Upgrades to Michaura M55s Completed - Report (Longish) - 2x6spds

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Upgrades to Michaura M55s Completed - Report (Longish)

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I received the upgrade parts from Parts Connexion for my M55s last week - a bunch of Jensen capacitors and Caddock resistors. Yesterday, I brought the parts and my M55s over to a friend with a soldering iron and experience with it. We opened up the M55s, pulled out the stuffing, removed the drivers and the cross over.
First impression, Uh-oh!
The cross-over was a little board with all the speaker wires soldered to it, and on the board a ceramic resistor about an inch long and a capacitor which looked like a miniature cylinder no more than a half inch in height. The Jensen replacement capacitors are larger than a D Cell battery, absolutely enormous compared to the original. The Caddock resistors (2 ohm and .5 ohm to be arranged in series) are of a totally different kind than the stock ceramic resistor. The stock is a rectangular structure a bit over an inch long - the replacements are small, two-dimensional squares with two metal legs.
Second impression - this doesn't look right and the chances of it working are slim.
Removed the fuse from the board and bypassed it with a thin piece of bare copper wire. Removed the resistor, bent one leg on each of the new resistors so they faced each other, mounted them on the board and soldered a piece of bare wire to join the two legs. Removed the wee capacitor from the board and replaced it with the absolutely gigantic Jensen capacitor. Replaced the cross over, then restuffed the speaker taking care to use the stuffing to support the gigantic capacitor, replaced the drivers, buttoned it up and tested the speaker. Surprisingly, it worked. Repeated the process for the two pair of M55s.
After barbecued steaks I took my strangely modified M55s home. This morning, I turned off the sub and did some listening to Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing, on a pair of stock M55s driven by an ASL MGS1 15DT and Ah!Njoeb Tjoeb, Mapleshade Double Golden Helix Plus speaker wires. Sounded very nice indeed. I replaced the stock M55s with the modified speakers.
Straight out of the box, the modified M55s sound better than the stock. The bass has more punch, the crowd's cheers hang in the air and are a more realistic sounding. Most importantly, the mids just have more ... something ... depth? ... something good.
Bottom line - I'm so pleased the speakers work at all after the mods that the fact they sound significantly better than the already excellent stock M55s is an occasion for some celebration around here.

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Topic - Upgrades to Michaura M55s Completed - Report (Longish) - 2x6spds 08:40:58 06/16/02 (4)

Re: Upgrades to Michaura M55s Completed - Report (Longish) - rhumdoodle 20:57:26 06/19/02 (2)

Re: Upgrades to Michaura M55s Completed - Report (Longish) - 2x6spds 22:27:18 06/19/02 (1)

Ooops! Wish they had edit function for late night posts. Correction - 2x6spds 22:35:42 06/19/02 (0)

It's not always the "cost" - Response34 18:31:06 06/16/02 (0)

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