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a little fairytale about oil caps or 'how i came to try solens on my horns and not run screaming from the room'


well crap-

recently, i had a conversation with a gent i know who's not a big fan of the 'audio snake oil'. we were blabbing regarding horn crossovers.. his take was that motor run caps-- the big 'ol oil cans i'd heretofore been using for my crossover-- were overrated in terms of voltage (foil's too thick), and couldn't possibly form up under 14 massive watts of power, as well as throwing the entire 'calculation' aspect of a crossover off, as they added a particular element of resistance to the whole works. his solution? use solens or even, gasp, the nasty nastiness of electrolytics!

surely, thought i, what a pile of nonsensical, overly scientific hogwash! so i had to try it. being somewhat concerned that electrolytics would be a disaster.. i went for solens, as they're cheap, and the values i needed were available. parts express got me what i needed in 2 days.. so off to the soldering iron.

i first pulled out the PIO on my bass driver and replaced it with a solen.. full well expecting harshness. to try to give it 'a fighting chance' against an old aerovox, i charged the things repeatedly with a 9v battery while watching tv or something for a while.. then i stuck 'em in.

surprise. they sounded NICE.. WTF? that made no sense, surely.. they're SOLENS.. eiichh.. bane of the bypass cap crowd. nice fat rolling bass harmonics, and no significant detriment that i could hear?! but this was in a second order-- so it was more or less 'out of the signal path' for a low pass.. so i surmised. ok.. let it stay.

so i waited a few days. then i went and messed with my horns.. if there's a place grit would grab you, there it is-- above 1800 hz, right? so i popped it it as my main, first order cap. now if anybody likes lush gooeyness, it's me, and i HATE gritty treble.. who doesn't? i want it to be smooth and easy.. i got it from the solen?! but with less grit than the vitamin Q's i had paralleled!. to be fair, i'm not using the cd compensation part of the crossover with the solen.. so the top end from about 7500hz on up is being comped with a gudeman pio.. but y'know.. its some of the best sound my system's put out yet, to my memory!

guess it goes to show that there IS a lotta bad information out there- and i'm absolutely positive that i fell prey to it! i'm sure there's probably great implementations of PIO caps in crossovers.. but i obviously didn't have one going on.

anybody have similar experiences?

yrs

d.

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Topic - a little fairytale about oil caps or 'how i came to try solens on my horns and not run screaming from the room' - stuck.wilson@gmail.com 12:55:38 04/10/07 (20)
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