Celestion ditton 15 - restoration project

[Wakefield Turntables]

Here we go again. I've tried the 15XR's, nice speakers but always wanted the 15's. I decided to do a little modding and updating so watch this space.. :eek:

[Wakefield Turntables]

Pt 2 - A couple of hours work.

This is the second pair of 15's I've had and this pair is by far the smartest. The cabinets seem better constructed than my old 15XR's. I decided to start this project out of boredom whilst waiting for some parts for my Lenco 75 project to arrive.

The Celestion 15 - A decentish 70's speaker that can be picked up for <£50 usually.

19570

The goodies from Hi-Fi collective. Some nice caps, a pair of solid copper (gold plated) binding posts and some DUELUND cable (the vintage tone variety), more on that later.

19571

Access to the X-O is simple. Just unscrew the ABR unit and the XO is held in place with 4 screws, x2 for the XO itself and x2 for the binding posts.

19572

5 minutes later we have some lovely new binding posts installed.

19573

Another five minutes later and the single cap is replaced on the first XO.

19574

Total time spent so far approx 30 minutes.

[Wakefield Turntables]

Pt 3

A quick shot showing old parts for new.

19575

Open heart surgery!!

19576

This pic shows the speakers where made in March 1977, so they are 40 this months :eek:. Well as they are getting an overhaul as a 40th birthday pressie!!!


19577

The old XO wiring to be used as a template for the new wiring lengths.

19578

A steady 10-15 minutes later and I have cables cut for both speakers to be rewired.

19579

Time take so far about 75 minutes. It's a nice steady project which I'm enjoying. There is no rush with this little project and I'm really looking forward to hooking them up to see what the new caps and wiring sound like. Stay tuned :)

[Wakefield Turntables]

Pt 4

Rewiring one of the 15's today. It's uesful to take a few snaps of the driver units so we know how to re-wire! Here's the bass and tweeter.

1958119582

And here's the XO rewired with "vintage tone" Duelund AWG20 wire. Not a very good job but who's going to see when it's installed?

19583

Well after a little messing around I finished rewiring the 15 and assembled one of the units. I now have to do all this again over the weekend. My treat for this weekend with be having a mess around with the speakers, sipping a little whisky and reviewing the effects of the Duelund wiring. I now have a complete loom of Duelund wiring. The IC's and speaker cable are Duelund 20AWG whilst both speakers will eventually wind up fully re-wired with the same stuff. Should be fun!!

[Xapito]

Enjoying this one, eager to know your thoughts on the final results and sonic differences. I did the same thing a couple of times and surprisingly on a couple of them enjoyed more the original sound with the old nasty elcaps :| Never used ClarityCap's though.

[Wakefield Turntables]

Enjoying this one, eager to know your thoughts on the final results and sonic differences. I did the same thing a couple of times and surprisingly on a couple of them enjoyed more the original sound with the old nasty elcaps :| Never used ClarityCap's though.

Thanks Felipe. The project is now finished. All in I think it took about 5-6 hours taking things quite slowly.

Now, just a few notes.

1. The Claritycap's legs are slightly wider than the Elcap so a 1.5mm drill will be needed to drill the XO PCB so they fit.
2. The binding posts are also slightly larger than the originals and a 6mm drill will be needed to slightly widen the binding post sockets on the speaker cabinet.
3. I've not massively modded these speakers but the newer binding posts now enable a wider selection of cables which can be used with the speakers.
4. The speakers have been specifically rewired with Duelund 20AWG tinned copper for a "REAL SOUND" experiment, visit WWW.JEFFSPLACE.ME for more info.

I hope this little thread will help all those that want to try or mod the Celestion ditton 15.

[brian2957]

And what kind of turntable is this you have now Andy :lol:

[Wakefield Turntables]

And what kind of turntable is this you have now Andy :lol:

Still the same old Lenco. Just waiting for the tonearm Brian then I can start spinning some vinyl again.

[brian2957]

Have you sent it away already ?

[Wakefield Turntables]

Yep, been away about a week now.

[Xapito]

And your thoughts on the 15's vs the XR model? I only had the later and enjoyed them very much, kinda regretfully sold them as they were 100% mint, very rare in this neck of the woods...

[Wakefield Turntables]

Well the 15's are a little muffled but they do respond really well to being recapped. I found that they produced a nice wide soundstage with some depth. They sound especially good with rock and arn't that bad with Jazz either. They are not my favourite pair of 70's speakers, this falls to my JR149's. The bass is a little limited but overall the speakers are very enjoyable.

[Wakefield Turntables]

I'm going to restart this thread again and hopefully do some more mods to the speakers. The whole project is just to how each mod affects the sound of the speaker. The 15's are great because they are so simple. It should be quite easy to see how changing one variable affects the sound. I've only added a small amount of additional of internal damping to the base of the speaker. I've already learned that trying to dampen these speakers too much has a very poor affect in that the output just sounds lazy and muffled. I've been reading with some interest the designs of Jeff Day's reference level Tannoy XO's and I'm hoping that lessons learned from this project will hopefully enable another step up in my already stellar performing external RFC Reference XO's on my 15" MG's. I'm already looking at several new replacement caps for the XO's and shall be trying the following


2398323984239852398623987

These have been shortlisted (and it's not complete) and over time will be compared to see what they offer. Should be fun!

[dantheman91]

Hi Andy

Superb thread just wondering what size are the binding posts as want to put some in my 15's?

Cheers
Dan

[Wakefield Turntables]

Hi Andy

Superb thread just wondering what size are the binding posts as want to put some in my 15's?

Cheers
Dan

you can get them from hifi collective and I've managed to stuff 6mm van damme blue speaker in them. Solid copper and gold plated in construction and quite cheap.