Spendor BC-III BC3 Crossover update

Tweakers' Asylum

Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

Hi. The Spendor BC3 XO project has been completed. It took about 30 hours, and about $600 (+another 100 for the granite slabs I'll be putting them on.
Many thanks to Derek Hughes from the spendor group, Mike Barney, Jeff & Elliot @ soniccraft, and the many posts in this forum, especially from jeffreybehr.
Parts were Kimber TCSS wiring in the speakers, Speakon 8 connecters on the speakers, Audionote 5way binding posts (3 pairs), Soniccaps, and Mills resistors, with the original inductors being reused. I used Silver wire in the XO tweeter sections. I've made it into a 3-wirable system - LF, MF, and tweeters, using silver solid wire as jumpers externally. I'll be fooling around with bi- and tri-amping at some point.
Was it worth it? IN SPADES! The speakers sound fantastic already, and the XOs are not even burned in fully yet. They old XO became unlistenable and harsh once 1 new one and one old one was in service, and the old one was no slouch.
The biggest and most important improvement is in timbre and tonal accuracy. We heard Luka Bloom singing to us on Sunday from 3 feet away, unamplified, and we (my wife & I) now finally have a reference to compare systems to. With the new XO, you can now truly say thats him on the Innocence CD - its almost real. The Amsterdam LP/CD, however, does NOT sound like him - the importance of microphones! Still sounds superb.
Imaging, soundstage depth, all the other audiophile characteristics, have been magnified too. There is a lot more treble energy, and almost too much bass - I did not imagine that the BC3s could produce more bass than they had already, and its cleaner. On Amsterdam, you can hear individual audience members applauding and yelling. On his guitar, you can separate each string! But, like I mentioned, vocals are just amazing - you can feel the ending of every syllable, the sss and rrr as words end..
Enough gushing. Friday night is another FFT session with Mike Barney, so we'll have more data. The speakers are now facing each other, out of phase, with the XLO CD track 9 playing 24/7.
My left and right speakers still sound different, in mono. I may need to change out some of the drivers. In stereo, though, you can't tell. We'll know more once we FFT.
Next steps: Try some cap bypassing in mids and highs. And then its on to cap replacement in the Audio Research amps!
I'll upload some photos and add a link shortly.
Samir.

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Topic - Spendor BC-III BC3 Crossover update - Gofast 05:58:38 05/17/06 (13)

Re: Spendor BC-III BC3 Crossover update - cyclonic 23:29:37 05/19/06 (1)

Re: Spendor BC-III BC3 Crossover update - Gofast 06:50:13 05/22/06 (0)

Added FFT graphs of original XO - Gofast 08:55:18 05/17/06 (0)

Yikes!... - Bare 08:08:19 05/17/06 (3)

Re: Yikes!... - Gofast 08:42:37 05/17/06 (2)

Huhhh. - Bare 12:25:35 05/17/06 (1)

Tannoy - Gofast 13:02:47 05/17/06 (0)

Re: Spendor BC-III BC3 Crossover update - deankhor 07:07:18 05/17/06 (0)

Link to photos - Gofast 06:06:44 05/17/06 (4)

3rd try - Gofast 06:14:07 05/17/06 (2)

Re: 3rd try - pburke 13:35:14 05/17/06 (1)

Re: 3rd try - Gofast 19:04:26 05/17/06 (0)

2nd try - Gofast 06:12:19 05/17/06 (0)

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