Today, i bought, for the very good price of just £25, a pair of sony XS-HT170SN speakers, and he also threw in a set of dragster tweeters in for free as well, its all 2nd hand, but all working, however, it wasnt until i got home that something suddenly dawned on me, these are (although not brand matched) component setups, and there were no crossovers with them, which i know there should be as a quick google of the sony ones brings up this picture, which shows what should be there...



But all i have is the 2 'main' speakers and these little dragster tweeters.

So, my question is, do i HAVE to go and get a set of crossovers to run these, or can i just run em off my head unit (when i get a new one) as they are??

Many thanks in advance!

Crossover's are just needed to cut off certain frequencies. Those frequencies that can kill the components, i mean ... they would cut off the low ones so u can listen them loud. But, if u stick them on ur unit, keep an eye on them because the low frequencies will pass through.

Low frequencies will damage tweeters pretty quickly. A first-order high pass filter is pretty simple to make. Blocking high frequencies from the midbass drivers isn't as important, but still is something that should be done. You can get passive crossovers anywhere, the only problem is that you don't know the RMS power rating of the individual drivers. The crossover that normally comes with those speakers may reduce the amount of power going to the tweeter, as it is unlikely that the tweeter has as high power handling as the midbass driver.

This could well be totally wrong and i also may have dreamt it lol but i seem to remember messing about with an old set of coaxial speakers and for some reason there was a capaciter laying about in amongst my tools and purely out of boredom i put the small capaciter in between one of the speaker terminals and the wire and it cut the main cone off, just leaving the tweeter running, so would i be right in thinking that its simply a case of getting the right caps and wiring them in to filter out all the low stuff to the tweeters?

You aren't going to kill the speakers by not running a crossover. The speakers just aren't going to be able to produce any sound in the lower frequencies with the tweeters, and high frequencies going to the larger drivers is going to make them sound like crap.

You filter the frequencies with a crossover to get the drivers in the narrow frequency range it is made to produce to sound good. If not, the tweeters will sound like crap, and woofers will sound horribly muddy.

You can add a capacitor of specific unit to the speaker leads to help filter out unwanted frequencies. It's not the best course of action, but will work somewhat. That is how coaxial and triaxial speakers work. A dedicated passive crossover before the amplification, assuming you have seperate amplifiers for each set of drivers, is better. You will get much better sound quality coming from your drivers this way. It's the only way actually, because if you're not going to use a passive crossover, then you may as well just put some cheap junk in. Doing it half-assed would be like buying a Ferrari with an automatic transmission. Why bother with good drivers if you're not going to do it right.