Happy New Year to all!

This Holiday I finally carved out some free time to build a set of the highly taut Hiraga A5 crossovers for 8 ohm drivers using published schematics.
Point to point wiring, Air core inductors (including ALPHACORES on the woofers) and Sonic Cap capacitors were used in the direct signal path.
I hand measured every components to ensure the values are per spec'd.

My components :
Altec 515-8Gs in 828 cabinets.
Altec 288-16Gs with new GPA diaphragms and 16 ohm resistors in parallel for compression drivers
Altec 1005B multi-cell horns
Altec 1285-8B crossovers set to 500Hz.

The system sounded really good as is.
I replaced the 1285s with Hiragas ... I fired them up. I was expecting improvement. Instead, the sound was underwhelming. I understood that Hiraga used 1505bs that were 2dB more efficient, so there maybe a balance issue. But having a lot of experience with active crossovers and knowing what driver imbalance sounds like, what I heard was not a balance problem, it sounded like there is a huge suck out in the frequency response. Songs that I am familiar with, entire sections of the musicians went AWOL.

Yes, I made sure polarities on the highs are reversed... as Hiraga designed.

I checked the connections on the crossovers, nothing obvious. I will double check. Hard to believe I screw up the same way on both sets.

Right now they are back on the 1285s, which in my humble opinion, are really good sounding crossovers, even though they are completely stock.

Just wondering if anyone here has heard the Hiraga A5 crossovers first hand? and provide a description on what they are suppose to sound like. I search the forums but surprisingly cannot find a subjective description of what the crossovers sound like. I read the hype and been to many shows where systems sounded great when playing carefully selected demo music, but when played stuff people actually listen to, not so much. Just want to know the real story here. I would real happy if it turns out the bad sound is due to my mistakes.