Teflon Bypass

[BobM]

Yes, it smells just like varnish

I've been told that this varnish dries fairly quickly and should not pose a problem with undries mush in the center of the windings like other "potting" products have without baking. The exterior seemd to dry pretty quickly (1-2 hours).

I suppose that it would make sense to leave the cover off the external crossover box for a while and let the system play. That way if the coils heat up things can off-gas appropriately.

[DaveC]

That way if the coils heat up things can off-gas appropriately.

Or explode... that would be cool, heh heh... 

[BobM]

Well, all that I can do has been done. I've given it all 2 days burn in so most everything should be somewhat where it will end up (at least 95% anyway). The potting of the inductors resulted in exactly what you would expect, a tighter sound overall but still deep and tuneful. At first I thought it sounded leaner, ands turned up the sub. But then I played a different CD and had to turn the sub back down.

The very tinkly top end seemed a bit reticent, so I put a .1uF teflon bypass back on the last set of caps (10uF) and those tinkly things came back. So I guess it does make a difference to the better, to my ears anyway. Perhaps more break in time will lead me to remove it in time. We'll see. That's the beauty of an outbound crossover with easy access to parts and a soldering iron that heats up quickly 

Now I can finally sit back and just enjoy things for a while. It's taken a bit of time to get to this point, but it was fun taking it slow and hearing what each change did to the sound overall.

[BobM]

Progress - what a wonderful concept. Yes, my Duetta Sig's are singing wonderfully now. The reticence I heard was really due to a bit of a setup issue. Now that the crossover has been externally housed and parts replaced and such the speakers needed to be slightly repositioned.

If you have Apogees then you know that literally 1/4" can make a huge difference in soundstaging and presentation. This fro the view of distance to the listening seat, distance to the front wall, toe in, cant of the speaker. What a pain to get right, but when you do it all comes together nicely.

I think I have it together now, just in time for the cold winter months when I can sit and listen without having to worry about cutting the lawn, or playing golf, or doing the gardening, etc.

What I am hearing, in terms of improvement (from memory, obviously):
- tighter bass overall
- tighter character everywhere
- more even presentation across the spectrum
- less "in your face-ness", more behind the plane of the speaker presentation, just as deep
- no etch
- still top notch imaging and soundstaging
- less of an initial "surprise" at how nice these are and more of a natural sounding presentation. No ear popping standout surprises.
- Just as dynamic