My sister gave me a set of cornwalls recently. In my current house, they are very intrusive size-wise. I'm looking for a way to integrate then into a wall of built-in cabinets. The cabinets have countertops with doors below and bookshelves above. The house cabinets will take the cornwall cabinets on their side, at floor level. I came up with this idea and I wanted to run it past the forum. I have read a lot on this forum, but haven't researched this exhaustively. If this has already been covered, just point me there - thanks.
Briefly about the speakers and me:
The speakers are cornwalls birch raw with the flush fronts (no grills or grill recess) the cabinets are lined with the "tissue" padding and cotton cording and the woofers have the square magnets. Any ideas on what age ? (I can post the serial no.s later).
I have been a Klipsch fan since the mid 70's. I ,off and on, delivered systems for the Klipsch dealer here. I have owned two sets of heresy models. I don't think I know anywhere near the math and physics that go into speaker design, but I'm basing this idea on some principles I think are sound - namely, bass frequencies are percieved as omnidirectional, the cabinets are designed mainly around the woofer (back air volume, resonance, porting etc.), a good stereo "stage" is set with speakers (high freq.) toed-in 45 deg., horns disperse better horizontally than vertically.
My idea is to remove the squawker and tweeter assemblies from the cabinets, seal the enclosures with a block of plywood covering the horn cutouts from the back, pass the wires from the crossover through this board using terminals similar to the main terminal in the back, and run these leads to the horns mounted in a separate enclosure. This would allow me to place the cornwall units in the bottom part of the built-in cabinets and mount the horns above them in the book cases. This would make the cornwall disappear almost and hopefully the sound would still be much better than almost anything else I could buy.
Notes, questions and Issues:
- I read about people putting Altec voice of the theater in small rooms by having window seat-like bass enclosures and the horns higher up.
- Khorns come in two pieces although they are bolted together when setup.
- I would build the horn enclosures to look like a smaller versions of the Khorn top.
- Would the signal degrade if the mid and high leads were 6-8 ft. from the cross over.
- The cabinets would be on their side - ok for bass, right? - but that is why I want to move and "aim" the high end.
- should I mount the crossover with the horns and run the bass lead to the cornwall boxes?
- I can completely undo this "mod" if I get more space later.
- will the abscence of the horns and compression drivers make a big difference air volume-wise?
- Will this sound "worth a dern"?
Thanks for reading - Please reply if you get a chance.