Hi All.
Recently I went for wire wound ceramic encased resistors for my crossover rebuilds.
Somewhere along the line a sound engineer had advised avoiding cheap sandcast resistors.
Could I have done better than these ceramic encased options?
5W Non-Inductive Wire Wound, Fixed Resistors | Wagner Online Electronic Stores
Would something like this have been better?
5W Superes Resistors
My Loudspeakers are vintage, but nothing you'd class top of the range.
Although I'm not looking for state of the art, I'm wanting to avoid anything which might substantially affect sound reproduction and or cause the speakers to malfunction.
cheers
Cliff
Recently I went for wire wound ceramic encased resistors for my crossover rebuilds.
Somewhere along the line a sound engineer had advised avoiding cheap sandcast resistors.
Could I have done better than these ceramic encased options?
5W Non-Inductive Wire Wound, Fixed Resistors | Wagner Online Electronic Stores
Would something like this have been better?
5W Superes Resistors
My Loudspeakers are vintage, but nothing you'd class top of the range.
Although I'm not looking for state of the art, I'm wanting to avoid anything which might substantially affect sound reproduction and or cause the speakers to malfunction.
cheers
Cliff
Inductive ... non inductive ... the answer is;
If you can detect above the fundamental frequency of the inductance, fine , use non inductive resistors but non of us can hear above 18kHZ and we are talking above 50kHZ so it make no difference unless you have paid over the top and want to make yourself feel a little less silly for wasting your cash.
5W ceramic of any construction is fine and in use by millions of manufacturers successfully.
If you can detect above the fundamental frequency of the inductance, fine , use non inductive resistors but non of us can hear above 18kHZ and we are talking above 50kHZ so it make no difference unless you have paid over the top and want to make yourself feel a little less silly for wasting your cash.
5W ceramic of any construction is fine and in use by millions of manufacturers successfully.
Really? Speak for yourself.
And the difference between resistors is audible (well, to some!) particularly in tweeter attenuation. I like Mills, at a reasonable price*, and don't like Jantzen MOX, for example.
* I was given some Duelund Graphite Silver resistors, but haven't use them; they are too long!
Personally I prefer non-inductive, non-magnetic resistors with a minimum power rating of 10W better 15W and more and preferably low temperature coefficient.
5W I use only for tuning/adjusting purposes not in a final design
5W I use only for tuning/adjusting purposes not in a final design
You can make your own Dueland with 2HB pencils. Just remove the wood and wrap wire at either end. Resistance is based on length of lead. I mean length of graphite.
Noninductive wirewound resistors are just wound differently, with no real cost premium, so use them.
When you tune with resistors, do you mean add them to a circuit between cap and speaker to reduce brightness?
If you do, at what ohm increments do you try when performing adjustments?
When preliminary design of crossover is finished (lspCAD) It gets assembled and goes to tuning/measuring cycle. At that stage the whole crossover is a unsightly bunch of various parts on a piece of something, often just a cardboard, sitting outside the speaker cabinet with bunch of wires running to the individual speakers inside the enclosure.
Then the whole thing goes through few iterations of measure/change/listen procedure. I have a box with couple of hundreds various 5W resistors anywhere from 0.22 to 24 Oms, along with two other boxes with caps and cored and coreless inductors to tune/shape crossover. Increments at that stage could be in range of 0.22-12 Ohms it depends on where in crossover resistance needs to be adjusted. At the final stage when all values adjusted, actual parts are ordered, crossover assembled and moved inside the enclosure.
Tune/change/measure part can take few weeks, first couple days things changing rapidly, and the "listen" part gets longer and longer with occasional returns to "previous version" for comparison until I satisfied with results.
I wish I had your experience.
Basically, by rejuvinating crossovers from vintage speakers, I'm assuming the original designer was correct.
By replacing aged Electrolytic with Polypropylene and at the same time replacing terminals containing ferrous and aged resistors I'm hoping this will do the trick.
But after reading your post I realize I'm flying blind.
Replacing 'lytics with film caps can change the crossover characteristics. Not always for the better.
I would say reducing distortion, higher tolerance and stability over time would only be an improvement, assuming the nominal value was correct in the first place.
For xover better use 10W resistor or more.
10W Superes Resistors
About SQ I like Mills 12W & Mundorf M Resist Supreme.
10W Superes Resistors
About SQ I like Mills 12W & Mundorf M Resist Supreme.
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These are nice Resistors, but wouldn't you say they'd be better suited in a high end build?
Well, yes, but the Mills, which I use, aren't particularly expensive. And if you want 5 watt, try the Kiwames (KOA SPR5 apparently), another resistor I like. YMMV.
Thanks A.
I think it comes down to availability in my country.
Couldn't find a source for any of these over here.
Perhaps these:
10W Superes Resistors
9KHz for my old ears. Too many years as a mobile DJ and rock guitarist !
I have been using WW on amplifiers since 1980 with no problems.