which speakers

[pastypirate]

Hi,
I currently have a pioneer a400 ,marantz cd63 KI I,ve tried these with my q acoustic 1010i ,s the seperation ,detail is good they sound crisp, but sound light on bass and slam , I also have a pair of kef q35,s and have tried these ,I get more bass and slam, but the detail and seperation of the instruments seem more muddled than the 1010i,s any recommendations on a pair of speakers that will sound good ,please bear in mind I dont have loads of money please or any ideas how I could improve the setup thanks

[purplepeople]

Those KEFs look like full range speakers without a lot of high-end extension. There are a number of ways to go, but maybe the simplest is to build a pair of 2-way crossovers that use the Q's as mid/tweeter and the KEFs as your woofer. If you have another amplifier, then a pair of line-level cross-overs would be even easier to build. The nice thing about this kind of addition is that you can play with a very large range of cross-over points and no actual changes have been made to any of the components.

:)ensen.

[pastypirate]

Hi,
thanks I,m looking for another a400 at the mo, do you have any idea where I can get either of the crossovers ,if I understand you mean add a pair of crossovers at the speaker cable (amp end )so I can run both sets of speakers ,bit new to this speaker building . I have thought of building a set of speakers ,but time is quite tight at the moment, any idea of a good speaker plan I can follow easily, working with wood or metal is not a problem also good at electrics(household my trade) but not delved too deep into electronics.

[Jay]

Active crossover is too advanced to be usefull.

I would prefer to take the Q35 than the 1010. But your system is just not perfect so you need a little bit of "matching". Matching the three elements: the speaker, the amplifier, your taste/preference.

Your amp is suitable for the 1010, but there is no way to get a good bass from such a small bookshelf.

The Q35 can give you the bass, but if you need an acceptable detail and separation you have to tweak the amp to match it with the Q35. All you have to do is biasing the amplifier output with higher current. Sure you need a little bit of electronics knowledge, an ohm-meter and a solder.

No investment needed. You only need to turn one potentiometer for biasing properly (I guess around 150mA-200mA). If you want more class-A, be prepared to buy a fan. You can make a hole on the top cover to mount the fan (on top of the heatsink).

While you are upgrading the amp, you can replace caps with MKP. Most economical way would be to parallel some electrolytics with small MKP/MKT (>=100n). There is input cap (2.2uF), there are those two 3.3uFs and one 10uF.

If you don't know electronics, you can find your friend who knows electronics that can assist you to do that.

[purplepeople]

A good active crossover is not very difficult and usually cheaper to build than a good passive crossover. If you get a second amp... try something like this:

Linkwitz-Riley Electronic Crossover

If you change the 100K resistor at the input to a pair of log pots, you have volume control.... and the volume controls on the amps adjust the level between the high and low speakers.

:)ensen.