Spendor s3/5 upgrade recommendation?


does anyone tried upgrading the spendor s3/5. some says upgrading capacitor make a different? suggestion ? anyone have spendor s3/5 crossover schematic?
milen007
I too would strongly advise against altering the speakers. Depending on what you think you are missing, add a subwoofer or move to a different model.
Have to agree w/the above posts. If you're looking for a change, I cannot more highly recommend the Krix "Equinox." For $231 New (Silver) to a little over $325 for the Jarrah wood option from Full Compass. These spks. are a steal and most importantly sound fantastic. The Spendors are great spks. but the Krix's go lower, are easilier to drive and IMO sound more open and detailed. Superb midrange and image beautifully. Regards, Bill.
Thanks for the respond. yep that might be the reason. searching the web and found zero suggested mods.

kotta, i go check it out.

have you guys heard bout Zaph Audio kit SR71, or AR.COM kit using the Seas parts or Selah Audio SA1 avail at madisound com? anyone have any idea comparing them?
I respectfully disagree with the above posts. I just completed a complete rebuild of the crossovers in my Spendor 9/1 speakers. They were built in 1995 before high quality audiophile caps etc. were commonplace. I opened them originally to add a deflex panel behind the woofer which I knew was a great bass tightener for the SP100. While I was in there ,I noticed that the multi-strand copper wire, which was encased in clear PVC was turning green. I turned to Sonic Craft for advice, and he said that it would do little good to change the wire without upgrading the aged crossover components. Hey, I love Spendor too, but the components available at the time, as well as cost constraints mean that some pretty cheap stuff was used in the crossovers.I took the advice from Jeff at Sonic Craft. I bought solid core wire on several different guages, (silver and copper twisted for the tweeter)and caps by several makers including Mundorf, Black gate and Sonicap. He was familiar with the speakers and chose what he felt to be best for each purpose. He stressed that even if the electrolitics in the crossover were good sonically, they would certainly be degraded in their performance after 12 years. My feeling was that I knew that I liked the speakers fundamentally, and as we all know, it's hard to find speakers that you can live with long term- so I wanted to maximize their performance. I had no previous experience doing this work, altough I can use a soldering iron, and I think almost anyone can. When the parts came, I spent about 6 hours total doing the work, and I actually enjoyed it. I was warned that the crossover would take about 400 hours to burn in, but of course, the sonic improvement was apparent right away in some areas. The most disconcerting thing for the first 100 hours(it's been about 200 now) was that he "timing" of the speakers sounded wrong, but that has already gone away. The point is, I spent about 670.00 to upgrade speakers that I really love, and the results were absolutely positive and worth the money. There is increased purity, depth detail and smoothness. And most importantly, the components didn't change the basic character of the speakers. It's common sense, if you usse parts that do the job better, you will end up with a better result. I strongly recommend that you try it. Milen, I am emailing you pix of the crossover before and after.
Roxy54, there was really nothing to "disagree with" the others in what you did.

First, I don't consider the replacement of aged or degraded parts a "mod." That's just prudent maintenance in my book.

For me, a "mod" is when the original crossover point was 3 KHz or had a 12 dB slope and someone decides it should be 6 dB at 2.5 KHz or a similar deviation from the original design.

Second, you have an older speaker that hasn't been in production for a number of years. The S3/5 is still a current production model. His unit could be up to 10 years old but his question didn't give that impression.

Lastly, no one said DON'T mod the speakers, only that it isn't often done, especially in contrast to many other brands on the market.