Good day everyone! I’m restoring my first pair of speakers and looking for an advice. I purchased a later build of ditton44 by celestion. The crossover has 4 solid and 4 el cap capacitors. Should I replace the solid ones for better sound? What type of capacitors should I purchase here to replace the el cap and possibly the solids? Thanks in advance!
Welcome to the Technical Forum. There are a lot of posts on the Internet for people restoring these speakers. I just searched ditton44 by celestion there are discussions and forums , and even videos on people doing what you are asking. Do I think it could help the sound? It could if the electrolytics are drying out due to age. If you want to replace them you would have to list values and sizes on all of them. What you are referreing to the solid type, they could be poly type capacitors. I am not really sure on those. We would need the values to see where we can check if we have anything to offer. Honestly everything looks very clean. I guess if the speaker sounds good. I am not sure I would try to fix what it not broken. You would have to be the judge on this and make sure to do some research before you start this project.
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For speaker crossovers you want non-polarized electrolytic capacitors that have the same microFarad, same or tighter tolerance and, same or higher voltage ratings (printed on the caps).
Unless the speakers are more than 20 years old, I’d leave the film caps in place, they almost never go bad in 40+ years when used in a speaker crossover.
Also keep in mind non-polarized electrolytics used in speaker crossovers usually last well over 10 years and sometimes much longer. So if they aren’t too old you might not measure a difference in performance after replacement.
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Not just solid, but plastic film.
Ceramic, tantalum, mica, and other capacitors are solid but will perform very poorly in a speaker crossover circuit.
Transcription of the list (data from the photo in parenthesis)
- 4.7uf
- 1.5uf
- 3.3uf
- 0.68uf
- 6.0uf (non-polarized electrolytic)
- 72uf (non-polarized electrolytic)
- 24uf (non-polarized electrolytic)
- 72uf (50V non-polarized electrolytic)
I could not find any suitable capacitors @ Digi-Key to replace the non-polarized electrolytics. So you’ll need to check with specialty speaker component suppliers to find those.
Since you need to go to a specialty supplier anyway, it makes sense to buy the film capacitors from them as well to ensure they are suitable for a speaker crossover circuit.
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Thank you very much!