rborder

If you do put rollers under them, just be sure to support the side/back panels, not just the bottom. The joints between the bottom and vertical panels really aren't deisgned to take the shear load required to support the speaker. My LaScala's required major repairs in this area from a roller installation done by the previous owner.

Hole for K55 driver is covered with clear acrylic. Look close at the pic, you'll see it there, secured with 6 screws w/ rubber washers. Ports are pretty well locked in at 10". Although, they're secured only to the access panel (the one with the acrylic and banana plugs), and if I really got curious, it wouldn't be too hard to fab up some new panels with different length ports.

Hmmm- well I can give you one good report :-) After I purchased my CP-1's, I went amp shopping. I bet I home demo'd at least (I'm not kidding) 15 different amplifiers. My #1 choice was a Counterpoint SA-2 tube amp. I'd still think about buying one of those if the right deal came along. But, a very very close #2 was the Crown PSA-2. Since then, I've hooked up various other gear- Yamaha, Perreux, Hafler, even McIntosh, and I really haven't found anything that I like as much. I remember when I got my Heresy's, I first hooked them up to my Hafler DH220... it was so bad, that I honestly thought something might be wrong with the speakers. I will concur that the horn loaded Klipsch speakers are almost hyper-sensitive to the gear hooked up to them- to some degree I think that's why they get a bad rap in some circles... people just haven't heard them hooked up to the right gear. I should also mention that I've tried newer Crown amps; and haven't been very happy with how they've mated up. Though I keep my eyes open for a MicroTech 2400 sub-amp :-) I do occasionally appreciate the dynamic headroom available with 915W @8 ohms too. I like the PSA-2 so much for these speakers that I now own 7 of them. I do recognize that just because they were the right amp for my Cornwalls (and I like what they do for my Heresy's) there is a possibility that I would have made a different choice if I was amp shopping for the LaScalas.

> How does it sound? I guess I have to reference it against my Cornwalls (CP-1)'s. First I'll say that I continue to be surprised at how different the two speakers are. I almost bought pro LaScala's when I bought my Cornwalls- the 3 factors that steered me to the Cornwalls were price, space, and the low low bass response. I don't recall the difference between the 2 models being so dramatic. Next, I should probably tell you what I'm driving them with: I am using a Crown PSA-2, with an Outlaw 990 pre/pro. Compared to the Cornwalls, there is a definite improvement in what I'd call the "clarity". There's music I've had, and listened to for years- in which I honestly hear small details I've never heard before. The LaScala's are definitely more "in your face". In a review I read, the writer described listening to a saxaphone, and getting wet from the spit coming out of his speakers- that's about the best way to put it. The bass is tighter on the LaScala's. Sometimes it seems like I hear it more on the Cornwalls, but feel it more with the LaScala's. It seems like the "upper bass" is a little more prominent on the LaScala's. I think my LaScala's can reach just as low as my Cornwalls, which I attribute, in part, to the cabinet mods I made. My wife hears what she describes as a "raspi'ness" on the LaScala's. Upper range vocals seem to bring it out the worst. I don't really hear it, but on some tracks it drives her nuts. I suspect it may be the squawker/tweeter collision that I've read about with the type A crossover. To be honest, if I leave these where they're at, as the mains in my home theater, I am considering an eventual crossover upgrade.

I paid $400 for the lot; but it included that big subwoofer cabinet, and the (about 200ft, heavy) cable. So, I'll call it $300 for the LaScala's, and $100 for everything else. $100 for good used k77's, ~$50 for paint, $30 for the logo's, $30 for handles, $20 for rubber feet, $30 on lumber, $12 on acrylic, $10 on hardware (screws, wires, and such). Adds up to somewhere just under $600. Plus it was kind of a fun little project. For <$600, I think they'd be hard to replace. I certainly wouldn't sell them for that ;-)

"1st time" was just a reference to my 1st attempt to post the pictures. After putting up with a horrible web interface, and accepting they were going to put ads on my page, geocities shut my site down for bandwidth, after about 10 people looked at it :-(.

Well, since Geocities shut my site down after about 10 viewings, I'll try this again, with embedded image-shack URL's... Rebuilding/Mod'ing an old pair of Klipsch LaScala speakers I've been a fan of the old Klipsch Speakers for a long time. I have owned a pair of CP-1's (pro Cornwalls) for over 20 years now. Not too long ago, I picked up 4 Heresy HIP's (the pro versions) which are now the center and surround speakers in my home system. I've been keeping my eye on ebay, looking for 2 more similar speakers to complete the system (speakers 6 and 7 in my 7.1 system). Shipping is always expensive on these things, and so I often sort my searches by "distance"; and one day at the top of the list, popped up an old pair of LaScala's, about 15 minutes from my house. Here are the actual pictures, taken by the seller, from the auction: The good news was: yes, they are indeed Klipsch LaScala's. They're the Auditorium & Theatre version (sort of going along with my "pro" theme), consecutive serial numbers- 1F291, and 1F292. I brought a receiver with me, along with my ipod to test basic functionality. Acoustics were horrible in the shop- and they really didn't want me to turn them up in the store. But I could at least tell they made noise. I arranged to come back later in the evening to test them with a bit of volume. They came with a big subwoofer box (more on that later) and some long runs of heavy speaker wire. There was bad news too. Cabinets had obviously led a very hard life. Lots of damage. Tops were beyond repair, and just needed to be replaced. Joints at bottom were broken. Many (bad) chips at front of plywood edges. Further testing that evening confirmed that the tweeters were not operational. There were amateur covers over the access holes on the back and I wasn't able to open the speakers to check much inside. I was optimistically thinking perhaps they'd just been disconnected for DJ use (I've seen some speakers with this done). I was able to run them hard enough in the shop to confirm the horns and woofers seemed to be working pretty well, and so a deal was struck: $400 for all. I took them home the next day First thing to check was the tweeters, and I'm sure most of you have guessed by now that they were simply blown. Another visit to e-bay, and I had a new set of K-77's; which the seller had removed for an upgrade to his LaScala's. I wired them into mine, just sitting up on top, and the high end woke right up. So much so, that I started to question the bass on the speakers- something was really not right with one of them. But I now knew the dead tweeters were not the result of a damaged crossover (was fairly confident that would be the case from some reading I did about K-77's and the Type-A cross-overs), and so I decided to just take the plunge and fix 'em up. Disassembly yielded the probable root cause of the bass problem. The woofer in question was laying down in the bottom of the dog-house; not connected to the horn structure in any way. Additionally, there was a fair amount of hay in there sharing the space. My guess is that the original woofer failed. I've heard of burning out a driver, but never quite so literally... I don't know what exactly was the cause of the fire; but it seems to have been contained by the woofer surface. When it was replaced (thankfully, with a real K-33), the technician used wood screws rather than utilizing the factory T-nuts. I know this, because I found them stuck to the woofer magnet. It was obvious that the speakers had been abused/dropped, so it's not surprising small wood screws failed to support the weight of the woofer. I actually took this all to be very good news- I had found a very plausible, and easy to fix cause for the questionable bass performance I had heard. After disassembly, the next thing to do was repair the structural problems. The speaker in this picture is going through 3 repairs The big pipe clamp is holding one of the bottom joints near the front which has been repositioned, glued, and set with brads. The 3 C-clamps are holding a section of plywood which partially delaminated (I think it got wet) The big 6X6 on the back is being used to re-set a back corner. There is a threaded rod running through it, and through the bottom of the speaker. On the underside is a steel plate I fabricated which is squeezing the plywood (up against the 6X6); so as to pull it back flush with the side and back panels; where it too was glued, and re-nailed. Much of the cabinet damage can be attributed to the wheels which were attached to the bottom of the speakers. They were bolted to the flat panel only, and the joints of the cabinet were clearly not designed to take the resulting shear load. The speakers had small (factory) feet in the corners, but they were carefully placed to support the vertical boards. This, by the way, was the better of the 2 cabinets. Other damage included various holes which needed to be filled (drilled them out, and glued in dowel). Stripped holes where the horns mounted (again: drilled, glued in dowels, and then drilled fresh holes the right size), missing plywood where it was chipped (filled with filler, and in the worst cases, fiberglass re-enforced bondo), etc. Along the way, I was doing a little reading in the Klipsch Forums about possible modifications to the LaScala. With cabinets in such rough shape, I really had no fear about hurting them, and so I decided to do a couple of them. Most significantly, I decided to do the upper bass box mod, described here: http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/thread/259793.aspx. So, what follows are a few pictures of this modification, actually done to a set of LaScala's. Mine are old- meaning top loaded woofer- so the procedure would be a little different with a newer set. First step was to frame in the opening on the back of the speaker. We're going to cover this hole, and need something to attach the cover to. Be sure that you leave an opening big enough to get the front of the squawker horn though; there was very little room to spare on mine. My goal was to make a cover which would be, for the most part, flush with the back of the speaker. It would probably be simpler to put an external cover over the existing hole- but I was trying to keep the installation as clean as possible. So, here is the cover, along with the 10" ports. Note that there needs to be a 3rd hole cut for the K55 driver, since the back of it is almost flush with the LaScala cabinet. Don't worry, it will be sealed up... I have also added some (Radio Shack) banana plug adaptors to these covers. Next, since I planned on affixing permanent tops to these speakers, I needed to open up the bottom of the dog-house. This is a new hole, the old LaScala's have solid bottoms. The bondo and putty party commenced: http://img481.imageshack.us/img481/5555/puttyna0.th.jpg Since I'm going for a pro painted look, I added holes for handles, and used a router to put a clean round edge on most of the corners. Before gluing and nailing the new tops on, I did a few final checks to make sure everything was going to fit: http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/489/testfityr8.th.jpg As you can see, I relocated the cross-over to the side of the upper chamber. Originally, it was on the large panel which closed up the dog-house. Rather than remove the components, I just cut the old panel down. Likewise, much of the lumber used for my new internal parts was recycled from the old tops which I was replacing. And here's one of them all together. New top. New base. New braces between the doghouse and side-panels: http://img481.imageshack.us/img481/6292/togethervg0.th.jpg It's going through the final stages of putty and sanding here, which is the final step before... Set-up (a lot of cleaning): http://img481.imageshack.us/img481/1295/setupfr0.th.jpg Texture: http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/5109/texturecy2.th.jpg Primer: http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/4541/primebv5.th.jpg Details, Details, Details Remember, I said I had a plan for that hole required to accomodate the K55 driver? http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/4346/caprq2.th.jpg Another Ebay find- some vintage Klipsch handles. These needed some work too- I ended up really sanding them down, removing gouges, scratches, paint, etc.- before pouring a new layer of resin over them, and repainting. All in all, I'm really happy with how they turned out. http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/3492/handlekb7.th.jpg They really do look better than this... tough to take a picture of something that's all black. Some nice heavy duty rubber feet from Parts Express: http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/2677/feetwk4.th.jpg 5 feet for each speaker . Of course I needed a pair of Klipsch logo's which would match the rest of my speakers. These white-on-black, screw-on version are getting awfully hard to find. Even though I live in the central US, really not all that far from Hope, AK, these were found in Istanbul, Turkey. http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/8151/logogx6.th.jpg (ain't the internet great?) Drum Roll... Here they finally are, installed in my little home theater room: http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/2302/theatersb8.th.jpg If you look close and reference the very first picture up at the top of this page, you might just recognize that little coffee table / foot rest. It's the sub that came with the speakers, which I refurbished at the same time as the LaScala's. It's now sportin a JBL 2226H inside. It came with an EVM-15L (a 300W driver) which I inadvertently annihilated with about 1400W of power when I first tried to test it to "see what it could do". In this configuration, we simply refer to it as the butt shaker.

Doh! I really hate geocities. Apparently my bandwidth was quickly exceeded. Sorry guys. Maybe I'll try again, uploading the pictures directly to the forum... This should take you to the new version: http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/thread/854081.aspx Ryan.

I recently refubished an old set of LaScala's, and while I was at it, did the upper bass bin mod I saw described here on the forums. Though I found plans and discussions of this mod, I didn't find any actual pictures of speakers it had been done to, or of the actual modifications themselves. So, I thought I'd post a few :-) Point ye browsers at: http://www.geocities.com/ryan_border/lascala/rescue.html I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'd say these things reach down as low as my Cornwall's (CP-1's), but they still have that tight bass LaScala's are famous for. Cheers- Ryan.

My CP-1's each have 2 fuses at the input panel; a 1.5 amp, and a 3 amp. I've never cracked them open to see what's hooked up to what. I'm guessing that the 1.5 amp is in-line with the tweeter, and the 3 amp fuse is inline with the squaker. Would this be correct? Would this be an appropriate way to fuse the LaScala's with the type A crossover? Thanks- Ryan.

I recently picked up some old LaScala's (type K-447). They've lived a very hard life, but I think I can resurrect them [] They have the original type A crossover. When I got them, both tweeters were totally blown. I picked up some replacement K-77 tweeters on ebay, have tested them, and they seem to be working great. My understanding is that the later crossovers (type AA) offered better protection for the fragile tweeters. In car-audio applications, I've installed capacitors in-line with the tweeter speaker wire to protect them. I am wondering if doing the same on these speakers would: A) protect the tweeters degrade the sound quality And, if I was to do so, wonder what frequency cut-off would be appropriate. I know that replacing/upgrading the cross-overs would probably be a cleaner way to go, but it would also be a lot more cost effective if I can just add a cap. When I get them done, I plan to treat these speakers with much more care than their previous owner(s)- but I've seen enough speakers with damage to think it might be worth while to add a little protection if it's not too hard. While I have these torn apart for rebuilding, I may do the bass-bin mod, but I'll save those questions for another thread. Thanks- Ryan. CP-1 (pro cornwalls), Heresy HIP (pro heresy's) 2 sets, Theater LaScala (new toys)

Bridged, my center amp is 915w (Crown PSA-2) into 8 ohms. Into 4, I think it's near 1400w. I think it will be enough [], will just have to reset the gain adjustments, at the pre-amp, to re-balance everything.

Hello- Quick question. I am using 2 Heresy HIP's as the center channel in my home theater. Right now, I am taking the mono center channel, splitting it upstream of a stereo amp, and then running them in "stereo". My amp is bridgeable. So, it seems like a cleaner way to go, might be to bridge the amp, feed it the mono center channel signal, and then used the bridged amp to drive both speakers with the same signal. Is the right way to do this to just piggy-back the banana plugs, at the speaker) and run the speakers in parallel? What is the impedance (they're 8 ohm speakers) that the amp would see (4 ohms?). I've got the exact same situation with my subwoofer... Thanks-

Well, this started out as a technical question about differences between commercial and consumer gear, and some technical questions about paint/finish techniques, so I'll finish it here... even though it probably belongs in either: The photo gallery, The HomeTheater Group, or The Commercial Audio group. Here's how the Heresy's finally turned out: Like I mentioned earlier, texture is a just a bit heavier than what is on the CP1's, but is quite similar to some other Heresy's I've seen. Paint is a bit more glossy too; but I think with a little time/dust/wear, that will even out. That's obviously my CP1 beside them. I figured this was about the only way to have a center channel that wouldn't be totally dominated by my main speakers. For a little perspective: The 3rd Heresy, over in the corner is the right side channel. Plan is to hang it, up near the ceiling, probably on it's side again. There is, of course, another one over on the left side, out of view from this angle. Still have lot's of work to do with this setup, but speaker wise, I'm just about set. Those 2 chairs over in the corner are really just spare's; not a position that's at all optimized for viewing/listening to movies. On the plus side, that 3rd Heresy is sitting on top of my big (homebuilt) subwoofer right now, so that corner of the room gets the maximum shaker effect :-). There are 2 little KG1.2's in the rear of the room; those are the last speakers to be upgraded, though at this point I'm not really sure what with. Best idea so far is a pair of KSM-12's mouted upside-down at the wall-ceiling corner. No hurry on that little project though, have plenty else to do.

Judging by the amount of black paint overspray I'm covered with, you'd think so...