Restore And Upgrade Vintage Speakers With A DIY Capacitor Replacement

Restore And Upgrade Vintage Speakers With A DIY Capacitor Replacement

Scoring a pair of old, well-constructed speakers at a garage sale or thrift store isn’t unusual, but those old speakers may need a little TLC to get back in prime, proper-sounding shape. In this tutorial from Possibly Unsafe, Patrick Norton and Michael Hand show you how a simple capacitor replacement makes a world of difference.

Refurbishing old speakers is a great hobby once you get into it, and some of those old, vintage speakers you might pick up from your local Vinnies or an estate sale can cost you a fraction of what you’d spend otherwise and deliver far superior sound for your money. That is once you’ve cracked them open and given them a little restoration.

In this walkthrough, Patrick and Michael open up a pair of old Klipsch speakers and explain that as you use speakers over time, the ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) goes up because of wear and tear on the capacitors. The highs in your music begin to fade away, and overall the sound gets flatter with decades of use.

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to correct if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, grab a screwdriver and a soldering iron, and of course some replacement capacitors for the ones already in your speakers. The whole video walks you through the process step by step, so check it out above or at the link below.

Replacing Vintage Speaker Capacitors [Possibly Unsafe]


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