeter array. Clarity PX caps were used here originally. They are average caps at best, but inexpensive and nothing special. I used a 10uf Jupiter HT flat stacked and Jantzen Superior Z 2.7uf cap here. The Jupiter caps can be purchased from Sonic Craft while the Jantzen from Parts Express. Jupiter round VT caps would also be perfect here.
Resistors - two Path Audio 3 ohm resistors in parallel. Purchase these from Parts Connextion. They are the most neutral resistor I have heard and very quiet. You can also use Mills MRA for a tad more brilliance. These are also in series with the 6 outer ring tweeters.
1.5 uf cap - this cap is in series with the center tweeter handling the highest frequencies in the speaker - roughly 10k and over. I suggest a very good quality cap here such as Jupiter copper foil or Auydn True Copper. I used the Audyn. A Mundorf Supreme silver in oil would also work nicely here.
Inductors - I used the original ones. I don’t have any way of measuring these for values and don’t know them. I asked Eric for the values and he has chosen not to respond. I will send them out for measuring if Tekton will not help. These are not nearly as important sonically as the caps, wire, and resistors however. Important, but less so than the other parts. I would not change these. If you want, I would avoid foil types as they are brighter and not the best choice for the DI speaker. Solen Perfect Lay would be my choice. They are the warmest and most inviting. I will update my diagram with inductor values once they are known.
Cabinet dampening - the builder uses very little. I am sure he does this on purpose and their is really no right and wrong here. Over stuffing is wrong and should be avoided however. I opted to place open cell egg crate type foam behind the 6.5 inch and tweeter array drivers. In addition, no damping was originally placed on the back wall of the bass cab directly behind the woofers. I decided to place some to tame internal reflections coming back and out of the woofers.
Bass crossover board - I replaced the 100uf electrolytic cap with a nice Mundorf MKP film cap. In addition, I replaced the sand-cast resistors with Mills MRA. The board still easily fit inside the cab...see pics.
This upgrade is not for a novice as you will get lost a perhaps not be able to finish what you started. If you have experience, then you can opted to do any part of what you see here. All the upgrades make a nice positive improvement. I would start with replacing the electrolytic caps for sure. Go as far as you like because this speaker is worth it. The DI is am amazing design and one deserving of the very best parts and layout. Be sure to order parts all matched within a 1% tolerance. Be sure to use good silver solder from WBT or Mundorf. Place all the inductors 4 inches apart outside diameter to outside diameter. Twist all of the wire runs to the crossover to cancel out as much noise as possible. Have fun!
Whatever you decide to do will be rewarded with sonic improvements as this speaker reveals it. My upgraded DI is obviously improved head to toe sonically. The bass is far better, harmonic richness and bloom in spades, better layering, greater resolution, more refined, smoother, and on and on....This is not a couple of percentage points of improvement, but rather another level of sonic wonder. Only 130 hours of break in thus far.
This is a very special speaker.
Copy and paste for pictures and diagram......The first few pics are original XO boards the rest are pretty self explanatory I hope 🙂
http://s1097.photobucket.com/user/grannyring1/slideshow/Tekton%20DI%20upgrade
