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Celestion Ditton 44 Refurb [Tweeter repair / Cab Resto etc]

istari_knight

pfm Member
I picked up a pair of Celestion Ditton 44's last week courtesy of eBay... I tested them at the sellers house all okay, wired them in at home everything was fine then that evening one tweeter decided to suddenly go open circuit :scratch:

A quick dissection showed the actual voice coil was black & crumbled to dust when touched so repair was off the cards ! After some hunting around the net it seems others have had similar problem & the suggested replacement is the Seas 19TFF1. Some clever chap over on diyaudio has calculated the necessary changes to the crossover making the Seas a proper replacement instead of a bodge.

Anyway, I've just ordered the parts so will update when they're here & installed - I thought I might as well do a thread on it as its a common problem & lots of people seem to give up & flog the speakers without working tweeters which is a shame.

This is the original crossover:



And this is the revised crossover :



Its also worth noting this is compatible with both Ditton 44 & Ditton 66 as they share the same HF crossover & 4ohm HF2000 tweeter... The Seas 19TFF1 is a direct replacement for the HF2000 whereas the Hiquphon OW1 would be a major upgrade in sound quality but thats not my goal ;)
 
Fantastic service from Audio-components.co.uk as always, I placed the order at 2pm yesterday & they arrived 10am this morning ! Unfortunately the tweeters haven't arrived from Falcon yet :(

Anyway this is what convinced me to go for the Seas as apposed to finding another HF2000:



Thats a Vifa D20 I nicked out of a Rega Kyte, its not a drop in replacement & its not even fitted properly and yet it sounds indistinguishable from the HF2000 in the other speaker.

That gunk on the roll surrounds is glue... I've tried isopropyl alcohol but its been there for 40 years and intends to stay... Anyone got a bright idea how to remove it ? I can only think of using "back to black" rubber paint to cover it but not sure how that will look
 
Delivery from Falcon Acoustic arrived today !



Just awaiting the tweeter surround felt & some better speaker cable for the rewire :)
 
Spent the afternoon recapping the crossovers...

This is one of the original crossovers:



Check out the production date on that cap :cool:



After the recap with added resistors for the HF... Just needs a cleanup to get rid of the flux:



Pair:



I measured the original caps after removal & every single one was still within the 10% tolerance... No idea of ESR though as my meter doesn't have that function. I'll probably have a go at fitting the new tweeters tomorrow, the cutout hole needs slightly enlarging, with an additional cut-out to clear the terminals on the Seas tweeter so I'll have some fun with a rasp :)
 
One dodgy looking tweeter template :rolleyes:



Cut out



Crossover in



Tweeter in



Gold binders fitted



The felts still on order so I'll have to remove the tweeters again to do that bit :cool:
 


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