Tannoy D500 crossover

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Hello,

Recently I have bought a pair of Tannoy Definition D500 in mint condition. I would like to upgrade the crossover components when possible.

Does anyone has the crossover schematic for this cabinet, or can someone confirm the series capacitor for the HF is a 22uF?

Best regards,

Walter de Jong

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Hello,

I did some research myself. I opened the cabinets and draw a schematic for the Definition D500 crossover:

Bass (lower woofer) is only in series with a iron cored coil (value not known), coil looks very small!

Midrange (upper woofer) in series with a reasonably big air cored coil (value not known) parallel to this a capacitor (made out of two parallel ones) + resistor of 8.2 ohms/17 watts is placed.

Tweeter (in center of upper woofer) is only in series a 2.2uF capacitor. Please note the very low value and the claimed 1.7kHz crossover (I think the driver itself will have high impedance). I removed the strange blue cover of this capacitor and a small yellow foil capacitor of indeed 2.2uF was shown.

As is commonly known the components in serie with the units need to be of good quality. In this case this would mean the iron cored coil in series with the bass, the air cored coil in series in the midrange and the capacitor in series with the tweeter.

The air cored coil for the midrange seems to be of good quality, it is quite big I estimate 7cm diameter, it is mounted seperate from the crossover board.

The iron cored coil in series with the woofer seems of low quality, wire size is low and coil is very small, I suspect this coil to have high resistance. However it could well be Tannoy took this resistance into account when tuning the vents. So perhaps upgrading this coil is not so smart.

The series capacitor for the tweeter is at least a foil type which is good, but still this is a very simple one. I replaced these with Audyn Plus MKP of the same 2.2uF value. Size difference is obvious and I suspect the Audyn to give more detail in the music. I have used these Audyn in my previous speakers and they sound very well.

Best regards,

Walt

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I have a pair of Saturn S8's which are a scaled down version of your D500's. I replaced the HF capacitor with a Claritycap MR and the Woofer shunt cap with a Dayton. The speaker now sounds less colored and more dynamic, I'm very pleased with the results.