Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Meridian DSP5200 Legacy Mods

Outside of listening, really enjoy modifying gear in this hobby. My faithful legacy DSP5200's, have been great speakers, but desperately needed some renewal.
Adventures So far:
Full Re-cap of Amp and DSP electrolytic capacitors (in another post): everything sounded better~ more bass/clean mids
New Tweeter Ferro Fluid (fantastic guidance from the forum): Tweeters sounded Great! gained a DB+ easily, sounded great
Remote Mounted Voltage regulators and Resistor banks to get the heat Off the Amp board and Main caps (pics in the forum gallery): main caps ~100f instead of 150F on one side. (my 5200HSE remote mounted regulators, 5200SE had T0220 heatsinks). No change in Sound, the speakers are not cooking like before.

As I own DSP5200SE's figured some of the Meridian SE changes may be worth copying ~ especially the Amp coupling transistor caps. This Sounded Amazing, no change character other then a great improvement in mid/upper detail: sounded really very good! As good as the BE tweeters? no, but closed the gap a bunch with out loosing any Meridian character. Highly satisfied


Part 2... We have all see the posts and speculation about Excel tweeter retrofit/speculation, why not give that a try... After all the prior Changes and refurbishment did I find the tweeters lacking? No not at all, sounded amazing, 100% happy.
So picked up a pair of SEAS Excel T25CF-001. Prior guidance (emailing seas) was H1212, but that tweeter has no semi wave guide like the Meridian tweeter. the SEAS Excel T25CF-001, seemed close based on response graphs and was called out in a lot of Rodney's Old posts. One thing that is incorrect, simply turning down mounting flange will not work, you need to make a new flange.

from Left to right ~ Stock Meridian Tweeter and Stock Below are my first Waveguide (grey) and revised (black, with offset magnet, and tapered mount holes) custom flanges. Mounts printed with SLA for better mechanical properties and dimensional accuracy (don't have a SLA printer, so used a service)

Model

Installed


So how does it sound? Only converted one at the moment, sounds darn close to the stock tweeter, final verdict is still pending. No obvious negatives or positives, very subtle. Have a few other mods planned (different bulk caps(has new stock FW's from recap) + ultra fast ultra soft bridge), but one thing at a time.

Sadly, your images are not visible here in the UK, as 'content not viewable in your region'.

Thanks for the heads up, Updated with whats hopefully UK safe image hosting.

Ace! They're now visible.

Tossed in the 2nd tweeter. Things sounded a little "light", very slightly more detail then stock, not unpleasant. Adjusted the Tweeter in the hidden config menu to +.5 (if going by the H1212 specs the 001 excel is .5 DB less sensitive), and everything started sounding very improved. Crossover seemed to blend much better, vocals sounded right, piano and violin sounded great. prior to the .5 db bump, was most likely going to revert, after: satisfied with the sound. The highs seem a bit smoother yet detailed, very easy to listen too. overall Meridian did an amazing job with the stock H1054 tweeter; the bypass caps made the stock tweeter amazing(much blacker background adding clarity and detail). Going to the excel did not jump the bar much~ more a question of sonic taste instead of improvement. Still need more hours on the tweeters to break them in, so sonics and opinions may change. depending on how it goes, may make up some new mounts with better material.