Re: Bad driver or bad crossover?
Quinn!! Haven't heard from you in ages!! Welcome home
I have a pair of original Sierra-1's to which I have done the NrT upgrade. They had the very insulation you are decribing: Yellow fiberglass-type material encased in black mesh "socks" glued to the inside of the cabinet. I ripped it out and replaced it with the white Dacron mat stuff which I happened to have on hand from my Rythmik sub project.
My speaker wires were not hard wired with solder to the speaker terminals as you describe, but rather had the spade male-female connectors. Also, the original models had a slightly different crossover board with different mounting hole spacing vs. the NrT crossover, so I used one of the original mounting holes but had to use Spax self tapping screws for the remaining 3 holes.
Sounds great and you get an official "NrT upgrade" sticker to put on the back of the speakers!
Ed
* Sierra-2EX's W/V2 crossover upgrade
* (2) Rythmik F12's
* Parasound Halo P6
* Audio by Van Alstine DVA-M225 Monoblock Amps
* MiniDSP 2x4HD For Sub calibration
*World's Best Cables Canare 4S11 speaker cables