Replacing my tweeters a good idea?

Wire a resistor to the tweeter leg? I am new to modifying components - could you be more specific? The tweeter is an infintity EMIT-R type. Thanks for the help!

Just splice the resistor into one of the leads to the tweeter; positive or negative won't matter. You could use an 8 ohm pot temporarily to get the exact value you like, then buy a fixed resistor of that value. If you still can't get it right I'll sell you my nice pair of 19mm Seas plastic-dome tweeters cheap. (I'm through with speaker building!) Good Luck.

Subaruguru:why are you giving up speaker building?

Yo Shabbadoo, I doubt that you can find a replacement for the EMIT tweeter that will sound half as good. They really are superior to most of the dome tweeters out there. That EMIT tweeter is just complaining about the cheap capacitor Infinity used in the crossover. Try bypassing the last cap (closest to the tweeter) in the crossover with a Crescendo cap of a .1 mf value ($7.45 ea.). Solder it in parallel with the existing cap. Or if you feel flush replace it with the same value in a cascade bypass arrangement. Read all about it at: http://www.northcreekmusic.com/Bypassing.html. By all means discuss the idea with George at North Creek before you try inserting resistors in series with the EMITs. The other thing that will help is if you treat the room with acoustic foam treatments to minimize early reflections off of the side walls, front and back walls and ESPECIALLY THE UPPER CORNERS.

While i hope that nobody takes this personally, but "just inserting" a resistor into a speaker circuit is NOT a good idea. Outside of lowering the output level, it will alter the crossover frequency, change damping and tonal characteristics, etc... The ENGINEERS at Infinity didn't just throw parts into a box and hope that it worked out okay. Nonetheless, there is always room for improvement in any design though and this is especially true of mass market brands and speakers in specific. Your best bet is to look elsewhere in the chain to see what may be aggravating the problem. As someone mentioned, the use of low grade crossover components INSIDE the speaker may also be causing problems. You really have to look at the system AS A SYSTEM and NOT cast the blame on just one component. Unless you have changed things around enough and substituted other components in their places, you can't be sure exactly what is causing the problem. You might be surprised at what can cause "less than stellar" performance out of a system. My suggestion is to look at the source components and then work your way back. Is the problem only with one source ( cd's ) or when listening to any source ? This will give you an idea as to whether the problem is SYSTEM based or COMPONENT based. From there, the path to take will be much clearer. Sean >