Malcolm

IMHO in order of preference: another Heresy, custom box using Heresy tweeter, squawker and crossover with two smaller woofers (10" is my preference but you may be able to get by with some 8" woofers), Academy or KV4. The Academy is hard to come by, the KV4 even more so. Even these last two are compromises. Anything else is a big compromise. FWIW I have 5 Heresys and a good sub.

Turn up the bass control on your amp or get a subwoofer. The woofer in your Heresy is not running off the autotransformer. Anything you do to get "more bass" by changing the autotransformer is just going to reduce the overall efficiency of the Heresy. Changing the autotransformer taps may make the woofer louder in comparison to the squawker and tweeter, but you can do that with tone controls. And whatever you do, you are not going to get lower bass of out it. It is going to be 3 dB down by about 65 Hz no matter what you do.

2.0 uF is what is called for in a 1984 Heresy. I seriously doubt you could hear any difference between a decent 2.0 uF cap and a decent 2.2 uF cap in either location in the network. FWIW a modern 10% tolerance 2.2 uF cap is likely to be within the range of tolerance of the older 20% paper in oil motor caps used in the Type E network which was the predecessor to your network. And IIRC the only difference between the Type E and Type E-2 is the addition of a 33 uF electrolytic across the woofer. I doubt you can actually hear any improvement over the film capacitors in the 1984 Heresys. But if you are like most folks, you are likely to think you do. Replacing them with decent capacitors certainly isn't going to hurt anything, though. And it is relatively cheap. So, have fun! You aren't going to do much about the bass short of adding a good subwoofer.

I bet PWK is rolling over in his grave...

Don't feel too bad. There have been auctions I hestitated on and lost out on a good deal. But another one just as good will come along sooner or later.

I think you will get the best advice here: AVS Forum

I have a simple Xantech IR system. The receiver is small enough to be unobtrusive. A three wire cable runs from it through the walls and attic to a connecting block in the closet. The connecting block has four IR emitters connected. Two emitters control all the equipment on each of two shelves. Total cost was around $100 a few years back. Ofcourse, you can get much fancier, and pricier. Xantech You'll have to do the searching to find the best price now. Also, there are other companies with equivalent gear.

Gee, don't get discouraged. It takes some learning to do a good veneer job. But it isn't rocket science. Take your time. Research the process first. Practice. And then you should be able to do a good job on the real thing. Or, heck, just go for broke. The best way to learn is to make mistakes, if you can afford it. Probably best to make the mistakes on something unimportant...

If you haven't already found a good book on veneering, you might want to get one: Books on Veneering FWIW I don't think you'll have much of a problem with unbacked teak veneer. Just make sure the veneer is flat before you try to glue it down. You may have to moisten it slighly (mist) and put it under some weight between layers of paper for a day or too, but most of the teak veneer I have seen is pretty flat to start with. Then just make sure you have a good substrate and go to it.

Just a few words on joining up sheets to get the width you need... To do it right, you need to joint the edges (get a true, straight edge) to be joined. There are any number of ways of doing this. I made a jig that rides in the slot on my router table to do it. Some folks clamp the veneer between two boards and make a few passes on a jointer. After you joint the edges, you need to tape them together and glue the edges together. Then you just have a single sheet to deal with when gluing to the substrate. Don't count on being able to get a good fit if you try to glue up the pieces separately, or just tape them. You are likely to wind up with overlaps or gaps you will have to deal with.

Ullman, Do you mean the 12WK and 15WK, the 12" and 15" woofers with 16 ohms nominal impedance and 3.2 ohm DC resistance produced by EV for Klipsch type horn enclosures? If so, they were produced before T/S parameters existed. AFAIK EV never published T/S parameters for them. Someone else might have, but I don't know who if anyone. If you have one, you can always measure it yourself. There are devices you can buy and hook up to your computer that will do most of the work for you. Or you can do it with releatively simple test equipment.

Gil, Which EV manufactured Klipsch speakers had a K suffix? The ones I know of either had no suffix or an M (K55-M, K77-M), or just an EV part number. Doesn't the K suffix mean Klipsch?

I have shipped big computer systems around the world packaged much like this. The main difference was that they were on a pallet, heavy enough that they had to be handled by a fork lift, and went air freight, not UPS. I'll bet the gorillas at UPS will consider this a challenge... Good luck!

The K-52-H was built by Heppner. You will find it, and the K-53-K, a Klipsch built equivalent with a flange mount, in the last of the Heresys. It is the same squawker driver used in the Heresy II and the Heresy III. So, a Heresy with that driver sounds at little more like them than the earlier Heresys.

22,000 uF? Are you sure they aren't electrolytics?

A lot of things done in building a house are not as planned as you might initially think. The end results are specified, but the way of achieving them is often left up to the tradesman. Think about your electrical wiring. The blueprint calls out where receptacles, other outlets and switches are to be, and what is on each circuit. But it typically says nothing about how the wiring is actually done. And the positions of the devices are only general. They are going to be placed wherever they can be fastened to studs, etc., unless you are very specific and lucky. And even with things like wall lengths, door and window locations, etc., you are lucky to wind up with them within a few inches of what is on the drawing. There has been more than one family who found out that special sofa they bought, or that custom cabinetry they had built, didn't fit on the wall it was intended.

The only capacitors I am aware of that degrade significantly with time under normal operating conditions in audio gear are electrolytics. Somtimes old paper in oil caps will start to leak, though.

Yep, Heresy IIs all around with a good sub is the way to go. I have that, only with Heresys instead of Heresy IIs, and am very satisfied. If you really need something with that "center channel" form factor, IMHO an Academy would be your best choice unless you want to built a Heritage center. Unforunately, it will cost you about twice what a Heresy II will. I wouldn't mix KGs with Heresy IIs. KV3 is a nice speaker, but definitely not timbre matched. I had one once and the difference between it and a Heresy as center was like night and day. You really want the three most important speakers in your system, front left, center, and front right, as well matched as possible.

Man, that sucks! Didn't you read the posts on the dangers of shipping speakers UPS? FWIW, from here it looks like the woofers failed because of G forces, not direct impact. If so, I would file a claim and go after reimbursement. Heck, I would anyway if the packaging was half way decent. IIRC UPS has mechanical systems that shunt packages from conveyor to converyor with a ram, besides the gorillas they employ. This just doesn't seem right. Doesn't look beyond repair though... Interesting... My main concern with shipping new speakers has been the MDF cabinet. In this case, it seems to have been the plastic woofer frames that failed. Hmmm.... Maybe what the country needs is a(nother) class action suit agains UPS...

Heresys from the mid 60s or so through the early 70s had 16 ohm woofers and Type C crossover network. Later Heresys had 8 ohm woofers and Type D (relatively rare) or Type E crossover networks. The difference in these two networks is simply a phase change made after Klipsch found out they sounded better that way. The last of the Heresys were kind of a transitional form to the Heresy II. They had a K-52-H or K-53-K squawker driver and a Type E2 crossover network. There earlier ones all had K-55-V squawker drivers and sound amazingly alike to me. The last ones sound a little different, not worse, than the earlier ones to me. There were only two tweeters, the K-77 which had an round alnico magnet, and the K-77-M which had a square ferrite magnet. The K-77-M has maybe 2 to 3 dB higher output above about 11 kHz, which is a barely audible difference if you have good ears. Probably the most desireable ones are the ones produced in the early 80s with the K-55-V squawker driver and K-77-M tweeter. The other models that are highly sought are the ones with woofers with alnico magnets produced before about 1974. The nature of the magnet circuit makes them more compatible with CRT displays than the ones with ferrite magnets. The differences in the crossover networks are simply to deal with the different components in the speaker. They all use the same autotransformer, same woofer inductor and same types of filters, with the exception of the E2 which adds a 33 uF capacitor to the woofer circuit. Early networks use motor capacitors which are nothing special. Later ones use metallized film capacitors which are better. If you don't like the capacitors, they are easy to replace with you favorite "audiophile" brand in the same value.

You can change the low end frequency response by changing the volume of the cabinet in a sealed design, at the price of efficiency.

Heresy is 3 dB down at about 65 Hz. You can get lower bass out of its 12" woofer in a sealed cabinet, but you will give up efficiency.

Prima Vera Note that rosewood was Brazillian Rosewood. Now I think it is Santos Rosewood.

That's the same driver the Heresy switched to around the same time frame, followed by the K-53-K. I guess the K-55-V just got too expensive for the Cornwall price point, too.

There were many flavors of the Aristocrat available from EV. Some had a single speaker, an SP12 or SP12B, and no crossover. Some had a single speaker, SP12TRX or SP12BTRX with a built-in T35 tweeter, and no separate crossover. Some were two-way systems with a woofer, SP12, SP12B, 12W or 12 BW, and a midrange horn and had an X-825 crossover. Some were three-way systems including an X-36 crossover and a T35 horn. Some had one or two AT-37 level controls. And then there were the Aristocrat cabinets that were purchased separately and filled as the customer liked.