What should I do with my Arctics?

[saabracer23]

Hello everyone, it has been awhile since I have posted here. I have two pair of Pinnacle Arctic 1's and a pair of Pinnacle Arctic 2's.

Arctic 1



Arctic 2



I also have enough extra woofers and tweeters to make an extra MTM Arctic 2 giving me enough to make a 7.1 channel home theater. I cannot find anything about these on the web at all. I called Pinnacle and talked to a tech who has been there quite awhile that gave me a little info. The Arctics were built in 1993 and were considered a premier speaker but were short lived due to the fact that the cabinets cost too much to manufacture. They were hand painted and had too many hours into them. They do have a beautiful gloss finish. The 1's were $375 and 2's were $475 I believe. They use 1 inch aluminum dome tweeters and 5-1/4" poly cone mids, both made by peerless











These have to be one of the cleanest, best sounding speakers I have heard. They do everything very well with the exception of bass, but I believe almost all bookshelves need subwoofers. I have heard many speakers and these have always trumped when it comes to treble, midrange, midbass, especially vocals and strings.

My father and I were talking and thought it would be fun to do a tower, a small line array, possibly open baffle. Problem is I don't know the T/S parameters. The crossovers for the Arctic 1's seem simple using electrolytic caps, here is a schematic. (my first time drawing one so please point out anything that looks wrong)



So what would you do?

1. Build the extra MTM for home theater and leave it alone

2. Build the MTM and replace all of the caps with better ones (about $50 a pair for crosscaps)

3. Build a pair of towers using four woofers per side

4. Find two more woofers and build small line arrays (maybe open baffle)

hmmm.

Also, if I were to send someone trustworthy a woofer would they be able to measure it for me so that I can find out the best app for it?

Thanks for your time,
Dan

[Psychobiker]

Make some SERIOUSLY good reference speakers?

[Andersonix]

I don't think you've got the xo schematic right. Look at other 2nd order xo's and study up on how caps and inductors work when in series or parallel with tweeters or woofers. (And use units of uF for caps and mH for inductors.)

I think you should leave them alone and pick up one of Zaph's projects instead.

[saabracer23]

Hmmm, I thought I got it right, I just followed the flow the current would take on the board. I doubt these would help.





I wish it was as easy as building another design, if I could I would build Zaph's 2.5 way revelator design. I do not have the funds right now to buy all new drivers and crossovers.

Maybe I'll just build the extra MTM to complete a home theater system and when I can afford it build a nice set of reference towers.

If I put new Jantzen Crosscaps in would I hear an improvement over the electrolytic? Any advice on a cap better than the Jantzen without breaking the bank? Also I see people using Mills resistors as replacements for the ceramic ones, would this improve sound? If so should I also replace the resistor and coil with better ones or just the caps?

Thanks
Dan

[Psychobiker]

I second the crossover looking iffy - there is no 'return path' for any of the components there - the components need to be relative to ground (negative). From reviewing your pictures, those caps are RELATIVE TO ground, ie. they are forming part of a filter, not DC-blocking anything.

Like this :

NOTE - the uninterrupted negative line.

[saabracer23]

ohh I see, I'll go over it again and redraw it. The negative in has an uninterrupted line going to the positive of the woofer and tweeter, not the negative, unless they marked the drivers weird. I assume the positive of the tweeter is the terminal they marked with a yellow dot (hooks up to yellow wire) and the positive to the woofer uses the big spade connector.

Dan

[Psychobiker]

I would severely doubt that there is an uninterrupted line to the positive speaker terminal from the negative line!? Wow, that's...erm...upside down!

If you have a multimeter, trace it that way. I think you'll find there will be a cap in series with the tweeter (and inductor to ground/negative) and inductor in series with the woofer and capacitor to ground. These are high pass/low pass filters respectively

[Andersonix]

Once you figure out the xo for both the A1 and A2, post them here.

Think about changing only the main cap to the tweeter (10uF?) for a film cap and leaving the rest alone. Also leave the R's alone. (Those Jantzens are cheap enough, but there are also much cheaper film caps from Madisound and Apex Jr.)

When you say "I also have enough extra woofers and tweeters to make an extra MTM Arctic 2," do you have the actual A2 drivers?

[saabracer23]

Ok thanks guys, I will open the A2s and get a look at the crossovers. What would be the reason to not replace the other caps? No significant difference to the woofer? Yes I do have the actual peerless drivers from the Arctic series to use for the other "A2" that I want to build.

Thanks,
Dan

[Andersonix]

If the other large value electrolytic caps are part of a notch (or even alone) in parallel with the woofer, the return on investment swapping them for expensive film caps diminishes (so save your money for a proper Zaph project). But in series with a tweeter, the effect of a film cap is quite noticeable.

I've been pleasantly surprised by cheap 'surplus' film caps from Apex Jr, in particular the 4.7uF ($1) on this page:
Whats New at ApexJr
Two of these in parallel (9.4uF) might be just the thing as a sub for the 9.7uF (assuming that's the one in series with the tweeter). There's also a 10uF ($0.60?) from Madisound.

Since you have the actual drivers, why not build an Arctic 2 clone (as opposed to measuring them and attempting to find a suitable project)?