crossover help

[bowti1]

So I've inherited my dad's 4311 WX-A's and I'm looking to rebuild the crossovers. I've browsed the site enough to figure out that there's only a 2 way crossover in the speaker. My question is this:

Can I build a 3 way xover to keep the 12" from being a full range driver or am I defeating the design of the speaker?

I'm planning on rebuilding the existing crossovers with new parts and rewiring the internals and also installing new binding posts anyways, I'm just thinking that a 3 way crossover would be better. If the 12" has a natural roll-off frequency that was used in the original design though, I might be messing with a good thing.
If any of these questions have been answered in existing posts, please point me in the right direction. Thanks.

Jake

[duaneage]

Take a look at the crossovers for the 4411 and 4312. They are very similar. You can roll off the woofer with a coil and a capacitor ( you must use a coil first, then a capacitor across the woofer) but remember a few things.


1. The resistance of the coil ( all coils have at least some resistance) will change the speaker slightly, you will have to add a little fibreglass or polyester fill to make up forthe increase in resistance. The vent should be OK. Testing with equipment for impedance is best.

2. The output of the woofer may be VERY cilghtly lowered, probably not a factor.

3. This will affect the midrange as you are introducing a filter in parallel with the midrange. The midrange may need to have it's crossover changed as well.

The woofer will roll off above 3 K pretty rapidly, the large voice coil acts like an inductor ( it is a inductor) and chokes the woofer naturally.

I would leave well enough wlone unless you want to change the way they sound or have sounded

[Mr. Widget]

...I might be messing with a good thing.

Now that is certainly something to debate about... the biggest issue I see with reworking the network is that to gain access you need to damage the foilcal... I wouldn't. If the speaker is damaged or sounds wrong, you may need to, but if you are looking for a bit of an upgrade, I'd start collecting parts and mess around with something else.

If any of these questions have been answered in existing posts, please point me in the right direction.

Probably have... I am too lazy to look them up myself.

Widget

[Zilch]

In my view, there is little value in "rebuilding" the original crossovers, other than replacing the L-Pads (a proper cleaning will do as well,) and perhaps adding bypass capacitors.

If you're determined to try "magical" components, build new ones separately and retain the originals intact for performance comparisons.