Dont worry there is nothing to age inside xovers of Wilson. just refurbish it and enjoy. P.S> use genue or exact replacemnt of dynaudio 21w-54 surrounds. most replacement are harder and rises Fs by 12Hz
Thanks - I'll be sure to use the Dynaudio surrounds. The tweeters are going to be the tough part - I see the foam surrounds are available, but I've got one that's missing the titanium dome... Ouch!
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I think I have complete replacement domes for WA, also some midrange drivers (WP7/8) let know if you will have dififultis acquiring them localy
Hi - thanks - I will check on what I can find bouncing around the U.S. next week and will let you know. Cheers, Chip
Hoping this chat is still active... I recently acquired a Watt/Puppy 7 and trying make it work in our living room with various degrees of success (if any). I picked up an earlier remark about the fact that the crossing between the Watt and Puppy leaves a gap in terms of mid-bass bloom. I can certainly attest that I miss the full-bodied, rich, organic and relaxed sound I was expecting from a hiend speaker. Overall, I find there is way too much midrange and high presence which could be piercing and annoying on many records. I could not tame the speakers despite trying various speaker placements, amplifiers and cables. I have increased the tweeter resistors from the standard value of 2.1 ohms to 4.7 ohms which helped a bit. My next step is to increase the value of the midrange resistor, but not knowing the crossover, I am not sure what change this will bring. Did anyone play around with the resistors accessible through the bottom of the Watt? Thanks!
It is perhaps the hardest speaker i have dealt with. Apart from being acoustically unfriendly to many rooms it is also exceptionally difficult to drive. Too prominent a midrange is indicative of this. It really requires a serious, massively paralleled amp not only to show what it's capable of, but even to achieve a normal tonal balance. There are some exceptions, like my SE SIT, which manage to get the tonal balance right but the power into 2.5 ohms is very limited.
put them in well damped room and place in the corners of it. then sit down in another corner of room. that should solve tonal balance. they realy sound best in dull /damped/recessed in mids hights and weighty presentaton (when you talk in those room yur voice sounds unnatural weighty and lush- oposite of what you hear of your voice in free spaces outside buildings)
Thank you both, this is very useful and very much in line with my findings so far. It is indeed about getting the tonal balance right. They have resolution, air and soundstage in spades, but they lack tonal colours and timbre realism, at least in my listening environment. Will proceed as you have suggested. I presume there is not much I could do further in terms the crossover resistors?
if tweeter resistors wouldlower tweeter level transparency of speakers will suffer. if midrange resitors will be adjusted midrange microdynamics will sufffer- no free lunch. I have modified some Watt puppies (also WITT) to have more lower mids uper bass. unfortunaely you will need 1) measuring equipment, 2)big hammmer with iron bars 3) lot of endurance and new parts.
other option are replace midrange unit with 8 ohm version + longer voice coil and run diferent high pass filter to it. that really helps to tame rought upper mids and lean upper bass. agaain not a easy DIY option.
Thanks again, playing around with speaker placement and room acoustic treatment sound easier, though I may consider the "big hammer with iron bars" - love it!!! 🙂
Since being over 60 years old, my ears are dull/damped/recessed - I no longer need the room to do it, so Watt/Puppies should be perfect for me now. 🤣
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I'm still researching tweeter replacement ideas for the Watt/Puppy 5's. Any ideas on how well dropping Focal T120 kevlar diaphragms would work - measurements seem extremely similar, other than the suspension/dome material (see pic).
Finding a pair of titanium diaphragms seems possible, eventually... but might be a long wait for a pair to appear. (Seems they show up most often in singles - probably because the 2nd one burned to short!)
Focal voice coil specs:
Finding a pair of titanium diaphragms seems possible, eventually... but might be a long wait for a pair to appear. (Seems they show up most often in singles - probably because the 2nd one burned to short!)
Focal voice coil specs:
If you fancy Focal tweeters, get a TNF tweeter, fabricate a piece of timber to fit baffle opening, and take a listening evaluation. If it'll sound odd enough, hire someone to execute the necessary filter modifications that will put things back in order.
I wish it was that easy like that. with we get only reduced bandwith (like 2-12db/oct filter from 2kh to 10khz, and usualy another one steeper from 10-15khz around 48-120db/oct) with age but discortions are heard nearly same.
on the one hand we want very airy and fresh sound (get back to the young years) but any "stress"/dicsortions will show up badly when we try to crank up tweeter level. its VERY dificult AND expensive to get high quality hights to elderly audiophile. young ones are much easier to satisfy.
I heard the Watts at the end of '90 at North Chicago suburbs dealership. Wasn't particularly impressed, later I heard Mikes Dzurko Jaguars, which were IMO more natural sounding spkrs.
As for the secret souce it must be the difficulty to drive as impedance dips very low, and tweeters foam which falls apart with time and exposure to UV. First requires expensive Hi-End to drive them. As for the T120Ti, sure they were special in the '80s when titanium was the magic material for tweeter domes. The wide dispersion inverted dome with 19mm voice coil and no FF was something special back then, but not today. There were a few versions of this tweeter. I think TB makes tweeter similar to Focal, but with 25mm voice coil - who knows maybe it's better than the french thing. I heard a few of the Focals kits, still have some of their parts.
Best thing would be to measure individual drivers response together with in/out of phase freq resp and filters transfer functions and impedance to determine what the xover is doing.
As for the filter to mate WATT to woofers, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't something similar to what Jeff Bugby did to mate his Kairos with SB woofer module.
As for the secret souce it must be the difficulty to drive as impedance dips very low, and tweeters foam which falls apart with time and exposure to UV. First requires expensive Hi-End to drive them. As for the T120Ti, sure they were special in the '80s when titanium was the magic material for tweeter domes. The wide dispersion inverted dome with 19mm voice coil and no FF was something special back then, but not today. There were a few versions of this tweeter. I think TB makes tweeter similar to Focal, but with 25mm voice coil - who knows maybe it's better than the french thing. I heard a few of the Focals kits, still have some of their parts.
Best thing would be to measure individual drivers response together with in/out of phase freq resp and filters transfer functions and impedance to determine what the xover is doing.
As for the filter to mate WATT to woofers, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't something similar to what Jeff Bugby did to mate his Kairos with SB woofer module.
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Very good point. We could attenuate the mids and lows relative to highs, to simulate younger ears, but given most consumer (even very expensive consumer) speakers, we may overdrive the tweeter to reach an appealing volume level. That's why I'm an expert in changing voice coils in my Spica TC-50's! (I use TC-50's as the WATT in my homebrewed Watt/Puppies.)
Maybe Dave Wilson's inadvertent "discovered" that the older guys with $40k+++ to spend on speakers, enjoy what younger ears perceive as a overly bright sound. Maybe why so much disagreement about the earlier Wilson sound?
By saying more hights and airy sound I mean last octave after 13khz or so. anything below 11khz is perceved as bright sound.
there is very litle music information here over 12khz , but that small amount of resonably SPL makes souund more realistics.
everything in the world is against those frequencies and tries to "steal" them-
1) live event absorbtion
2)recording/mastering loss
3) replay at home absorbtion loss
4) replay directivity of listening axis loss
5) replay cancelation of highest notes when speakers placed slight of phase.
6) tube amps (most)
7) dac filtering techniques ( not much)
8) Age degenaritve processeses
9) acoustical traumas
10) even long hairs covering ears!
here is average Joe on most ages what they would perceive in speakers as "being airy, without being bright"
black line is most average joe with damaged heraing due improper life style or accidents.
there is very litle music information here over 12khz , but that small amount of resonably SPL makes souund more realistics.
everything in the world is against those frequencies and tries to "steal" them-
1) live event absorbtion
2)recording/mastering loss
3) replay at home absorbtion loss
4) replay directivity of listening axis loss
5) replay cancelation of highest notes when speakers placed slight of phase.
6) tube amps (most)
7) dac filtering techniques ( not much)
8) Age degenaritve processeses
9) acoustical traumas
10) even long hairs covering ears!
here is average Joe on most ages what they would perceive in speakers as "being airy, without being bright"
black line is most average joe with damaged heraing due improper life style or accidents.
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I have used this online test at: https://hearingtest.online/ and found it pretty accurate when comparing to what I had done in the Dr. office. The Dr. version was not quite as bad - probably because the volume sweeps are more continuous rather than large discrete jumps. But overall it was very close - I drew in the approx. Dr. version, which for some reason showed some bounce-back above 8k. For the music that is important to me, I often EQ it to correct my "curve", and despite purists who believe EQ...Bad! I think it is the lesser of the two evils. Better to hear some very slightly degraded signal, than no signal at all!
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Back to Wilson tweeters - with the strong similarities in all the voice coil specs (and the associated tweeters) of the Focal TC series above, do you think there would be a serious quality change in replacing the titanium diaphragms with the kevlar or fibreglass (both of which are currently much more easily obtained than the titanium)?