Tweeter Questions

[DrOetker]

Hi I'm a total novice and would be very grateful for your advice. I have a pair of Bower & Wilkins P4 speakers, they are about 12 yrs old. The tweeters seem to produce very little volume so I guess that they are malfunctioning in some way? I know that more modern speakers have tweeters that sound better (for instance B&W Nautilus), would it be possible for me to replace my (I think) broken tweeters with some more modern ones or would they be completely incompatible with the crossovers etc?

The current speakers are 1inch and are 4ohms.

Do all 1inch 4ohm tweeters essentially create the same amount of sound?

How can I test my tweeters to be sure that they actually are broken and that I'm not just deaf!

Thanks

[stangbat]

Since nobody has replied, I'll give it a shot. I'm not an experienced loudspeaker designer, and somebody please correct me if I'm way off base. But I do know enough to tell you that no, you can't just drop any 1" 4 ohm tweeter into the speaker and expect to behave the same as the tweeter in the original speaker. Crossovers are designed for specific drivers. Each and every driver has its own distinct frequency response, impedance characteristics, resonance, sensitivity, etc., etc.

I'm not saying that it won't work if you drop in a tweeter that physically fits and is the same impedance. It just won't be "correct" and there is no guarantee on how it will sound using the original crossover.

The easiest way to diagnose your problem is to measure the existing tweeters. Sound meters are fairly inexpensive and you can download software that will generate tones so you can measure your speaker's response. Or you can hook up an ohm meter to the leads and see if your tweeters are completely dead. And if there is a problem with the current tweeters, the best bet is to replace them with a tweeter that is the same as the OEM tweeter.

If you want to replace them with something else and do it "right", you will need to find a suitable replacement, mount it in your baffle, take measurements, and modify the crossover to accommodate the new driver. Not simple, but not impossible for some of the guys around here. I'm not one of those guys though.

[JLC7]

Since you've got B&W speakers, you probably paid a pretty penny for them. In that case I wouldn't blindly try changing tweeters or whatnot. Unless the tweeters were completely nonfunctional it would probably make the speakers sound worse.

What indications do you have that the tweeter level is too low? Is it the same for both speakers?