After seeing some of these recent posts regarding ADC speakers with 10" CTS woofers I was motivated to reach the next milestone in my project and show some pics.
I picked up a pair of 303AX's at the GW a year or more ago, I dug right into them but when I found they had dead tweeters and a crossover that was covered in a waxy black tar I lost interest and stuck them in a corner of the basement.
Sometime later, I found a pair of BeoVox 4702's that just needed one new woofer (frozen) and new foams for the other three woofers. The SEAS and Phillips tweeter and mid were in good shape, as were the caps in the crossover. I bought a pair of new woofers, so I had 5 that moved freely. But then when I tried to find replacement woofer foams, I couldn't locate any that were the right size. The closest I could find would have required trimming of the outside edge.
So I had two pairs, one with bad woofers, one with bad tweeters. Obvious answer to me was to combine them!
The 4702 is a 4Ohm-nominal and the 303 is an 8Ohm, so I thought this might be problematic. But when I looked at the 4702's crossover circuit, I found that it ran two 8Ohm woofers in parallel in each cabinet; if necessary, I decided I could add an 8Ohm resistor to restore the original values.
So I got to cutting! I didn't take any pictures, but I bought a larger holesaw to add the Phillips Mids and ground out the existing hole to fit the SEAS tweeters.
I replaced the old ADC screw terminals with banana plugs, sealed up the gaps with Mortite and we're good to go!
Things left to do:
1. Refinish veneers
2. Sand and repaint the front -- ancient glue did not remove cleanly and/or Mount cloth grills (with ADC badges) on some kind of riser-post, I think I saw some on PE's website
3. Recap crossover, maybe with values chosen for the new single woofer
Listening impressions:
vs Ohm E2 Bass is stronger and goes lower (32Hz tone is audible, 40Hz might be the effective limit), gives up a little sparkle in the upper range. Hopefully this will be restored by a recap/redesign of the crossover.
vs EPI 100 Bass is equal, better midrange clarity.
If I have the opportunity to buy something wonderful, I'll take it, but I think I'm done shopping for speakers, these guys sound great now and I expect they'll satisfy my urge to tinker for some time to come!
I picked up a pair of 303AX's at the GW a year or more ago, I dug right into them but when I found they had dead tweeters and a crossover that was covered in a waxy black tar I lost interest and stuck them in a corner of the basement.
Sometime later, I found a pair of BeoVox 4702's that just needed one new woofer (frozen) and new foams for the other three woofers. The SEAS and Phillips tweeter and mid were in good shape, as were the caps in the crossover. I bought a pair of new woofers, so I had 5 that moved freely. But then when I tried to find replacement woofer foams, I couldn't locate any that were the right size. The closest I could find would have required trimming of the outside edge.
So I had two pairs, one with bad woofers, one with bad tweeters. Obvious answer to me was to combine them!
The 4702 is a 4Ohm-nominal and the 303 is an 8Ohm, so I thought this might be problematic. But when I looked at the 4702's crossover circuit, I found that it ran two 8Ohm woofers in parallel in each cabinet; if necessary, I decided I could add an 8Ohm resistor to restore the original values.
So I got to cutting! I didn't take any pictures, but I bought a larger holesaw to add the Phillips Mids and ground out the existing hole to fit the SEAS tweeters.
I replaced the old ADC screw terminals with banana plugs, sealed up the gaps with Mortite and we're good to go!
Things left to do:
1. Refinish veneers
2. Sand and repaint the front -- ancient glue did not remove cleanly and/or Mount cloth grills (with ADC badges) on some kind of riser-post, I think I saw some on PE's website
3. Recap crossover, maybe with values chosen for the new single woofer
Listening impressions:
vs Ohm E2 Bass is stronger and goes lower (32Hz tone is audible, 40Hz might be the effective limit), gives up a little sparkle in the upper range. Hopefully this will be restored by a recap/redesign of the crossover.
vs EPI 100 Bass is equal, better midrange clarity.
If I have the opportunity to buy something wonderful, I'll take it, but I think I'm done shopping for speakers, these guys sound great now and I expect they'll satisfy my urge to tinker for some time to come!
