Cal Blacksmith

Sancho, wow, we have something in common, our wives are both ill. I have a thread going and there was a lot of support from the board, your wife and you are in my prayers, look at https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/148802-ugg-what-a-day/ for more info on my wife. I feel WITH you brother! Better days ARE coming.

I don't know how I missed this thread for so long! I skimmed a bit but did not read everything. At the coffee site I hang out at, http://www.coffeegeek.com , we have the rule of 15s. Green unroasted coffee is good for about 15 months. Roasted coffee (whole, not ground) is good for about 15 days and ground, roasted coffee is good for about 15 minutes. Granted there is a little wiggle room but not a whole lot. Coffee is a food product and as such, it has a limited life span. Once roasted the clock is running, you have "cooked" the coffee and like all cooked food, the time it is at it's peak is short. Once ground the "play" clock is running (football term) Because coffee is brown to start with, you do not see it spoiling but spoil it does and rapidly. Think of it this way, there is no excuse to not have a grinder. Would you buy an apple at a store then have the man in the produce section cut it into a thousand small pieces because you do not have a knife at home? What happens to the nice clean white flesh of the apple? It reacts with the O2 in the air and it oxidizes doesn't it? After about 15 minutes, you will see the brown "rot" start to form. Because you cut the apple into a thousand small pieces, the surface area exposed to the air is vastly bigger and the same 15 minutes will have spoiled MUCH more of the apple right? The same thing happens to coffee but because it is already brown, you do not see it happening! This is true for all coffee regardless of how it was packaged. You simply must have a grinder if you want to drink good coffee, regardless of the brew method. Speaking of brew methods, there are a whole lot of them out there and which works best for you depends on how much work you do or do not want to do, how much you want to spend and what you expect from a cup of coffee. Just to hit the highlights for other than pod machines regardless of make. French press is often though of as THE way to brew coffee. Well it can make a good cup, if you do not mind drinking mud at the bottom of your cup, that is the reason I do not use the French press. The plus side, they are inexpensive, they do a good job of steeping the grounds, they leave all the essential oils in suspension in the coffee. The down side, there is a layer of mud in the bottom of the cup, you must remove the coffee from the FP as soon as you are done brewing as the coffee remains in contact with the grounds, it will over extract the beans and give you a nasty flavor. Aero press. This is a recent invention, it is a plastic cylinder you place your grounds in then add hot water, stir and then press the brew through a paper or micro hole SS disc. The up side is it is very inexpensive and is very tolerant of ground size and water temp variations. The down side is it pretty much limits you to one cup at a time so if you need to make more you need to cycle the process many times. It uses a paper filter so some of the oils remain in the filter and not in your cup but it brews a cup as clean as drip with more oils retained than drip. Vac pot. This is THE way to brew your coffee in the 1920s to '40s, it produces a very clean cup, it is very flexable for brew contact time, the water is automatically the right temp, not boiling but right at 205 F The down side is it is messy to clean, the seal between the two vessels needs to be perfect or else the coffee will not draw down to the bottom bowl after heat is removed. It does provide a great "show" so the method is coming back with table top versions that use a "tea" candle for a heat source so you can brew right on the dinner table and all the guests can watch..... great fun. Perk, uh, not a good method at all, the coffee is boiled, over and over again and is recycled over the grounds over and over again, this is a much less than optimal way to brew coffee but some like it so, if you like it... go right ahead. Drip. This method took over from the short rein of the perk after the vac pot. It was spear headed by the Mr Coffee brewer and has taken the home brewing market by storm. It is easy to clean, it can make a very good cup, the brew is clean and free of sludge as found in the FP. The down side is that most auto drip pots do not heat the water hot enough, the paper filter traps the oils from the brewed coffee and sooooooooo many of them come with warming plates which does nothing to the coffee but burn it and turn a delightful drink into unpalletable swill. Manual drip cones are a variation of the process and can give GREAT results as you heat the water to 195 to 205 F yourself, you control where the water contacts the grounds thus assuring an even soaking of the grounds and you control the water flow rate to maintain the optimal 4 minute contact time of water to grounds. There are more ways to brew for sure, these are just the most common ways to do it. The biggest thing anyone can do to improve the morning cup is to buy FRESH roasted (less than two weeks from THE DAY IT WAS ROASTED) if there is a best by or a use before date on the bag, do not buy it, you have no idea how old it is, you need to see the ROAST date. Get a grinder, not a whirly blade chopper thing but a real burr grinder. The blade chopper never gives a consistent size ground. It ranges from dust to boulders. The dust will over extract nearly instantly giving a nasty flavor to the brew while the boulders will never start to give up the goodness inside in the time you are making coffee. There many PSUTO burr grinders, such as the Cuisinart DB 8 or is it 9. They typically sell for around $50. They are not burr grinders rather they are made to LOOK like a burr grinder but the operate exactly like the whilrly blade thing. If you remove the upper "burr" you will see some "nubs" sticking up above the "burr" surface. These act just like the whirling blade, you are not grinding the coffee (cutting is more accurate as the burrs need to be very sharp and they slice the bean to a uniform size particle) you are beating it to death between the nubbs on the top and bottom plates they call burrs. I was suckered in by them when I first started and have one that I kept to remind me how bad they truly are. Hand crank grinders can be had for under $100, the Skelertion (I know I miss spelled that!) is a good one. It will not brew espresso (often misspelled as eXpresso ARRRRGGGGHHH!) but it works for other, less demanding processes. The key to properly ground coffee is consistency of the ground size. They all must be the same time for them to extract at the same rate of speed. A list of roasters we link to is http://www.home-barista.com/coffees/list-of-our-favorite-roasters-t12125.html We have used them and know they provide a quality product. Nearly all will roast and ship the same day so for the average travel time of 3 days, you get coffee, delivered to your door, with the minimum time for it to properly degass having passed. Fresh roasted coffee gives off a LOT of CO2 and that must be vented for about 3 days for the coffee to reach it's peak. Fresh roasted coffee is by most of the public's standards, expensive. Expect to START paying $12 for 12 oz, yes a dollar a oz, not $3.99 for a 5# can! Roasting coffee is another whole discussion. As the coffee is roasted darker and darker, it will take on the flavor of the roast and loos the light flavors that define one coffee from another. Starbucks is famous for this, they over roast ALL their coffee to burnt so that it all tastes the same, regardless of which store you go to. They are the biggest seller of Milkshakes with sprinkles and whip with only a drop or two of this thing called coffee. Any fresh bean with oil showing on it will taste very strongly of the roast and not the bean. Oil can also be an indicator of age on beans that were properly roasted and are now long stale. If great coffee is what you are after, avoid beans with oil on them and lets not get into "flavored" coffee. Coffee has one flavor,.... COFFEE! This has just only touched the surface of the subject. Just what is it you want from your coffee, how big is the budget. Do not think of even looking at espresso for less than $500 and then only the barest minimum of a setup that is unstable to work with. Pretty much if you see a espresso machine in a department store, it is junk, nearly every time without exception. Brevelle is KNOWN in the espresso world for producing garbage, home quality machines. For the price they charge for some of them, you can have a quality brewer but it is not in a department store. For an espresso grinder with a motor on it, new that is actually able to grind for espresso, they START at $350 and that is only for one that is ABLE to grind for espresso, not a quality espresso grinder. I am sure this post will generate a lot of comments. I did not read everything before me here so if I covered something that has been brought up before, I'm sorry.

This is a little more in depth, I have a real keyboard to use, not that tiny thing on the phone. Thank you all, so much. Lets see, when last we joined our hero, .... LOL! Lots has happened. The surgery was postponed Tue, the doc wanted to know more, he got a conference together with about 6 other ... brain docs, to kick around what they may find and what to do about it. They basically came up with the same thing that the last set of docs came up with about 30 years ago when this all started, they decided that it did not fit into any box, no disease that is on the books, .... my wife is... unique but I could have told them that from the start! The operated this morning and the surgery took about two hours. They started by drilling a hole (yet another hole) in her head as she did not have anything already predrilled where they wanted to have access. This cyst is a new one from any of the others she has from before, it was about 6 cm in dia and if I have my conversion factor right (or if I used the correct metric unit to start with) it was about 2.5 inches across (growing in the center of the brain) When they got inside, they found some necrotic tissue (dead tissue of some sort) that was attached to the wall of the cyst and they were sure that the tissue was the reason for this cyst. To get access to the tissue, they needed a bigger access point so they made the hole in her head even bigger. They removed the tissue but due to the size of the cyst, if they removed it or made it too small too fast, they were afraid of causing the blood vessels that in part tie the brain to the inside of the skull to rupture and bleed. So they decided to place a tube into the cyst and now she has it sticking out the left front top of the head. It is routed up and around so that gravity will not drain the fluid which is maintaining the shape of the cyst inside the brain matter thus preventing the tearing and bleeding. The tube is open though (measures to maintain sterility are in place) so pressure can vent. We saw her about an hour after the end of surgery and she was just getting settled into the intensive care unit. She was still kind of out of things due to the surgery but we could see an improvement in her talking and movement. So things are looking up, I will be going back early in the morning to see her and spend most of the day there. Today we (my son and I ) only stayed about an hour with her after she left the OR. I felt that even though, it was comforting to her to have us there, she would get more rest if we left. Tomorrow, after things have settled we will know more. It will take time to know the result of todays surgery but we do know that without it, .... well the outcome was not good. Thanks again for everyone here, the support is more valuable than sometimes we know when a post of support is made, I know often I will add a comment to a thread like this, feeling like I wish I could do more but knowing that prayer is all I can do. It all helps guys, it all helps.

Ok we just spoke to the doc . They removed what was thought to have caused this cyst but left the cyst its self as it was so large it was needed to prevent excessive movement of the brain. There is a drain tube installed and she will be in ICU for a few days but it is looking good at the moment! Thank you all for the support, prayers work and we had a lot of support both here and in at church and from family and their churches.

Thanks everyone. Right now we are 2 hours into the surgery but it should be done soon. There was a good positive result just with the. Antiinflamitory she got in preperation for surgery so we have good hopes of a positive outcome of the surgery which the point of is to reduce pressure in her head. Well, back to waiting for the doc to finish

The issue seems to be tied to the sat/tv setup. I looked at everyrhing and came up with a soultion, but it is a work around and not the source. Everything is now fed to the tv via hdmi. There is a tosslink out on the tv so I bought an inexpensive dac that takes. Tosslink in and rca out. As there is no metal connection to the audio system, the groundloop is not made. There is no problem with the tv_sat_ps3_xbox_computer network. I still get digital audio throuth the whole network up until the conversion right before the preamp. The system is now dead quiet

I am not so sure that there is that much distortion from a Cornwall! It is manly the chest thump I am missing, that may improve with sealing though. Now to get back to them. I did disconnect the TV completely and that cured the hum, I was afraid that I had lost a filter cap in one of the amps but now it is all good, at least with the hum anyway

Well, that is a choice I did not need to make but I have heard that the pre has more of an affect tube sound wise than the amp does provided that you have a qualified ty amp to back it up,

Thanks guys, today is looking better, a good rest is what I needed. I hate it when the long post that took forever to type gets lost when you hit the post button! Oh well it saved you all a sappy post, you are luckyl

Short history. For 30 years my wife has had medical issues and we have just lived with it. Since just before Christmas, she started going down hill. She has several Cysts and calcium deposits in the brain. It has been the trigger for seizures when this all started and has been under control for the last 20 plus years. Around Christmas, she started loosing the ability to speak, she could say words but not the ones she wanted to say, they were all mixed up. Then as the weeks passed, she started to loose her balance and for the last 3 weeks she has been bed bound. About 5 or 6 weeks ago, we started the process of getting the doctors involved, doctor appointments were made and after several of them, today was supposed to be just one more. We saw the doctor today and he admitted her to the hospital straight from his office. We spent since 9 am until after 8 pm with all the things needed to get into the hospital and ready for surgery. She is having more tests, likely as I type this in prep for tomorrow mornings surgery. Then the long drive home and early I will need to get up to go back and start over again. She has had one cyst triple in size since the last MRI scans 2 years ago. There is no cure and there isn't even a name for what she has so we just do things day by day. This will be something like her 12th brain surgery since this has all started. Thank the Lord for good insurance Boeing provides. Anyway, that is what I did today, the comments about the new Khorns took a lot of the load off of the day, it gave me nice things to think about to break up the day. I did not mean to be a bummer, sorry, it has just been a long day. A better one awaits tomorrow I am sure!

All, thanks for the comments, support and pics! At the end of a really long day for me, I sit here listening to the Khorns and I am wondering what I was talking about with the lack of bass comment, it is there for sure, different but there, it will be better I am sure when I get them sealed into the corners though I wish I could figure out where the 60 cycle hum is coming from, it just showed up, there is something too with the dish network unit, if I plug the HDMI calbe into it leading to the TV, BAM 60 cycle hum which is odd as it runs on a wall wart transformer and is a low voltage. It does it in the HT too, different unit but the same hum. ODD! I will start a new thread about today and how it was a long day. I do not want to mess up this thread

Eric, I just sent you my contact info. Schu, I agree about the xovers. At the least I was going to order a rebuild kit from Bob Crites and likely upgrade them at the same time. I think I would be honking too if I saw them moving to a new home myself KfancF4 thanks for the link, that made it so much easier to understand what I need to do to seal them Tom, well, I started with Linda Ronstadts Your no good followed by Silver Bells and Golden needles as they were the first and second songs I ever heard on Khorns way back in'77, tradition I guess then I moved to Eagles Hotel cal on the hell freezes over album. then it gets a. Bit fuzzy some light Jazz. This morning was the whole Hell freezes over CD at a lower level though. Claude thanks I am pretty jazzed about them!

Good morning all RL according to the posted code, is Rosewood Laquer. IKD but just two days ago, I made a tool for my son out of Brazilian rosewood that I know for a fact is BR. The faces of the bins look as if they were pealed off the same log of wood as my known sample of BR, so IDK but that is close enough for me :~ As it is still morning, they are playing low, Hell freezes over by the Eagles, they are sounding much more balanced than they did last night at higher volume. They still can stand to move a little further into bass but it is much better so as mentioned above, dropping the mids/highs by a few DB seems to be a lot of the answer. OK, just exactly what part of the backs need to be sealed? FZN mentioned the tail boards, is that pretty much it or is there more to it? It is indeed a different bass than the direct radiator, I suppose I am mostly missing the chest thump of the Cornwalls. Thanks everyone for your kind comments, at last I am "part of the club" of horn bass owners, all of my other speakers are DR and I love them, these new horns are fitting in very well. I suppose my bass question is similar to the new owners of say Forte or Heresy speakers, looking for the full sound they know that are in the speakers but do not know how to set them up properly. So to make a comment that may be posted by one of them, they sound great now and I am sure they will be even better when properly setup. A comment about last night, my son who has KG5.5s driven by a Dennon AVR (I made sure that his "room speakers" in the navy would be top-O-the heap) so he knows what sounds good. He has been out for about 2 months now, and as his room here at home is smaller than the room he had in the navy, his setup is in storage. Anyway, he had some digital music recorded to his phone that he wanted to hear, the car system hid all the defects, the Khorns just caused him to have a headache! Seriously, after he listened to most of what he wanted, it was so poor, he just stopped listening and went to his room to recover! (it was pretty bad, the mids were really distorted and confused) He made the comment that now he needs to find better recordings! OK, so just what exact parts need to be sealed? Sorry for the "dumb" question from someone who has been here a few years :~

I am going to bed after a long day, looking at my "new" K horns, I just realized, they are not only sequential Rosewood, ... THEY ARE BOOKMATCHED! I did not think it could get any better, but it just did!

John, YES, THANKS That is exactly what I could not remember how to find That means these are from 1978, one year after I first heard the awesomeness of the Khorn and was drooling over them! Then they were powered by a Mac 225 and the sound was awesome! I have the 12,734 and 12,735 Khorns produced in Brazilian Rosewood, STUNNING Brazilian Rosewood I may add. holtrp, yes I think you have the answer. It would be much easier to just build the wall out an inch of so that is needed under the sill. I may try the pipe insulation behind both speakers to keep them even first, it will only be a few dollars and it is easy to do. I will check the woofer drivers but the obvious care these speakers have had have me doubting that they will be altered. For sure I know the caps need to be freshened up and the mids and highs dropped a bit, that alone may do it. There IS bass and when the bass is the main sound, it is nice indeed, it tends to get lost in the mids and highs though with a more rounded and full sound.

Yes, I did not even see her there. She is an old girl at about 13.5 years so her hips are bad and she is on anti inflamitory and pain killer meds but she is a happy girl. We just picked up a Akita mix, young adult. I don't know what he is mixed with but he looks like an Akita but is on the thin side and he is the most people minded dog I think I have EVER had, of ANY breed!

Thanks, caps are easy and not all that expensive in the large picture. At a Klipsch gathering in SoCal several years ago, I remember that the mids/highs were adjusted, it was something to do with which jumper went where in the crossover? I have never played with them before so I will soak up all the advice the more wise in the ways of the crossover, have

One more pic of the Xover. The last owner babied these speakers, there was not a spec of dust anyplace not even in the corner of the upper box UH, I long ago lost the link to serial numbers and manufacture dates, does anyone have it handy ? Thanks!

New to me K horns in the house !!! After 37 years, I have a pair of Bs, my favorite model, in the house Eric, Thanks SOOOOOO much! For those who don't know from my other thread in agony waiting for reply, babadono, or Eric, a forum member from south of me, noticed my email from my own add I took out for the Khorns as the seller was not answering emails about the speakers. Anyway Eric and I talked a while and had a very nice chat and he said he would step aside as he was looking at them too and as he did have a pair and I did not, he bowed out, ever so kindly. They sure are R L, rosewood lacquer ! There are a few small chips and dents on em but nothing that is not seen from a few feet away if you don't know where to look! The man I bought them from was the second owner so I am the third. They have been through 2 wives with the second owner who has moved to Riverside. They were in storage since last November. The seller had thought that he was replying but his emails were not making it out through Craigs list. I got an email from him on Friday night and at about 12:30 am he had opened up inspection for sale to the 5 people who had responded to his add. I did not see my email until SUNDAY at about noon due to a medical issue with my wife. A whole day and a half, with no reply from me, I was sure I had lost them I called him and got voice mail (not a good thing) and emailed to the address he wanted me to. I was not too hopeful but I kept on trying and about an hour after my call to him, he called me back!! He had been out working with the plants in the yard and did not hear the phone. An hour later, we were standing in front of them at the storage yard. I took a generator, extension cord and a HK Reciever to just make sure all the drivers were working, there was no way that they were going to sound wonderful in the open but it was enough to hear all the drivers working. Now for the problem, It is Sunday, though I have 3 bank accounts that had money and I had MORE than plenty to cover the purchase, ATMs will only let you take so much money out at a time. He was not too happy about taking half the money and finishing tomorrow but he followed me to the bank across the street. I took out $1500 from my 3 accounts and my son thought for a second and realized he could tap his accounts for the remaining $400 and so we had enough cash! The seller was happy, I was happy, my son was happy to help and we exchanged cash, now the next guy who was due to arrive in an hour to look at them would NOT be happy!! The speakers were loaded and the whole 15 miles back home were crossed without event. I took out the Cornwalls from my 2ch/den and made room for the Khorns The left fit in without any issue but the Right one has a window that has a sill about the center of the top end cab so it will not go back into the corner all the way. I am powering them through my VTL ultimate tube preamp into my Sonic Frontiers power amp, a ~ 50 wpc push pull 6550 based unit. Now for the down part.... Where is the bass ? I am used to the Cornwalls but with the Khorns, I feel like I need to reach for the bass knob... which I do not have! I know they are not sealed in the corners and with some guidance from the board, I will be happy to do it. I may need to make a false corner for the right speaker if I can't get a seal on the bass bin, it is about 1 inch away from the wall. I have heard other Khorns and I solidly remember being blown away by them in 1977 when I heard my first pair of horns so I know it must be in my setup. The mids an high end are sold but sadly the bass is only half there. I did double check, the speakers ARE in phase and I had plenty of bass with the Cornwalls so, ...... HELP? ANYONE?

OK, I am trusting you are right!

I just ordered them a few days ago and noticed that they are the on the ear model, I much prefer an over the ear cup, As they are on the discontinue blow out deal, there is no going back but the price was great at $69 shipped, http://www.amazon.com/Klipsch-Image-On-Ear-Stereo-Headphones/dp/B00ELJO14C/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_y Anyway, my son has what I think are the V2 image ones with the over the ear cups, the ones I have coming are white and his are black/copper. Are his pads available as a replacement part and will it swap with mine? Are there over the ear cups for mine? I have no issue with paying the normal price for them if they are available. Help anyone?

I ordered mine last week, they should be here soon. The only thing I am bummed about is that I prefer Over the ear rather than ON the ear I ordered them before I noticed the difference. Mine are the white ones, does the cushion from the NEW V 2 fit over the ear and is it interchangeable or is there a way to get the cushion from parts? Mod help ???

In 9 days it will by my 10 year anaversery on the board! Time passes way too fast! Do I get a BS button or something? JK

Well, not so much about sounding better but I had to put in adjustable attinuator on the output of my preamp to move the volume knob above about 3.5. It seems the first owner of it (VTL Ultamate pre) had the same issue and the volume knob actually gets stiffer at that point, it seems to be well worn, now I play it at about 5 but lower the signal a little on the way out.

The Crites Ti tweeters make a big difference to, They seem to add a whole 'nuther layer to the high end, to remove the blanket so to speak. I have them on my Cornwalls, Fort'e, Quartets and in my Sons KG 5.5s. They are a very inexpensive but substantial upgrade.