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Review 5 of 52
Price Paid:
$0.00 Summary: This speaker, as setup by Pioneer, sounds really bad. It is harsh, really harsh. I was puzzled about all the positive reviews. Looked online and found very little information on modifications. It looks like the reviewers just like harsh sound.
I was on my own, I already bought this heavy oldies, so, I took them appart to see why it sounded so bad. To my complete surprise the problem is in the crossover. The mid-range capacitor of 4.4uF is wrong making a big void in the sound. I guess the harshness comes from a sort of spectral vacuum? The correct value is between 70 to 100uF. I did one speaker and did an A-B comparison to the other unmodified speaker. The result was dramatic the harshness is gone and the sound is a lot more detailed.
During all this, I tested the HPM super tweeter and found that it produces very little sound. It is hard to even get a measurement of its sound output using top of the line Neutric sound analyzing equipment. I guess it was a gimmick from pioneer just for marketing games. But, it does not matters because the cone tweeter works just fine and does not needs the HPM tweeter help.
I also tried changing the crossover components for newer ones and did not improved at all. Also removing the pots (level controls) do not improve on the sound.
Overall, a bad, harsh sounding speaker that can be transformed into a sweet sounding, full range speaker by just changing the 4.4uF cap to 75uF.
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