Def Leper

Since most of the music DVD's seem to be of live concerts, I'm not very enthusiastic about them from a musical sense. Generally the recordings are marginal to poor compared to good studio recordings and with many groups (like Rush) the live aspect means that the usual layering done in the studio by the musicians (one performer laying down multiple tracks and vocals) is not possible. Sometimes the actual music release happens to be a live performance anyway (Talking Heads from Stop Making Sense) so you get the same musical performance plus the visuals but often the live performances are not as polished or full as the studio work. In addition, some of the performances (especially older concerts like Queen) are produced and filmed/video'd in a way that is just plain crude and/or distracting by today's standards. Others, like the Doors, are of such poor performances that I'm wondering why the producers simply didn't take the band out back and put them (and us) out of our collective misery. On the plus side, there are some shows (like the recent "Cher's Farewell Tour) that really have first class production and good visuals and sound. So for me, it's a mixed bag, and I do tend to avoid concert DVD's unless I can audition them first.

Think of the housing market as a strange version of ebay. Problem is that 80% or more of the lookers are BS who can't afford the house in the first place or are 'get rich quick program' suckers looking for a sacrifice sale. What you've done is prove that you are serious about buying and will get successfully get through the financing process. Pain in the butt, yes, but gives you a lot more 'zing' when the seller considers your offer. Last time I bought a house, I had a pre-approved mortgage and a 50% cash downpayment tendered by draft with the offer. It was accepted over several others and my offer was the lowest of all the offers. Why was it accepted? The seller had gone through several potential buyers who tendered offers but could not complete the sale. Sometimes reliability is better than a higher price.

Never have so many worked so hard to produce so little. Good illustration of what Limeys on the dole do for fun, though. []

For me, it's all about enjoying my music and nothing more. I can't think of anything sadder than someone with a "best of everything" sound system who can't hear anything more than "resolving power, transparency, and dynamics." The average listener probably needs far less than any of us own to enjoy a quality listening experience and equating that to a mountain ascension needs to turn the oxygen a bit higher. Usually the pursuit of "best" is a hollow one, and really just an excuse to say "I'm better than you are" because of what I own.

Too cold. They all moved to CA to enjoy the sunshine, beach and thongs. [] LOL. Don't forget other California regional treats like overpopulaton, droughts, firestorms, torrential rains, mudslides, landslides, earthquakes, tsunami's, 2-hour commutes in some of the heaviest air pollution in the world, 1500 sq. foot homes built on a slab for only $400,000, some of the highest tax rates in the country, and freeway shooters. Here in Michigan we don't get quite as much sunshine but we sure have more beaches (second longest coastline in America, 3288 miles verus CA's puny 840 miles), some very beautiful ladies, as well as thousands of wonderful lakes (11,000), beautiful forests, some real serious camping, hunting and fishing, and even some smaller-scale mountains with world-class wilderness areas. Of course, we don't have Gov. Arnold, Paulie Shore, and the world's largest supply of fruits and nuts, but then you can't have everything. []

Since I'm a vinyl guy too, they can try. Young people who are used to listening to CD's on solid state equipment usually need to take some time listening to vinyl to get used to the overall sound before they can start hearing some of the more subtle differences. Part of the problem, too, is that so much of the vinyl is used and you have no idea how it was played before, and I often end up with used records that have been damaged by the previous user. The biggest danger is that someone new to vinyl will think that they need to spend $10,000 for a high end turntable and cartridge. LP's are just like CD's-- The source material ranges from crap to crystal with a strong emphasis on the crap side, and much of the sport is finding good source material.

My Adcom stuff sounds great with my Cornwalls. Note that my preamp doesn't have a phono preamp, so I'm running an aftermarket outboard preamp, so I can't vouch for their phono preamps. I don't like my amp's turn on and turn off transients, so I unplug the speakers when turning it on or off.

It produces a tremolo effect. You've probably heard it hundreds of times if you listen to classic rock. The Hammond B3 was a staple of rock bands and you often hear the Leslie effect that this Khorn tries to emulate. The Leslie speaker was the most effective though, with a 360-degree rotating horn pair on the upper frequency speaker and a separate low frequency speaker. The rotating horn could be turned on an off during the performance for a unique effect. Here's an online article about Leslies on a hammond web site: http://b3world.com/leslie.html

If you've been listening to digital sources and switch over to LP's, they do tend to sound flat. That's because compared to most CD's, they have a limited frequency range and tend to roll off the high end. That isn't necessarily bad, it's just a difference you need to be aware of when you start listening.

What really cracks me up about these half-baked conspiracy theories is that ebay has such a limited staff that they can't even offer a rudimentory support system, and yet they have time to create and conduct fake auctions to hump up final auction values on a few of the millions of items that appear weekly on ebay, and even items that are relatively rare like Khorns. When you've got about $500,000,000 worth of cars on auction at any given time, what is two or three pair of Khorns a month? Ridiculous......and pure internet circus of the absurd.

We are truly living in the age of DEVO, where everything is dumbing down and becoming a thick emulsion of stinking crud covering the planet. No doubt a meteor will come down eventually and clean it off.

Yep, used as a leslie speaker for an organ. A screwdriver, wrench and a few minutes work with bondo and sandpaper should yield a normal Khorn.

You're just lucky that I didn't show up and do my Beethoven's Fifth duet with both ends of my digestive tract at the same time........and bring my collection of Enoch Light and the Light Brigade greatest non hits in SQ quadraphonic. [&]

Since we seem to be waxing nostalgic today, Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band Greatest Hits MOR Rock Classics

By happenstance, my new Sony 400-disk DVD player for the home theater system is an SACD player. That got me looking at SACD source material, and that is the rub. Frankly, I walked away disgusted that the bulk of the material was just remixed old stuff. How many copies of "Dark Side of the Moon" or "Tommy" does one need? Ditto for DVD audio. When I look at new releases that I'm interested in buying, I simply don't see them on these formats. I've actually picked up more material on the Dualdisk format, which seems to have much more penetration in the new release section, such as the new Bette Midler Peggy Lee songbook. I also have very few regular DVD music disks, which almost always tend to be concert videos. Since I'm most interested in the recording and performance quality, concert performances generally come in at the bottom of the barrel for me. So, before spending extra money for an SACD player, look at what media is available where you normally buy your music. I suspect you'll be very disappointed as I was.

Neil, you want to go halfsies on the Silverdome? It's up for sale again and five or six sets of these would make a cracking surround sound system for watching movies on the domevision system. They'd also look good in the background at a monster truck rally. []

Yeah, I know what you mean about theaters. I almost walked out in the middle of The War of the Worlds because the theater had cranked down the voltage on the bulb and the picture was so murky it was almost unwatchable. After getting the DVD, I realized just how much, since huge blocks of the scenes are so burned out that there are no highlights, but in the theater they were gray. Add to the the usual gang of Druids with cell phones, and even a pair that seemed to be roasting a skunk carcass. Also, a somewhat rare beast these days, a guy who decided to light up. I told the gum-popping manager of the Star Theater that I wouldn't be back. He said he didn't care. We enjoyed the showing of the latest Harry Potter but at a different theater. We went back to the same theater for King Kong, and once again got to enjoy several renditions of moronic ring tones that fairly shout "I'm a moron" and the druids were there too. (Only eating some strange form of cheese this time, or perhaps French-fried goodyear tires.) Sure makes it more desireable to sit down in front of the 53", which actually tends to have a better sound and picture these days than the theater, and the only Druids in the place are us.

Since Klipsch made so many of these designs over many years, there are lots of variations, inside and out. The older they are, they more valuable they seem to be, and original condition seems to be very important. Some of the variants, like the vertical Cornwall seem a bit more collectible. However, the 1970's and 1980's seem to be the peak of Klipsch production of these products, and I'm not sure there is anything you can do to recondition them that will hurt the value. They don't have any interest for collectors, the average speaker buyer isn't sophisticated or smart enough to pay a reasonable price for them, and any hifi enthusiast will consider your efforts to bring the speakers into better playing condition to be of value at resale.

Yeah, I think the price is highly optimistic, but it's a common practice with this kind of thing and is a dodge to evade ebay fees. The seller will get inquiries from serious collectors/purchasers and the item will go unsold on ebay, with the deal happening privately. What would be a realistic price for this combo? $8,000 - $9,000 ?

Do any of you folks read TOS before you agree to them? I can't figure out why a company that can help recover most of your funds after a fraud occurs is evil or sucks. I'd be happy to pay the service fee in such a case, but then that's me. I sure think both ebay and paypal can do a tremendous amount ot improve the way they do business, but these are essentially Borg outfits, which consist of big computers that are serviced by human drones. When you deal with a computer, you do it the computer's way. If you don't want to do it that way, you should not use the service. Read the TOS and if you don't agree with their policies, DON"T USE THEIR SERVICES. Ranting about it on some third-party forum is a waste of bandwidth and a rude intrusion on people who are here to talk about Klipsch.

$1800 seems like a great deal for a set this new. Wonder why nobody has grabbed it yet?

Wow, nice set on ebay right now-- '59 Khorn set with center speaker, all in original condition, and was set up in the owner's living room by PWK himself. Too bad the room (designed with PWK's input) doesn't go with the speakers. http://cgi.ebay.com/KLIPSCH-3pc-KLIPSCHORN-K-357-KHORN-1959-K-5-HORNS_W0QQitemZ5871387148QQcategoryZ61378QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I agree with with the crossover suggestion. I had Bob Crites rebuild my '84 Cornwall B-3 crossovers and the lower midrange really tightened up, noticeably at lower volume levels.

And the irony being that many of us can find these scammers so easily, and ebay can't? There's something rotten in Denmark, I think.

Sorry I couldn't attach a sketch, you're simply not following me on this. Anything I mentioned would sit on top of the speakers, not in front of or surrounding them, and would have the same outline as the top plate. Since the top plate meets the walls all the way back into the corner, nothing you can sit on top of the speaker can have any effect on the sound. The doctored photo below is exaggerated a bit, the screens wouldn't need to be much taller than 12"-- Just high enough to block those hands with cups in them. The frames with grille cloth would simply sit on top of the speaker and continue the speaker's footprint upwards, hiding the flat, tempting surface. As you note, they should be acoustically transparent, but this has no bearing on anything since there is no acoustic path above the top plate anyway. Another method to protect the speakers is to rent some stanchions and ropes from a party rental service, and simply rope off the corners.