This tired mess is the Klipsch AL-3 crossover network used in the 1992 LaScala that has the K77 tweeter, K55M mid and K33 woofer. Although it is not pretty, I can say that after some listening I have come to generally appreciate the sound of these monsters. It took a lot of fiddling and adjusting to get them to blend with my 15″ sub (which is not really a good match for these speakers anyway). The LaScalas, as advertised, really do not go deep despite having 15″ woofers. The woofers only reach down to about 60hz and they really just reinforce what is the speakers primary strength – the mids. I tried running them with 250 watt PS Audio mono blocks but also tried them using a Marantz NR1711 A/V receiver that has 50w per channel. Both drive the speakers sufficiently however the monoblocks just seem to offer more punch and clarity. As for the crossovers – I have really struggled with how to proceed. I knew I wanted to upgrade these as a first step but was not sure whether I wanted to go with completely new crossovers from Crites, ALK, a home build or if I just wanted to do a recap on these using poly caps. Being a pragmatic type I decided to do a stage 1 type of upgrade with just cap upgrades to Sonicap. I would also like to thank Michael Crite for his input as he spent a fair amount of time on the phone discussing the options and their pluses and minuses based on his experience.
Crites supplied me with the necessary caps, mounts and driver gaskets so I now have some soldering to do. I did spend a little time drawing up and 3D printing a larger saddle mount for the large 13uF caps as they did not sit too well on the supplied mounts. As you can see it is pretty basic but does fit nicely.
Below is a diagram of the AL-3 crossovers that I found on Audiokarma as well as a drawing that I made that helps me visualize how the components are mounted.
I will create another post when I start the actually upgrade of the crossovers so stay tuned. Have a great Labor Day my fellow Americans!