Bauhausler

The woofers in my Khorns were nonstandard Gauss PA drivers. Big 25 lb ones that were vastly overrated for the horn and probably not the proper characteristics for horn loading. The foam surrounds disintegrated after about 10 minutes of playing last night. It was pretty obvious that something had gone wrong. Age and Ozone had gotten to the foam. Today I disassembled the bins and took out the Gauss woofers. It was a real chore with that huge heavy driver and the glue that the assembler put on the mounting stud threads to keep the wingnuts on. It kept them on alright. Pretty difficult to take apart. I took the K33E woofers out of my La Scalas and installed them without difficulty. Initially, I have used only the bass bins directly driven by a solid state amp and an active line level crossover. The rolloff is at 120hZ to complement the high pass rolloff of the Lowther drivers that handle the rest of the music. It worked wonderfully. Next I will add AL crossovers and the K55/400 and K77 drivers. I will try them out this way, fullrange, with a tube amp. I have high hopes for this configuration and will report what happens. Thanks for all of your help and suggestions. Cheers

I just brought a pair of Khorns in the house. My first pair. I think this means my LaScalas are going on the block. These are so cool. The Lowther just sounds less beamy to me in this room. I lived for 18 months switching back and forth, and I get better balance in more parts of the room with the Lowthers. I wish I didn't because they're otherwise an incredible pain, expensive, need heavy cabinets, etc. All the things that the K55/400 isn't, but I just couldn't get the 400 to work for me. Now these Khorns have been modded. The top enclosure is gone and the top panel of the bass bin has been prefessionally laminated in black. The cab front is stained a 'transparent' black and beautifully waxed. They're quite striking for a huge black thing, but then it's a huge room. The tweeter is mounted on top of the 400 horn, and the 400 attaches to the top of the bass cab with velcro. Looks very sleek and machine age. This also means that the upper horns cah be easily re-aimed, which they can't in the ordinary Khorn. Also, the 400 is up much higher in the Khorn. I have thought that one problem with the LaScalas in my room was vertical dispersion, which the Lowther obviously does better. Having the 400 higher off the floor than the LaScala puts it might cure it. I PROMISE that I will give the Khorns a fair hearing before I decide to use Lowthers instead of the K55/400 combo. Heaven knows it would be simpler... More news as things develop.

I plan to use a pair of well broken in Lowther DX3 fullrange drivers with a separate SET amplifier and passive line level crossover. Right now I have the Lowthers in their 90 lb 40" high Fidelio back horn cabinets flipped upside down on top of the La Scalas. For the moment, the Lowthers are just wired into the AL crossover in place of the K-55-M. This entire rig is over 6' tall and is temporary. I will have to either cut off the La Scala cabinets and build dedicated cabs for the Lowthers to go on top, or modify the La Scala baffle board to hold the Lowther in the original cabinet. I think a separate cab is preferable because it gives more options for positioning. There will be no speaker level crossover to the Lowthers, but I'm considering using impedance modifying networks. The Lowther has a rising impedance characteristic, and combined with the rather high 2.5 Ohm Zout of the SET amp, this produces an excess of output in the upper mid. A carefully selected series L/C/R network centered on about 4.5Khz, parallel with the Lowther should tame this a bit. The main purpose of the exercise is to improve dispersion while preserving high sensitivity and low distortion. I love the sound of the 400/K-55-M setup, but the frequency balance goes all wrong off axis. The room is 25' X 36' X 8', with the speakers 9' apart in the middle of the long wall. Most of the room is out of the main dispersion pattern of the 400 horns. The Lowthers just do this better. The lOwthers have their own challenges, among them that they change sound every time the humidity changes, need to be run a little every day or they 'stiffen up' and sound shrill, need to 'warm up' a bit sometimes when not played for a while, and will not take much power. That said, the midrange tone from these drivers is very special or I would not put up with them. Right now I have this rig playing Ry Cooder & V M Bhatt's "Meeting By The River", an all acoustic string recording done by Waterlily Acoustics. The sound is so real it's uncanny. This is why I put up with Lowthers. Anyway, I have decided to part out the La Scala top parts and will begin after I have built proper cabinets for the Lowthers. Probably start doing that in January, as I need to get out to my stepfather's wood shop to plane and sand a piece of Bolivian rosewood that's going to become a new armboard for my Thorens turntable. So many projects! Thanks for your interest. I have retained the email addresses of the people who contacted me with interest in the La Scala parts. Regards

Yup, sorry! It's the AL crossover. They appear to have a mix of one large 30uf oil cap and small mylars, if that helps. The drivers are K77 with square magnet and K-55-M. the mid horn is metal. I can see no type ID on the mid horn except the PWK logo, but it's hard to see in the cabinet. I haven't had the parts out, just disconnected them. Thanks

All; I'm new here. I was directed here by a user who said it's the best forum to get info on the value of vintage Klipsch parts. I have a pair of LaScalas that I acquired in quite physically distressed condition. They work perfectly, however and I have used them with pleasure for a couple of years while ignoring the ratty cabinets. Now, for various reasons I'm considering modifying the cabinets to use as bass horns with different mids, and selling off the top end parts - tweeters, mids, horns and AK crossovers. The SNs are 8605287 & 8 and I don't know what date that indicates. 1986? These speakers have by far the best bass of any of the many speakers that I have tried in my large room. Nothing else even comes close and these are definitely the woofers for me. The visceral snap and impact of plucked acoustic bass just raises the hairs on the back of my neck every time. I can't get enough of it. Unfortunately, the mids and tweets' radiation patterns are all wrong for this space. They only cover about 20% of the room and that's not acceptable, as it is a public space and non a dedicated one-person listening room. I have been using the LaScalas' bottom sections paired with Lowther drivers from 400 Hz up and I find this gives vastly better coverage in the room, with the clarity and low distortion of a high efficiency driver. After 4 years and dozens of speakers I'm sure I'm on the right track now with Klipsch bass and lowthers on top. To make a proper permanent installation with the Lowthers, however, I need to remove the LaScalas' top components to get the Lowther drivers physically closer to the bass horn either by installing them in the top of the Klipsch cabinet or, first choice, cutting down the LaScala cabinet and building dedicated Lowther enclosures to rest on top.. Thus my decision to permanently mod the LaScalas' cabinets and get rid of the top end components. So my question is: is there a market for the LaScalas' mids, tweets and AK crossovers? If so, would the prices make it worth the trouble? All responses are appreciated. Cheers!