melted crossovers

I picked up some more speakers to restore this week.

Interdyn P33 which is a nice unit, when I got there the mid ranges weren’t working and the woofers had been replaced. I nearly walked away but decided the cabinets might be resurrected and/or I could use the tweeters and crossovers as spares, probably too generous but paid $50.

Well….the mids are fine but these have to be the best cooked crossovers I’ve ever seen!

I did what I could to trace the design, I was a bit worried the inductors would be damaged but they both read an identical 0.18mH/0.4 ohm so I might be lucky.

The crossover design looks interesting, first order only with some impedance compensation, nothing at all on the woofer.

Based on the sketch this would be 700Hz/5kHz, can anyone see anything wrong with my assumptions?

SEAS H086 tweeter, 10 F-M midrange and normally a 25F-EWX woofer has been replaced with a Plessey C100.

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Well, according to this info, the Plessy C100 goes up to 13 kHz and the original SEAS only goes to 1500 Hz.
Since there is no filtration on the woofer in your sketch, the Plessy may be too bright for the mids, which may explain why the midranges were not working.
Perhaps they were intentionally disconnected when the SEAS woofer was replaced.
Hope this helps.
 

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I have no history on theses speakers, I suspects the Plesseys went in because they were available, and coincidentally had a higher response - but they didn't sound good when I listened.

I'm surprised the tweeters worked at all because the crossover tracks were charcoal, and I still can't fathom how they got so burnt out without also damaging the speakers.

Re the L-Pads, that's not something I have a lot of experience with, but I'm pretty confident on the values and the layout that I've drawn up.

> However - I've done some reading this morning, and looking at this with that understanding, I think there is too much mid range attentuation in the design and maybe some of the values were actually wrong?

Eg
H085 woofer is 91dB. No series inductor either, so full output.
H084 mid range is 89dB. This design has ~13dB attentuation through 2x 5 watt resistors.
H086 tweeter is 89dB. This design has ~3.5dB attenuation, series 5W and parallel 10W resistors.

The tweeter has a recommend 6dB crossover at 4 kHz so 6.8uF is probably more appropriate, but looking at the 0.18mH inductor on the mid and the 4.7uF cap on the tweeter, it looks designed for 5.5kHz but to me there is no need for any attentuation at all given it is already less sensitive than the woofer.

The mid is also less sensitive than the woofer and has relatively flat impedance curve, so why would there be 13dB attenuation? Seems that's why the resistors got cooked...

I've asked the original supplier for the crossover design so I can check...
 
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but the series resistor for the midrange is 12 Ohms.

Interestingly all the big resistors still measure in spec even though the boards underneath were burnt out, but the 2.2’s measure as 1.4 Ohms.
 
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I've asked the original supplier for the crossover design so I can check
I always thought that Interdyn speakers were only sold by Encel Electronics - in Melbourne. Is this correct?
I have also always wondered about the people/team & place that designed and built them 😳
PS.
I think that by today's standards, most if not all Plessey cone drivers would be considered to be quite 'loud & low HiFi'.
 
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I always thought that Interdyn speakers were only sold by Encel Electronics - in Melbourne. Is this correct?
I have also always wondered about the people/team & place that designed and built them 😳
PS.
I think that by today's standards, most if not all Plessey cone drivers would be considered to be quite 'loud & low HiFi'.
Interdyn were by Aranmar Acoustics in Melbourne, for Encel.

And yes, I think the Plesseys are not up to the SEAS standard. I’ll be replacing them ideally with some of the originals.

Although, the Plessey factory apparently is still in business, now called Lorantz, which is what these woofers are labelled as.

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