ACC 004: Speaker Terminal and Crossover Upgrade
(see the quick and dirty fix below)

Many older speakers use spring clip terminals, or worse, little screw terminals, on the back to hook up your speaker wire. These have three distinct disadvantages:

1. They are awkward to use. Incredibly awkward, in some cases.
2. It is very difficult to attach heavier gauge speaker wire to them. Impossible, actually.
3. When they break, they are very difficult to fix. And they all eventually seem to break.

Not only that, but in order to survive in a very price-competitive market, higher grade parts that most people might not immediately appreciate tend not to be used, in favor of cheaper parts that audiophiles sneer at, like aluminum electrolytic capacitors and rather thin internal wire.

The ACC 004 "family" of products that I have developed address all of these issues neatly, while being designed to deal with the typical "rectangular hole with terminal plate inside" designs of many speakers from the 60's and 70's.

The ACC 004 products all start with a nice, non-resonant 5" by 6" backplate I custom build out of 1/4" textured black ABS, with a pair of gold-plated five-way binding posts attached:

The ACC 004 is available as that and no more, if you want to add your crossover parts and wires (old or new) to it and install it to upgrade your speaker terminals. The four 1" black oxide #8 phillips pan head screws to mount each one are included.

This design is optimized for mounting inside rear panels that are 3/4" or more thick, which most good speakers are. The binding posts, when tightened, do not stick out past the back of the panel, and the screws don't stick through the panel after installation.

Here is a pictorial of the installation process.

I also build several specialized versions which are appropriate upgrade replacements for the crossover, wiring and backplate used in most EPI/Epicure and Genesis Physics speaker systems. They all use nice 16 gauge wire, with female quick disconnects to attach to your drivers, audiophile quality polypropylene film capacitors, and where appropriate, custom made air core choke coils and perhaps high power ceramic resistors .

The ACC 004 A has a single capacitor, 6 dB/octave filter, for use in these speakers:

EPI 50, 60, 70, 90, 100, 101, 105, 120, 150, 200, Epicure 5, 10, 11, 14, 15, and many "A" series EPI models.

Genesis 1, 6, Basic

(note: these illustrations show aluminum electrolytic capacitors bypassed by smaller value film caps. I now use a single appropriate value film cap)

The ACC 004 B has a second-order, 12 dB/octave crossover set up on it, as used in these speakers:

Genesis I, 1+, 2, 2+, V-6, 10, 20, 110, 210

The ACC 004 C is set up to replace the terminal, crossover, and wiring harness in the "double module" speakers (two woofers and two tweeters) such as these:

EPI 180, 201, 201A, 202, 240, A240, 250, and Epicure 20+

I normally build it in the "4 ohm" configuration (parallel), and it does not have a switch to change it to 16 ohm. Most amplifiers will drive a 4 ohm load quite happily. If you are ordering a pair and prefer the 16 ohm setting, just tell me in the "comments" section. The photograph happens to show one unit built each way.

The ACC 004 X is a crossover/backplate assembly built to duplicate the setup in any vintage speaker. You send me the old crossovers to work with, and I build you a set of custom replacements. Pricing of these is determined on a case by case basis.

If you wish to order the ACC 004 A, B, or C, I must know the speaker model, and I may also want your old crossovers to make sure what I build is an appropriate replacement (long enough wires, etc.).

If you are ordering replacement parts for Genesis or EPI speakers and want to get a pair of these as well, make a note of this fact in the "comments" section of the order form, if this part is not listed there yet.

If you have broken or damaged spring clip terminals, and you want to simply make them work again without digging into your speaker, here is a simpler, if slightly uglier, solution.

Bust off the old plastic caps and moving spring clip parts, leaving only the metal part which goes through the board to the internal wiring. Solder a 6" or so "tail" of good wire to them, and solder some nice connectors on the other end.

These will work perfectly, and although they are not particularly attractive, you rarely see the back of the speaker.

Here is a photo of one I fixed this way for a customer: