I received the replacement tweeters for the Silver fronts, and have installed the soft domes from the 800i/1000i series from a few years back. These are in place of the metal domes original to the Silver fronts.
I didnt realize the left tweet was in distress. Much better now.
I expected to hear a miss from the cymbols or the high rider on the drum kit, but was pleasantly surprised to find everything in order.
As well, I played the Wallflowers cd, hoping for a cleanup of the mids from that particularly poor recording. Alas, nothing fixes a poor recording like a good recording.
The new tweets might be called warm by some, just as the metal domes might be judged harsh, , but I think that may just be expectations due to the description of metal and soft.
I will outboard mount the resistors for the high XO and try a few different values.
Question.. how much fiddling with the resistors until working with the open air inductor will show a difference?
I swapped out the resistors today, and replaced the 3.3ohm units with 3.9ohm. The result was anti-climactic, but a little better than I expected.
Again, I wonder if the open air inductor would be a larger shift towards more tweet openness, or should I look to high impedance resistors? Do I see an L-pad in my future?
Tim can give you better advice on speaker parts than I can; but an air core inductor is going to have its most benefit only at high volume levels where an iron core inductor would saturate and begin to shift the impedance of the system. Dynamic compression is the result of that sort of shift along with a slight change in the Xo point of the drivers. I would be looking for better quality in the windings and the correct gauge for the inductor's wire in order to maintain the most constant resistance as the inductor heats up, if I were looking for a better inductor to gain at all volume levels. Matching the components tightly to one another will get you some of the "air" you want. Bypassing the capacitors, and/or using better caps, will allow a faster signal response and gain some more in the openess category. I don't know what you have in mind with regards to resistors.
When all is said and done, forget the L-pad and go for active Xo's.