Yes. I did the first one around here. Less than an evenings work and the results are not subtle.
dave
Some of the mids are treated already. It really does help (does much the same with the woofer).
dave
Alright not looking forward to it but I will try to free it from the Masonite thanks.
All right so despite the speaker repair guys best assurances you feel it is a good idea to replace the remaining caps 2 blue and one black with red ends, it's small potatoes for me I just hope I can find replacements that fit on the original boards. I bench tested all the drivers today and they all sound good so good to go there. Since you guys can't agree on the speaker cone treatment I am going to wait with respect to that mod as no-one else has weighed in either way. I would like to know what the mod is for the fuse holder if it is going to sound alright I wont bother. I would think ROXUL insulation would be far better for stuffing a woofer enclosure ( Roxul is naturally water- and fire-resistant and it is much denser than fibreglass ) I can get replacement Masonite from MICHAELS with the same density and dielectric properties as the old stuff. The rubber on the 5 inch driver is supple and free of defects it looks like new to be honest. Another member had mentioned getting excellent results from bracing the base cabinet however neglected to offer any pics or materials used or location of the bracing I am wondering if NO-RES would fit the bill and I can stick it everywhere a bare section of cabinet is the back of the base cabinet sounds like a toy drum it is so shitty.If I replaced a 16uF cap with two gigantic caps what the hell am I to replace an 80uF cap with? a four slice toaster ?what caps do you suggest and can I get away with lesser quality ones that replaced the 16uF cap Thanks for now I would like to finish these this weekend.
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Not large when compared to a 240 µF poly cap (as we have used in Tysen V2 and A12pw MTM).
dave
Yes. You're looking at electrolytic capacitors that are designed with a 10-15 year life expectancy now pushing near half a century in age. They don't hold up despite the bizarre belief that's very prevalent in vintage audio to not replace the caps until they go bad and break something else. (The old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" fallacy that probably leads them to wondering why their car's engine burned up after 30,000 miles without an oil change.) They also weren't the greatest even when new, which is why Dahlquist introduced a crossover revamp at serial number 22,000 replacing everything but the 80µF with metallized polyester capacitors OEMed from Texas Instruments. It wasn't a cheap option (they had to increase the MSRP $50 in 1976 dollars to cover it), but it was worth it. They even sold a capacitor upgrade kit to DQ-10 owners so they could take advantage of it, though you're a little late to order it now. Anyways, yea, all the caps should be replaced excepting the 0.1µF and 0.15µF capacitors on the supertweeter, which were always metallized polyester caps and should either be good enough still or don't matter because the supertweeter doesn't do anything until 12.5kHz anyways. While new electrolytics would actually be smaller (hurrah for improvements in the material sciences), the metallized film capacitors you should go with will be larger. Fortunately, with the crossover board just sitting out in the air like that, you've all the room you need to make things fit even if you have to extend the leads a bit.
To which, I went ahead and took a few minutes to put together a shopping list of options for you if you so choose because it can be a bit overwhelming at first. I've opted for a couple of stores I know are reliable, Madisound and Parts Express, and given two options from each. For the former, I've put together a set of links for ClarityCap PXs (my preference just because I prefer their build quality) and Solens while for the second store I've put together their budget line of caps that are sufficient and another set for Solens. With each, there's an option to go film or electrolytic on the big cap to offer cost options. While the values aren't an exact match, the tolerances on these new caps are tighter, so they're actually more likely to be within the range they're supposed to be than those caps were new and especially where they're likely at now.
Madisound
ClarityCap PX:
6.0µF (x2)
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-6.0-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
6.5µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-6.8-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
OR
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-0.47-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
AND https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-6.0-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
8.5µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-8.2-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
16µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-15-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
AND https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-1.0-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
80µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/px-cap-250vdc/claritycap-82-mfd-px-range-polypropylene-caps/
Solens:
6.0µF (x2)
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/solen-capacitors/solen-6-mfd-fast-cap-400v/
6.5µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/solen-capacitors/solen-6.8-mfd-fast-cap-400v/
8.5µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/solen-capacitors/solen-8-mfd-fast-cap-400v/
AND https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/solen-capacitors/solen-0.47-mfd-fast-cap-630v-ppe-series/
16µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/solen-capacitors/solen-15-mfd-fast-cap-400v/
AND https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/solen-capacitors/solen-1-mfd-fast-cap-400v/
80µF
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/solen-capacitors/solen-80-mfd-fast-cap-400v/
Parts Express:
Dayton:
6.0µF (x2)
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-PMPC-6.2-6.2uF-250V-Precision-Audio-Capacitor-027-236
6.5µF
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-PMPC-6.8-6.8uF-250V-Precision-Audio-Capacitor-027-238
8.5µF
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-DMPC-8.2-8.2uF-250V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-426
16µF
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-DMPC-15-15uF-250V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-432
AND https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-DMPC-1.0-1.0uF-250V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-410
80µF
Film: https://www.parts-express.com/Audyn-Cap-Q4-82uF-400V-MKP-Foil-Capacitor-027-124
Electrolytic: https://www.parts-express.com/80uF-100V-Non-Polarized-Capacitor-027-358
Solens:
6.0µF (x2)
https://www.parts-express.com/Solen-6.2uF-400V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-558
6.5µF
https://www.parts-express.com/Solen-6.8uF-400V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-560
8.5µF
https://www.parts-express.com/Solen-8.2uF-400V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-564
16µF
https://www.parts-express.com/Solen-16uF-400V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-578
80µF:
Film: https://www.parts-express.com/Solen-82uF-400V-Polypropylene-Capacitor-027-612
Electrolytic: https://www.parts-express.com/80uF-100V-Non-Polarized-Capacitor-027-358
Of course, you don't need all of them at this point since you've already done half the recapping, so pick and choose what you need.
My position on cone treatment comes from discussing the matter with various folks over the years who design drivers professionally as a living at the bigger companies. There's been no variation in their position: it's a Dunning-Kruger level of terrible idea. It's a good way to get them to cringe just at the idea of it (though when there was an idiotic fad about fifteen years back to draw magical checkerboard patterns on cones that did net a 50/50 rate of laughter and facepalming.) Cone treatments are carefully selected to get the desired properties during the design of the driver and checked against careful measurements with all the cool gadgets to understand what's happening (ie lasers, etc). Randomly slapping on puzzle coat, cone shine, etc after the fact undoes that hard work in a hurry making for unpredictable results that invariable come out the worse for it. It's Beranak's Law in action, a speaker related adage that boils down to "I did a thing, therefore I made it better because I did the thing." But, they are your speakers, so if you want to diminish the performance, destroy the legendary coherence and decrease resale value, have at it.
With stuffing, the acoustic resistance is of greater concern and that's very frequency dependent. Typical fiberglass is decent at bass frequencies, better than most materials available, but it's also a known quantity. The cabinet was stuffed to the amount needed to get the response needed. The cabinet was undersized and damped just a certain degree to produce a particularly shaped response hump that would let the woofer better match with the midbass/lower midrange. This was an issue that took awhile to sort out with this model. The prototype had a bass cabinet that was originally twice as big and used a CTS sourced woofer. That enclosure was eventually halved and the woofer changed to one of Gefco manufacture similar to that used in the Advent. The crossover was revised twice to improve sensitivity further and damping behavior. In the end, the bass sensitivity was increased by 3dB and upper bass integration and performance was changed significantly. Change the stuffing without carefully measuring the results and you could risk undoing that. There's a balance in restoration. Change too much and you can lose what gives a particular model the sonic character that made it a legend, but don't have something as good as you would've had if you'd started anew from scratch with more modern driver options.
Sounds like you lucked out on that Philips then. Most are getting pretty hard these days, which makes replacement difficult since even the replacements are suffering age related degradation since they stopped making the AD5060 in 1985 and the newer replacement, the AD5062, is pretty uncommon.
Damping material does help, but it only diminishes resonances after they've already started to make sound. Stiffening the cabinet is better as it helps prevent them from starting in the first place. If you can cut some strips of 3/4" hardwood ply and sneak them in through the woofer hole to glue narrow side onto the back, it will help alot with negligible impact on the enclosure volume (so won't hurt the tuning). Even 1"x2" oak from Home Depot works to that end if need be. Particleboard is garbage as a cabinet material, so a little extra bracing on the larger unsupported panels goes a long ways. Just make sure you don't block any internal openings or fill it up with big blocks of wood.
It's easy to quickly get into beer can sized capacitor territory or larger when working with high value film types, though an 80µF film type is more large pill bottle sized. You can opt for a more affordable and much smaller non-polarized electrolytic capacitor in that role. While not as good as a film type, it'll be a whole lot better than the ancient electrolytic that's in there. The top three issues new DQ-10 owners find with their speakers are 1. foam rot on the woofer, 2. blown fuses on the tweeters (or blown tweeters because the fuses were replaced with too large a value) and 3. bad 80µF caps.
I too had DQ10s, and quickly mirror imaged them. The scuttlebutt I heard at that time (I can't remember who to attribute it to) was that Jon and Saul were doing the NY area shows to demo the DQ10 and were using Luxman MB3045 (high power triode) amps. I bought a pair of the Luxmans and the match was indeed heavenly; they made my Marantz 8b's sound sick by comparison - but they ATE output tubes very quickly. Oh yeah, I also found the DQ10 bass underwhelming and added the Dalhquist active/passive crossover (that I still have) with a pair of Janis subwoofers and that fixed the bottom end nicely.
Before I forget to share these...again...these are Dahlquist's mirror-imaging instructions if you don't already have them. They work off the assumption that you'd have the kit with the new baffle board and wire extensions, but you can make do with what you have or make a new one if you've a router and circle jig to make the driver cut out. The handy part is the set of dimensions for where to modify the bass cabinet. The supertweeter's position isn't particularly important, but the felt for the midbass/lower midrange is. So, prioritize accordingly to keep it intact as best you can. If it gets torn up too much, the driver won't see enough acoustic resistance to behave properly.
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Polyprop motor run (not start) capacitors will be cheap and manageable if you can find stock.
Apex Jr. has a stock of 75uF MKP capacitors for an incredible $4/each. I bought a bunch. They appear to be pulls, but seem to be perfect aside the short leads. Mine all measure well.
https://www.apexjr.com/
https://www.apexjr.com/
Oh wow this is a jackpot of information thank you for taking so much time to put this message together I am definitely ordering the remaining caps today, I will repack the woofer enclosure with the original materials, I have some kiln dried hickory in my shop I will use for bracing the back of the base enclosure, it is the worst so I will glue some strips in there, and I happened upon a piece of Masonite for the mirror imaging work and will be sure to keep the felt intact, I have been a master cutler for 20 years so I am very handy with pretty much any type of refurbishing I am confident the old speakers will look and sound great, thanks for your time.
Well I am new to all this so I am sure the sky is the limit I wish I had been advised sooner about replacing all the caps before I made my little crossover boards especially now since it seems to only make sense I replace them all, at least I have some options with respect to size though I would probably error on the side of quality ( bigger ) instead of space so I'm not sure what to select for the remaining caps however I am going to order them today I want to start spinning some vinyl asap, thank you for your time and advice.
This is when the aesthetics of a speaker becomes equal to or exceeds it's intended sonic function. I would pay a big chunk of change to have these pumping out music in my home as opposed to the millions of coffins out there. I am going to look for those old coffee table peg legs and already decided to go with a double cappuccino stain on all the woodwork along with several coats of varnish , you wouldn't happen to know where I could source that exact fabric would you it looks great with the woodwork really nice job, thanks for posting.
Go for it! Those speakers look way better for real than the photo.
No idea what the fabric is… but if you took your phone to a good fabric store and showed then the photo I’m sure somebody would know what that style fabric is called.
No idea what the fabric is… but if you took your phone to a good fabric store and showed then the photo I’m sure somebody would know what that style fabric is called.
No problem, glad to help. Sounds like you'll have them sounding great in no time.
Regarding that restored pair, the fabric looks to be the "open weave natural linen" type. It's sold for curtains and interior decor and a well-stocked fabric store or one of those bed and bath places that's a scented candle filled horror should have something similar. It's also more recently is being sold for vintage speaker repairs, specifically for Dynacos and KLHs that used a similar cloth originally. While not so budget friendly, that latter route is an option such as this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304581201050
80uF 100V Electrolytic Non-Polarized Crossover Capacitor $2.43 each,,,,,,
Solen 82uF 400V Polypropylene Capacitor $50.00 each,,,,
Audyn Cap Q4 82uF 400V MKP Metalized Polypropylene Foil Crossover Capacitor $30.00 each
Considering the price differences here I have to ask, am I going to hear the difference between $3 cap and a $50 cap, the gentleman at the speaker shop I bought my caps at suggested these caps that are remaining ( see pic ) were sonically the least critical, now if he was mistaken would I hear a difference between the $3 cap and the $30 dollar cap? I attached a pic showing the original Xover and the 
modifications that were made .Attachments
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I found the legs online prefabbed and stained along with the mounting hardware the legs in the pic you attached according to my calculations are 8" so that's what I am ordering as for the fabric DIOGENES attached a link for a very similar product https://www.ebay.com/itm/304581201050 however the link wont let me select between the two fabrics shown and as well don't indicate the number of products you get with your purchase nor the dimensions of the fabric you are buying so can't pull the trigger yet.
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BTW the link wont let me select between the two fabrics shown and as well don't indicate the number of products you get with your purchase nor the dimensions of the fabric you are buying so can't pull the trigger yet, now it could just be me as I am not savvy with online shopping however I can't seem to get those details sorted. Thanks again for the link I am going to snoop around and see if I can't get on the phone with someone and get the material ordered.