[Elecraft] New Crystals or Not

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

They MIGHT. It's a matter of the "luck of the draw". They didn't CHANGE
the crystals, but changed the matching specifications so sets are more
consistent. You may have a good set, you might not. Mine weren't good.
The OPT1 bandpass at the -6dB points was less than 2 kHz, and there was
no setting of the BFO frequency that was going to make the audio sound
good. 

Be assured that however bad your K2 sounds in receive, it sounds no
better in transmit if you have a  bad set of crystals.

But FIRST, have you done the "SSB Filter Flattening Mod" described on
www.elecraft.com under "Builder's Resources"? That affects the received
signal quality. It has no effect on the OPT 1 filter or the transmitted
signal. It flattens the response of the "cleanup" filter at the output
of the IF amplifier. The original design of that filter had quite a
"tilt" to the bandpass, making SSB audio sound overly "bright" with way
too much high frequency response on one sideband and bassy and muffled
with too much low frequency response on the other sideband. If you
haven't done this mod yet, do it FIRST, then evaluate whether you think
you want new crystals for the filters.

Ron AC7AC
K2 # 1289. 

Fred N9TA wrote:
What will the new xtals do for the performance?? I've always thought my
K2 (Ser#242) sounded like crap on SSB (RX side), but seeing as I rarely
work SSB I didn't really care. Will the new xtals "open" up SSB somewhat
???