The Vintage Altec Codex

[junker]

On the N-800-F there are two caps: a 10.5uF and a 4uF. Typically with most modern film caps you would do a 10 and a 3.9.

I've been buying Soviet surplus caps for my crossovers over the past year: MBGO, MBG-CH, and KBG-MN. The red ones are MBGO 10 uF. They are small for their capacity and are pretty good. The hammertone silver ones are MBG-CH and are same family as MBGO but are larger for the capacity. Both are wax, and I think paper/poly dielectric. The -CH have improved HF response and are a lot bigger.. the silver cap is only 4uF. The KBG-MN are even bigger and are true WPIO. I have the MBGO bypassed with a Vitamin-Q and the HF cap is bypassed with a Duelund Silver CAST bypass cap.

The inductors are air core dipped in organic beeswax WPIO and are over a wood dowel and clamped down. I didn't like the idea of those huges inductors being free to move around. BTW The HF inductor shouldn't be a super big gauge and similar DCR to stock. The LF inductor of the same value should be as big of gauge as you can go since it is in line to the woofer and any voltage drop lowers bass output... I'm sure it's not much maybe a fraction of a dB. You could do a really nice cored inductor too but air core should be better if you can get a big enough one to keep the DCR low but then they do get expensive.

Originally Posted by grantray

Whoa. Are those giant potted inductors with baltic birch lids? Crazy. I have almost no idea what you're doing, but I dig it. What's going on with the grey/red containers the capacitors are connected to? I think the red container/cap is the 4 uf cap to control the HF, right?

Thanks for the photo and the schematic!