# Damaged Crossover



## uiquint (Feb 28, 2011)

I'm new to the forum so hopefully I'm posting this in the correct place. 

So in the middle of bi-amping my Boston Z6 components I mistakenly switched my amp to the low pass crossover setting (I was trying to switch it from high pass to off and it slid over too far. I know, I should have turned the system off while making adjustments). Now my Boston passive crossover, the one that comes with the components, distorts both the midrange and tweets badly. At first I thought my speaker was blown but I wired it directly and it plays fine. 

Does anyone know if it can be repaired? I took the cover off and didn't see anything terribly wrong but I don't have a trained eye either.


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## gt6334a (Sep 9, 2010)

uiquint, you mentioned you were bi-amping, so my first thought is, why do you even need the crossover?

running a full range signal should not damage the crossover, so i'm not sure what's going on...


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## uiquint (Feb 28, 2011)

Maybe bi-amping is the wrong term...

I'm using a 4 channel amplifier. Up till now I have ran it bridged to the passive crossover since the Z6's can handle a lot of power. The mid is quite low in the door so the tweeters easily overpower it, even attenuated -4db on the crossover. Each crossover has a high and low pass speaker level inputs so I figure if I use these I can turn up the gain on the mids relative to that of the tweeters. FWIW, the passive crossovers have a 'normal' or 'bi' setting on them. 

Are you saying I should ditch the crossovers altogether?

As for the original question. All seemed to be fine until I ran the amp on low pass. It is an Eclipse PA5422. I tried to hyperlink but I don't have enough posts.


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## uiquint (Feb 28, 2011)

For whatever reason, today the crossover is performing fine again. Thanks for the input.


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## gt6334a (Sep 9, 2010)

uiquint said:


> Are you saying I should ditch the crossovers altogether?
> 
> As for the original question. All seemed to be fine until I ran the amp on low pass. It is an Eclipse PA5422. I tried to hyperlink but I don't have enough posts.


yes, you can ditch the passive crossover.. this is what is commonly termed as going active. the basic idea is that you split the un-amplified signal using an active crossover prior to it being sent to the amplifier... 

it sounds a lot better in most cases since you're dealing with a lower power signal and this can even be done in the frequency domain..

the downside is that you need to know what you're doing and spend some tuning the crossover points/slopes to get it right...

i hope this helps...


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