Celestion DL8 Series 2 - Rebuild

[selby]

Picked up a pair of Celestion DL8 Series 2 speakers really cheap and am keen to make them sound as best as possible...first of all any thoughts on these speakers?

I was thinking the crossovers would need new caps etc and also thought it might benefit from replacing the internal wiring to silver plated grade cable, thoughts?

[Beobloke]

(1) Replace crossover capacitors and resistors.

(2) Re-wire with decent cable. Doesn't have to be fancy silver stuff that costs a squillion pounds a metre - even some chunky mains cable will be an improvement on the original wiring.

(3) If the drive units and crossover board are connected with push-on tags, ditch these and hard solder the connections. Note, though - when soldering to the tweeter tags, use heat shunt tweezers or a pair of pliers held closed with a rubber band at the bottom of the tag - if too much heat passes down the tag and onto the very fine wire passing to the voice coil, it can melt.

(4) When you re-assemble, ensure the bass drivers are done up nice and tightly.

[Rare Bird]

5, & some nice binding posts..

[The Black Adder]

Love the DL8's..

[Rare Bird]

Aye i prefer the MK.I tho...

[Beobloke]

5, & some nice binding posts..

Fair point but it depends what they have fitted as standard.

If they already have some sort of 4mm socket or binding post them I wouldn't waste money on something shiny that you never see and which will make bog-all difference to the sound. Just clean 'em out with Kontak!

[Rare Bird]

Hi Adam

I mentioned it because if i remember back to mine, i couldnt get 4mm Banannas in just bare wire, or am i thinking of another speaker

[walpurgis]

I'd try to avoid re-wiring with silver plated cable. In fact try to avoid silver plated cable in any audio situation. It can sometimes sound OK, but often seems to add brightness and harshness.

Why replace resistors and capacitors if they are OK? Just because they are not new does not mean they aren't up to the job. If you do choose replacement, go for alternatives that have a proven history of making an improvement in that application. i.e., do some research.

Never heard of tweeter coil lead out wires melting. I've had them come unsoldered though, not a big deal. To melt a tweeter wire would imply that the soldering iron's temperature had reached the melting point of copper, which would no doubt also be the melting point of the soldering iron's copper tip. Is that likely?

[Beobloke]

Sorry, allow me to clarify. It's not the tweeter wire itself that melts, but the heat travels up the wire and melts the glue that holds it in place on the voice coil - the voice coil then effectively falls off the former.

As to the resistors and capacitors, they will be pushing 30 years old. The capacitors are likely to have drifted in value and will probably be starting to dry out if they are electrolytic types. As to the resistors, these can become brittle with age - I have had one literally crumble to dust beneath my fingers when all I was doing was gently moving it to the side so that I could read its value!

Also, these were not expensive speakers and so, much as people would like to believe otherwise, the components will have been chosen because they did the job and were cheap, and not for their incredible performance, high value tolerance and astounding longevity.

[selby]

Great feedback...so do you guys recommend the DL8's?

I'm going to be buying and trying a few different speakers over the coming months until I find some bookshelfs that I like...I'd really like some TDL RTL1 but they never seem to come up...I'd also like to try some Royd and Castle speakers.