Tweeter Without Crossover

[Macabe]

Hello:

I have a pair of EPI M-110 speakers from the late 70s. I noticed the tweeter on one of them had gone silent. After some troubleshooting, I saw the problem was the rheostat on the speaker--it was extremely corroded.

To bypass this, I cut the rheostat and capacitor out. The speaker is now wired to my receiver on two different outlets-one for the woofer, one for the tweeter.

Is there any downside to this? The speaker sounds fine, but will it do any damage eventually? Thanks for your help.

[Richard Ellis]

Do NOT drive this tweeter with the capacitor removed............
Look up the value(Read off the device) of the capacitor....if you intend to replace it.
Any music applied to this tweeter without a capacitor will damage it very easily.


__________________________________________________ ____Rick.........

[wintermute]

There are a few problems, but the most significant will be that if you turn the volume up to far you will most probably blow the tweeter. By wiring it direct you will be getting lots of low frequency energy that it is not designed to cope with, which can easily overload it and burn out the voice coil.

The secondary effects of this will be that it is trying to reproduce low frequencies which will likely cause all sorts of distortion, and also those lower frequencies it does manage to reproduce will likely interfere with the output from the other driver.

I'd suggest at a minimum to put the cap back in. If you don't think that the treble sounds out of balance then don't worry about replacing the rheostat (I assume this was actually an lpad).

Tony.

[Macabe]

I took your advice and picked up a capacitor today, wired it in, and the tweeter sounds better than it ever has.

This makes me think there was no problem with the lpad, and it was just the three decade old cap. When I get around to it, I'm going to recreate the crossover so I only have to take up one speaker terminal. Thanks for your help!

[boywonder]

Are there still low pass crossover components (like inductors, etc) in the circuit for the woofer?

[sofaspud]

So you only have to take up one speaker terminal?
Can you give us a good description of your speaker hookup?

[NEO Dan]

He is using the A and B outputs in a bi-wired configuration from his receiver, one to the tweet and the other to the woofer.

[Inductor]

Originally Posted by Macabe

...When I get around to it, I'm going to recreate the crossover so I only have to take up one speaker terminal. Thanks for your help!

Originally Posted by NEO Dan

He is using the A and B outputs in a bi-wired configuration from his receiver, one to the tweet and the other to the woofer.

Not anymore...