Infinity 2500 tweeter replacements?

Hi,

I picked up a pair of 2500s with dead tweeters for a ten spot.
I have verified these are gone as I've temp replaced them with other working tweeters.

Is there a suitable inexpensive replacement available? I see lots of the polycell and other Infinity speakers available on the bay but none of them have a similar size face plate for mounting. These are 5 1/8 inch plates.

Looking for suggestions on size and suitablity for the task.

Last pic is with the temp tweet in.

Thanks

That'san Audax-polydax tweeter, made in france probably.

That model was "upgraded" or "replaced" by the Infinity Qe, so I'd do what Infinity did: get a pair of Emit tweeters (they sell for about $60/70 used), change the capacitor to match the Infinity Qe crossover, and convert them from "2500" to "Qe".

You could Open the tweeter and look what's wrong. Perhaps you can fix it.

elnaldo said:

That'san Audax-polydax tweeter, made in france probably.

That model was "upgraded" or "replaced" by the Infinity Qe, so I'd do what Infinity did: get a pair of Emit tweeters (they sell for about $60/70 used), change the capacitor to match the Infinity Qe crossover, and convert them from "2500" to "Qe".

You could Open the tweeter and look what's wrong. Perhaps you can fix it.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that. There seem to be different emits. Is one more suitable to this speaker than others?

I have had them apart but can't find the fault. Probably don't know what to look for.

Thanks

The Qe emits are those rectangular silver, with a plastic circle behind. The plastic is only cosmetic, but it will cover the round hole. Qa and Qb Emit are the same, but they don't have the plastic piece. There are some circular faceplate Emit, gray colored, a bit newer. I'mnot sure if they are 100% the same. Read a thread here at the forum about interchangeable emits.

You should look for a burned Voice coil, or some broken wire. Sometimes the VC is ok and it's just a bad solder. Sometimes just unwinding one turn of the wire, and soldering it again can fix the problem. You need a multimeter or any way to check the VC continuity.

Yeah, I've resoldered the connections and can find no visual faults with the windings. They are open and I believe they are toast. Looking for suitable replacements now. I'll check out the emits. What about the Infinity polycells, they are abundant on the bay. Would they make a suitable replacement?

Thanks

The tweeter probably burnt up because the crossover let in too low freq. Either defective XO or poorly designed XO for the tweet ...
If its open you have nothing to lose taking it apart and you may see the thing has turned greenish. If so, its burnt. Check the XO, values of the caps etc, and put in correct caps if you find em low. If you're replacing ti with a non identical tweeter - you may have a different freq you need to crossover into on it. So change the XO to fit that requirement.
Cool.
Srinath.

Not too much love for those polycell tweeters... If you are not going to hack them to convert to Qe, I'd stay with a textile dome tweeter.

It seems yours is some Polydax HR "somenumber", but I think any Audax / Polydax, 1" textile dome tweeter will perform well there. Look for any Audax "HD somenumber D 25". They come with 4" faceplate, but the dome is 1". If you go for the "HD xx D34", they have a larger faceplate with a larger dome. CHECK THE MAGNET DIAMETER SO IT WILL FIT YOUR CABINET HOLE.

I think the Audax TW025 is the modern replacement, always with 4" (100mm) faceplate.

Replace the capacitor as suggested... If you change for an emit tweeter, the crossover is this: one 9.5uF cap and one inductor
http://911manuals.com/product_info.php/products_id/226709

The 2500 is very similar, the woofer is the same (same replacement part number, 902-2666), I think just changing the cap will be OK, even if the inductor is a bit larger.

http://elektrotanya.com/infinity_1500_2500_2way_100w_speaker_1997_sm.pdf/download.html

I actually like those polycell tweets. Not state of the art, but they do the job.

I actually like those polycell tweets. Not state of the art, but they do the job.

Click to expand...

That's the point. Emit and those Audax are very good tweeters, close to (or) "state of the art"... I wouldn't replace them with polycell tweeters, even if they perform quite well.

Hi,

I've had no more than a few minutes this week to participate. I appreciate all of your thoughts and advice. I did receive an answer from an email I sent to Madisound about suitable replacements.
Here is the reply: "I would buy the Audax TW025A0 tweeter and swap the face plates. The lead wires are at a different location now, so you might have to notch your hole to fit it. This would be a near exact replacement. Those tweeters will be back in stock in about 2 weeks."

As stated these are not in stock at present and they seem to be gone missing other places as well. They run about $30 each plus shipping. There is an original pair on the bay asking $40 each but with free shipping. I can also stay with the Cerwin Vega tweeters I have in there now. These seem to sound ok other than I think they are higher efficency. Not sure what could be done about that though.

I picked these speakers up for $10 knowing the tweeters were not working. I can't see these being "super nice" speakers so am averse to throwing too much money at them.

What would you guys do?

Thanks

The Qe (same woofer with emit tweeters) are for sure "super nice" speakers (search opinions and listening impressions here in AK).

The Audax tweeters are also "super nice" tweeters, so my guess is that small 2 ways could surprise you, depending of what you have listened before.

I don't know what other speakers you have... If you have already 3 pairs of true Hi-Fi speakers, leave them alone. If this is one of your 1st Hi Fi speakers, I'd fix them and enjoy.

I'd get the emit tweeters and change the capacitors to match the crossover. If you are in a budget, I'd get some used Audax tweeters instead of the new ones, or keep looking for some offer or discounted sale on the new ones. Some europe sites sometimes have good prices, check the web.

Here you have a replacement VC:
http://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/audax-rw025a0-appc2-voice-coil-hd12x9d25-hd12x8d25-tweeter.html

Watch out, this is "Audax RW025AO APPC 2 with opposing terminals". The new one has th eterminals in different position, so it won't fit in your tweeter. If you buy just the VC, check that terminals.

I think I'm going to dump these off at the goodwill. They are fairly ugly and the sound is rather boomy. I'm certainly not going to throw another $80 at them. Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.

Good news! These did not make a journey to the local Goodwill. This morning I decided to give these tweeters a more thorough inspection. Thanks to srinath's suggestion to look for the "greenish", I found it on both tweets with proper magnification and sure enough the hair thin voice coil wires were "burnt" causing the open readings. It was somewhat like brain salad surgery but I was able, with care and paitence, to unwrap one wind and resolder the wires to the terminals and I now have two working tweeters.

It is still fairly early morning here with teenagers still snoozing so I can't yet put them through their paces at volume but I am listening to them now as I type this and I have to say I am fairly pleased at this point. A while from now I will be able to give them a proper listen and evaluation and finally see what I have in these 2500s. I love it when a plan comes together.

Thank you all again for the comments and suggestions. Happy Labor day!

Had a chance to sit and listen to these. I have got to say they are better with the original tweets installed. They are smoother and more detailed than with the CV tweets in there. That should be a given. There is still a bit of boominess to them but that could be attributed to placement. I need to get these hooked up to a better system than my test system and give them a go.

These are a 4 ohm speaker. Given the fact that they are low on the Infinity line why would they choose to build a 4 ohm design when that price point on amps would not be conducive to running a 4 speaker setup of 4 ohm speakers?

I know those tweeters are very good, and so the woofers, For sure it's a nice 2 ways..

Perhaps being 4 ohm they are more efficient. Anyway you can drive them with any amp I think, they shouldn't be so hard to drive...

Maybe that's what ended the first life on these tweeters, a 4 ohm load on an amp that wasn't up to it.

Yesterday I pulled these from the basement work area and hooked them up to the family room system. With the Kenwood KR-5030 driving their 4ohm load at about 80w and half way up the volume dial they are much different sounding than when hooked up to the wimpy 20 watts driven by my test amp. These 2500s appear to be much happier when driven by some power. They were weak and boomy with a muffled high range but now they are much more open and detailed.

Just an FYI

Two later years to add my 2 cents on these speakers….I got a pair on electronics sale plus half off for Halloween sale at a thrift store. They were filthy grimey, but fully intact. After a few hours each for cleaning they got hooked up to my Sony str-de935 stereo/tv set up for a sound check. A wave of sadness and thoughts of my wasted time cleaning these Infinity speakers for dull highs with thick muddy bass and mids somewhere lost on the range. Swear words! Are these really Infinity speakers I wondered and failed to find much internet info to settle my curiosity. Maybe they needed new tweeters? I unplugged them and put them away for almost a year.Meanwhile my new audio addiction became stronger and so did my gear. Curious still I brought them back out and hooked them up to a Sansui G-7700 and Concept 4.5D.
Wow!
Much different. Now I realized the tweeters were working fine. Glad I didnt trash them. I agree with the posts about having a substantial amount to power to launch into the 2500's. So far the more the merrier. They like it. As I type this, they are being powered by a JVC CD player to a Yamaha CX-1 preamp to a Sherwood AM-8500G power amp. Now these speakers are smiling. However I think a different preamp- one with more detail mids and highs will make the speakers sound even better. They are kinda picky!!
Also I didn't know they were 4 ohm. That explains the poor performance from the Sony.
Also glad to know about the replacements tweeters.
Really glad I kept these beastly bookshelf/ midget floor speakers.