Minimus 7 Speaker Mods

A DIY company offered an upgrade kit fir Minimus 7's many years ago, and others still sell upgrade parts and kits today on ebay. The first suggestion on this list will yield the biggest improvement for your money. 1. Crossover Modification and Improvement: Replace the stock gray 4.7uf 50v electrolytic capacitor with a 4.7 microfarad Metallized Polypropylene Film Capacitor rated at 250 volts or more*. The old one may be hot-melt-glued to the crossover board so instead of trying to remove it, you can just snip the leads and solder in the new cap. (Since box volume is already so small, it would probably be better to remove the old unused capacitor if easily possible) Hot glue the new capacitor to something solid in the box after soldering so it can not move or vibrate. *The above mod will improve the sound from the tweeter and is probably the easiest, most cost effective, and will yield the biggest improvement bang for your buck. Further improvment of the crossover would also yield better sound since a choke is not used on the woofer in the stock crossover design and it receives the full frequency range, this would clean the mids up and tighten the lower range some. To cut off the high frequencies going to the woofer, you can add a 0.4mh coil in series with the woofer. Replacing the capacitor and adding a coil to the woofer circuit will yield a definite improvement in sound quality. Next is by far the best mod I know of for the Minimus 7 crossover using the stock drivers and reusing the original choke coil on the tweeter circuit. The additional parts must be purchased or scavenged from other sources. If you do this one, make sure to use high quality crossover components.

Another person suggested something on the lines of "if you move the inductor over to the woofer, and upgrade the cap to a higher quality cap of the same value and run that to the tweeter, then this mod will give you about 90% of what improvements the ebay mod can give you. Leaving the original inductor on the tweeter and adding another inductor to the woofer is a better choice. (Not nearly as good as the mod schematic shown above, but certainly better than no mod)

2. Remove the fiberglass insulation and affix / dampen the top, bottom and sides with a sticky dampening material (like Dynamat). Be carefull handling the FG. Reinsert the FG (you may want to replace the FG with some Poly). Another option that would not decrease internal box volume would be to apply damping material to the outside of the speaker box. 3. Dope the woofer*. It seems Damar varnish is the "dope" of choice. Damar varnish is not a brand name, but a type of varnish typicaly used by artists who paint with oils. It would be available from a local art supply store. Grumbacher's Damar Vanish** (2 1/2 oz. was the smallest bottle I could find at artist supply store) proved to be the best in my testing. Do not get the type used for airplanes. Evenly coat just the paper woofer cone with a small brush and be VERY CAREFUL not to get any on the rubber surround. Allow it to dry eight hours and then apply a second coat. Allow second coat to dry 24 hours before playing music. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TREAT THE TWEETER! *Hint: Do the woofer doping a little at a time until you get the right balance of extension vs. articulation. **Special Note: If you cannot find the Grumbacher Damar Varnish.[/u] Run a test of a couple of whatever Damar varnishes you can find on 24# or

higher copier paper or paper grocery bags cut into 4" square and let dry over night. The successful varnish will dry without warping the paper. Michael's was very accommodating in allowing me to return the ones I didn't use so long as I didn't gum up the containers. Doping a speaker cone stiffens the cone and helps it to produce midrange better. It also adds mass to the cone slightly lowering the resonance. A million years ago, when I first started experimenting with speakers and sound, I used regular Elmers white glue to dope thin paper coned inferior quality speakers, and I actually got surprisingly decent results over what they originally sounded like. I really wouldn't recommend doing that now unless your paper cones are pretty bad. And in that case you wouldn't have much to lose by trying it.