Doesn't anyone like a wild top end anymore?

Im yousing rotel amp rmb 1095 and for the moment my musical source is a pioneer blueray player witch im going

to change son for a marantz sa 11-s2.

it sounds not sharp on all matreial without on a part different colletion disc
pangs to be bad kvalite on much of these disks unfortunately

i may get some hate mail...but i don't care....

your problem isn't with the crossover, it's the horn itself.  i just did the crossover upgrade myself and i didn't use the 10olm resistor, i still have it in the bag unused.  i came up with this solution while researching my Cornscala project.  AL from ALK engeenering sent me an email and he said that the "harshness came from the k-400 horn itself." 

started thinking a bit on that.....

i had some .25 and .5 antivibration foam laying around.  it's aircraft grade, really good stuff.  i invited a non klipsch friend over and Falcon 20x over.  the rf-7 that has no foam was much higher than the rf-7 with the .25 and .5 foam.  in fact the .5 foam was the least highest, almost boarding on "muddy."  during the listening tests we felt the .25 foam sounded the best, best of both worlds if you like. 

we compared a brand spanken new rf-7 vs a rf-7 with the crossover mod (no extra resistor) and foam, then foam in both, and orginal crossover vs upgrade, swapped speakers to ensure no acoustic "issues."  we compared those speakers in every configuration possible and came to a very simple conclusion.....

you don't need to add a resistor to lower the highs,

an upgraded crossover blows the heck out of a brand new crossover,

too much foam on the horn muddys the sound a little

and with everything combined, man you get a rf-7 that blows out rf-83's and my give some heritage a run for it's money.  (that's my thought only)

i was debating on selling the .25 foam for $30 total (shipping and paypal inclued) and you get 12 pieces pre cut and ready to install on 2 rf-7's and 1 rc-7.  i have enough for 5 complete set ups, but havent decided if i want to bother with selling it. 

you may be able to get the foam anywhere (not what i have but somewhat equal).  dynomat may work just as good, don't know, don't have any to A/B.

a real simple test to see how well it works with foam, besides listening, is tap on the horn itself (while installed).  you can clearly hear the difference between foam and no foam.

The harshness that comes from the K-400/K-55 has very little if anything to do with vibration. That issue relates to air overload in the small throat of the horn at higher volume levels. The RF-7 doesn't have that issue.

I don't understand how adding "too much" foam to a small plastic horn that's only running from 2kHz on up can result in a "muddy" sound. Not doubting what you heard, just don't understand it.

Too bad you didn't just go ahead and solder that resistor in -- it would have saved you the trouble of cutting up all that good foam. :)

 staple egg crates to the ceiling?

i know, it wasn't what i expected either.  i installed the foam before i did the crossover mod.  that's when i had the non klipsch friend over.  when i listened to both speakers i heard a difference.  i thought for sure my mind was playing tricks on me.  when i invited my friend over, i didn't even tell him what i did, just asked if he could hear a difference.  i was very happy to find out, that immeditaly he could tell the speakers apart.

like i said i got the idea in a indirect way from Al, i just ran with it with the rf-7.  had plenty of foam laying around so it was no big deal, it was sacrificed for the good :)!

 hopefully Falcon will add some comments, i don't think i am using the right word with "muddy."  it was neat/weird to run them together and what we heard was the upgraded crossover took over the nonupgrade.  infact, i couldn't even hear the other speaker until a "high" portion of the cd would play and then the no foam would over take the foamed speaker.  in a nut shell, from no foam, to .25, to .5, the highes would roll off at different points.  it's hard for me to put into words, but you could hear it at different points, while running them at the same time.  

the foam is attached directly to the horn itself.  i'll attach a pic in a few minutes.

 dean,

i wasn't trying to "one up you."  like i said, Al gave me the idea, i did the foam before the crossover, and both falcon and i decided if i added the resistor and the foam, it would lower that harshness too much.  at least that's the conclusion we came to with out actually soldering it in.  

i felt installing the foam would be a quick cheap way of getting rid of some of the harshness with out spending the money to do a complete crossover upgrade. 

 heres another pic.

 oh dean,

had a direct question to you about crossover upgrade resistors.  

falcon brought over his rc-7 with your upgraded crossover.  that crossover didn't have the extra 10 olm resistor in it.  is that how the rc-7 is suppose to be?  we did compare my rc-7 vs yours, and was curious because neither of us know how it was suppose to be done.  i believe the rc-7 was Arkys old rc-7.  

I parallel the 10 up with the 2 on the RC-7 too. I'm sure Arky's (John's) has it.

'"i wasn't trying to "one up you."'   

I didn't think that at all. No worries. You did state that "an upgraded crossover blows the heck out of a brand new crossover" -- which shows that it's not just the resistor mod that's accounting for the subjectively better sound.

I found DJK's bulb solution kind of interesting too. 

falcon and i couldn't find it on the crossover.  we wanted to call you and ask and see if it was one your first crossovers. 

so it's interesting to know that falcon and westcott did a A/B comparasion between your crossover with out the 10olm resistor and a rc-64.  they found that those two were so close in sound.  so that's good news.  i guess the only advantage of the 64 is that it's sealed.

DeanG:

I parallel the 10 up with the 2 on the RC-7 too. I'm sure Arky's (John's) has it.

fyi there is a tangental discussion of these issues over a diyaudio

if interested here is the link

www diyaudio.com/forums/showthread/t-118666.html

paul