Olorin

That's for sure! However, the guy playing has a lot to do with it. I read an interview with Steve Vai recently, in which he said he met Brian May many years ago and got to play the Red Special. He was surprised and maybe a little bit disappointed to find he still sounded like Steve Vai, not like Brian May. Now that's funny.

I think I get what you're getting at, and as with a lot of these things, the answer is "either, neither, and both." You have a signal chain, and like any chain, it's only as strong as its weakest link. In other words, your system is going to sound as good as its worst-sounding component. Ideally, processors, receivers, and amps don't have a "sound." Processors and the preamp sections of receivers are supposed to take a signal from an input and direct it to an output with no change in the signal, and amplifiers are supposed to take an input signal at a given voltage and output the same signal at a higher voltage. Practically speaking, if I were in your shoes and already had a high-quality multichannel amp with more than enough power to take care of my speakers, I wouldn't even be looking at receivers -- I'd be looking at processors.

There's more to it than just making the horn bigger as there's a very complex relationship between all the horn parameters. I think you're pretty brave for making sawdust without having any kind of simulation for mathematical model to predict your outcome because you're not going to know what you're going to get until you've gotten it, and it might come out with all kinds of odd peaks and dips in the response, or it might come out really well or it could land anywhere in between.

It's a little hard to tell by the pic, but that does look like the proper rounded edge molding for a grilled La Scala.

IIRC the K510 is about $750 each through the mothership, but that's off the top of my head from memory, and I'm sure it will be corrected if I'm out. Now it's kind of an open secret that the K69 driver is the P.Audio BMD-750, which is $200 just about anywhere online, and it mates with the PH-4525 horn for $85. There is also a $50 Parts Express Goldwood horn that appears to be a direct copy of the PH-4525. But -- there's always a but, right? -- neither the 4525 nor the Goldwood is the Klipsch horn, and I'd expect there is some tasty Delgado secret sauce in the 510 horn. Rudy81 has an extensive thread on converting his La Scalas to two-way using the P.Audio horn and driver combo.

What makes you think it's a waste? Everyone knows electrons are moody little ******* that get all bent out of shape when they have to travel through copper.

Definitely small.

On his head.

Yes, the triangular section is a sealed box. Don't worry about the slot in the motorboard, you have to remove the driver to see it and that's a lot of work to look at a 13" x 3" slot cut into a piece of plywood. GSDs rule, and the La Scala will blow any hair that gets in there right out. :-D

Dust mastadons -- I like that. I have a 120 lb German shepherd who sheds an amount of hair equal to her own volume every three days, so I know just what you mean.

No, no port; you had it right before I linked the plan drawing and "clarified" things. ;-) The triangular box is the woofer's sealed back chamber, and the slot in the motorboard is the only opening. There is a trapezoidal access hatch cut out of the bottom of the woofer chamber -- is that what you mean?

/thread

This should help.

They look just like my 84 LS-BLS with the ALs. Everyone says the AL crossover sounds bad, but my 84s with the ALs sound much much better than my 78s with the V drivers and Type As. Go figure. A vacuum cleaner with a dust brush will clean them up just fine. Get a third with the M tweeter and mid, and Type AL crossover, and then get two pairs of Heresys for surrounds and you've got a dream system.

I can't make heads or tails of that block of text. How does it sound?

Major geek points. I like it a lot.

You're right about all of that.

For a permanent installation, an infinite baffle is really the obvious solution here. I'm surprised none of us thought of it earlier. If it's got to be a speaker in a box, though, a Mach5 IXL-18.2.2 ($200) in a 14.5 ft^3 enclosure with a 44 3/8" long 18" x 3" slot port (~$100 worth of MDF) powered by one channel of a Behringer EP4000 ($350 new, less used) models very nicely in WinISD. I get 113 db from 15-20 Hz, rising smoothly to 118 db @ 60 Hz, falling back to 114 @100 Hz (1 meter anechoic.) Naturally in-room response is going to be dominated by the room. The images are large, so right-click/view them to see their full extent. If I downsize them, text is difficult to read. If you wanted a subsonic filter at 12 Hz, a Reckhorn B2 costs $100, and that puts it right on budget.

Spending two paragraphs talking about big tapped horns' downsides.

Yeah, you might have to hit it with a liquid soap (like Dawn) with no water, and be careful about spreading it first, and then rinse it off. Another thought would be to use Tecnu -- it's for treating poison oak, ivy, and sumac, which carry their toxins in oil similar to how peppers carry their heat.

Peppers have their capsaicin in an oil, so wash thoroughly with soap and cold water.

Tapped horns get really really big when you start getting into infrasonic bands. Remember that it's a quarter wavelength resonant pipe, so its path length needs to be right around 1/4 wavelength. 20 Hz takes about 16' of path, and getting to 16 Hz takes about a 23' pipe. Couple that with the fact that there are very, very few drivers that are really suited to tapped horns, and you have a situation where, for the same driver in the same enclosure volume, there is most often little to no advantage over a big box with a big port, and the big box with the big port is a much simpler build. So enough with the negativity. The affirmative response is to look at some of the DIY designs at AVS or Home Theater Shack or diyaudio.com. Several designs built around the Exodus Audio drivers will meet your spec.

You might want to check out some of the Easy Button builds over at AVS.

SPUD clones?

Be sure to check out Harman Kardon's offerings as well. They sound very nice with the Chorus IIs and have pre-outs, so they offer an easy upgrade path.