Acoustic Zen Crescendo speaker crossover capacitors ... who makes them?

Sherod,
I’ve met Mr. Lee on several occasions and he is very gracious, friendly and accommodating. He’s proud of his speakers and deservedly so. They are the result of much time, effort and talent he has put forth.

I believe that he takes the position of "hey I’ve put everything I could into making this a sucessful speaker ". He may feel a sense of resentment that someone would come along and "tamper " with a speaker he’s put so much thought and energy into building. I can appreciate how he and other builders could adapt this attitude. Some may even feel insulted.

Yet I have to agree with Bill that clearly acknowledged excellent products "can" be improved further with carefully selected higher quality parts . Better quality parts will upgrade performance compared to lesser quality parts. In fact some manufacturers do recognize this and enthusiastically offer upgrade packages.

Just as someone can resort to tube rolling to improve sound quality, one can "roll" capacitors, resistors and wire using the same rationale. 
Charles

I am a firm believer in upgrading with better quality capacitors. I have improved my Reference 3a Dulcet and MMC crossovers with Audyn True Copper Max with spectacular improvements. I also have refurbished at least six vintage tuners by replacing all electrolytic caps with Elna Silmic II and Black gate caps with amazing results. I have no doubt that just replacing all the sand cast resistors in the AZ Adagio crossover would make for an improvement. 

Finished the bass board upgrade and again I am happy with the results. Nothing like upgrading the mid/treble board to be sure in terms of total improvement, but a nice little improvement in bass resolution or articulation. Very slight. 

If someone else wants to upgrade their Crescendo speakers, I would be happy to help any way I can. I would suggest an outboard crossover if you have the room and a spouse that is ok with it. Good idea to get these parts out of the vibration woofer box😎 Behind and under woofers are not the ideal spots sonically for crossover boards. It would be fun to place them in external boxes With vibration mitigation footers etc...

The speakers are now totally broken in and sound so wonderful. They sounded great after just 24 hours of break in, but now have improved in the areas of openness, ease, and realism.

I am actually thinking of getting another set to do the same exact mod, except putting all the parts in an external crossover! We will see as I have to run it past my wife. More boxes in the room :(

Ok Crescendo owners I have an upgrade you can do and it will cost you nothing. It will improve your sound in real immediate ways that you will notice very easily. If you are somewhat handy you can do this! No soldering.

The mod is to bypass those aweful sounding binding posts. This is better than spending $750 on those top end posts. It just is.

Here is what you do.

1) Remove the binding post plate on the bottom back of the speaker by removing the 4 wood screws.

2) Mark the wires going to the top and bottom binding posts. Cut them off right at the solder point on the binding posts. Make sure you have enough wire to protrude out the plate some 1.5 -2 inches as well as enough extra slack to work with the plate. You can pull out more slack by carefully pulling the wires toward you if a couple of more inches are needed. Be sure to reseat the black putty covering the small hole the wires are coming out of behind the plate.

3) Your plates are now free to work on. Drill two holes in each plate to pass the wires through. The holes should be between the top and bottom set of posts. Like this...

post O post
post O post

4) Run the wires through the holes and seal the back of the plate with more putty/plumber putty etc....

5) Thread the wires through he holes of the proper post. Be sure to strip enough bare wire to extend just beyond the plastic binding post nut on both sides.

6) Now you can place your spade or bare wire around the post just behind the hole with the wire going through it. The binding post nut will simply clamp your speaker cable run to the internal speaker wire for the best sounding connection possible.

The result will shock you. I do the same thing at the amp end for double improvement. The posts on our Crescendo sound bad folks. Bad.

Email me me for Pics! Contact me through Agon and we can go from there.