Hey, guys, just thought I'd share my latest project. I recently took in a pair of Infinity RSe's on trade. They are in excellent condition all around; cabs in great shape, grills perfect, Infinity badges in place. As close to perfect as a pair of 40 year old speakers can be expected. While the 8" woofers have been recently re-foamed, the crossovers remain untouched. Given the minimal investment required to replace the aging caps, I placed an order through Erse and had the new caps in hand in a matter of days. Total cost was around $30.
Infinity's schematic of the RSe crossover is known to be wildly different from the crossovers found in the actual speakers. So I pulled the woofer and, as expected, my crossovers were much different. Instead of a single 9.5uF cap, I found one each of the following: 25uF, 8.5uF, and 6.8uF. I ordered values as close as possible to the original from Erse: 24uF, 8.2uF, and 6.8uF.
Disassembly was pretty uneventful. The existing crossovers are actually mounted to a hard plastic board that holds the speaker terminals, fuse, and high freq. attenuator. This board is then glued and stapled to the cabinet from the inside. The biggest challenge was prying the board free without breaking it. A small, flat putty knife/scraper made short work of it and I got both crossovers out without incident.
The new caps were quite a bit larger than the originals, but I managed to make them work. So, with the new caps in place, I buttoned everything back up and had a listen. The difference was easily noticeable. The highs are cleaner and brighter, and the bass tightened up considerably, while also having greater impact. All in all, a worthwhile project.
And here they are where they'll serve mostly radio/background music duty.
