Drop in tweeter and driver replacements in a pair of ACI Jaguar LE Monitors??

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Lkdog

As title says, have been wondering if anyone has done drop in replacements for the drivers and Tweeters that are in the Jaguar LE monitors?

I believe the tweeters are Scanspeak soft dome 2905/9300's
The mid driver is a 7" Scanspeak also. Not sure what model.

I guess I am wondering if dropping in a Scanspeak Revelator or ScanSpeak Beryllium Illuminator is worthwhile upgrade.
Another forum member suggested I should look at upgrading these speakers and this thought came to mind.

I do like the Jaguar LE/LFM speaker enclosure and build combination and overall sound and have had them for several years.
Not really inclined to start over and the resale on these is likely not good at this point. Maybe have had them 15 years or more.



Any thoughts welcome.





dB Cooper

Are you dissatisfied with them? You could end up butchering a pair of perfectly good speakers.The internet is full of people who have opinions about everything (whether they've actually heard a given piece or not), but real experts are few and far between. Just 'dropping in' some driver is unlikely to provide much if any improvement. Different drivers=different sound. Unless they are very close in their electrical and mechanical properties, and you are prepared to re-engineer the crossover, you may end up with worse sound, not better.

One thing that might be worth doing- speaking of crossovers- is to contact Danny Ritchie  (GR Research) and send one speaker to him and have him re-engineer the crossover. I have heard speaker designers say they spend more time getting the crossover right than any other aspect of a design. This could be worth pursuing. The downside is, even one (he only needs one to test, and the customer installs the xover in the second one) of these would be expensive AF to ship and you probably don't have the cartons after 15 years.


I would sum up my thoughts as: There are probably ways to improve these but the cost-effectiveness of doing so might not be good. If you still enjoy them after 15 years, they're probably not that bad, and sinking $$$ into 'mods' may produce something that isn't really 'better'- just different, and maybe actually worse. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, you know? If you want to upgrade, start over. Consider taking advantage of somebody's upgraditis by shopping aftermarket and then sell these to somebody starting out.

dB Cooper

erroneous re-post

Carl V

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Agree with  what dB said
Woofer was 8545K....still available and still quite good.
Scanspeak 6600 would be a slight improvement...XO will need adjusting.
Slit Cone Scanpeak would be an upgrade & it fits. But again XO design
Klaus at Odyssey built speakers with those drivers & he followed the upgrade path.

Lkdog

Thanks. Good insights.

Yes, I got the idea of driver upgrades when I was looking at Klaus' Kismet Reference speakers.

I should probably leave well enough alone.  :)


Tyson

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The speakers are tuned around the existing drivers, I'd leave them alone.

mick wolfe

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The speakers are tuned around the existing drivers, I'd leave them alone.

Couldn't agree more. A better and possibly more effective approach might be an upgrade in source components or amplification. But without knowing the particulars, that would be just a guess on my part.

opnly bafld

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« Last Edit: 13 Jan 2023, 03:04 am by opnly bafld »

fritzspeakers

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Rocket

Hi,

Back in the day these speakers were highly regarded.  If you feel the need to upgrade them why don't you look at a simple crossover upgrade as long as you know the correct values.

Upgraditis... I suffer badly from that as well :)

Cheers Rod

Mike Dzurko

Sorry it took a while:  I agree with those on the forum who basically say leave it as is. Any significant improvement is likely to be very costly. The drivers in the Jag are really good to begin with. Most importantly, the crossover was designed over many, many hours of measurements, prototyping and listening, re-measure, tweak, listen, over and over. When we're talking measurements, not just a 1 meter on axis, but multiple off - axis measurements as well as looking at distortion, impulse response etc. I'm not familiar with the newer drivers but I'm sure they'll sound different, but will they sound better? Without the crossover being re-optimized might be a costly step backwards.