Islander

Why so much arguing about theoretical numbers, which only affect most of us indirectly, since only a few of us will be buying or selling at any particular time? Regardless of individual cases, it looks like prices for used Heritage Series speakers are trending upwards. That’s good news for people who own those speakers, right? I think what’s surprising people is that the prices don’t creep up in a slow and steady way, like bank interest. Instead, it’s more like a sticky hinge: no movement, then a sudden jump, and then another sticking point, and so on. We’re starting an era of sudden jumps in prices. Enjoy the ride, because it will stall at some point. It always does. Then, 5 or 10 years from now, these prices will seem “right”, or even low. And then the next jump will happen. Almost forgot: just like a sticky, maybe rusty, hinge, every sudden movement is accompanied by lots of creaking and squawking. Then silence returns, at least until the next jump.

Looks like he got halfway through a restoration job and gave up. But they are a matched pair, with sequential numbers. How much does that add, $1,000? ROFLMAO.

Cool! We rarely had colour choices in Canada back then. Our Canadian first-year 1976 RD400s came only in Low Gloss Black, kind of flat black with shiny gold graphics. Pretty much everybody waxed them to make them shiny. I really like the look of the green 1976 US RD400s. In 1979, I was brought to Daytona to wrench for Martin Schubert, who had a very fast 1977 RD400 that year. I brought my RD along, so I probably had the only black RD400 at Daytona Speed Week that year. Later, when my mother took a trip to visit relatives in Ireland, I got her to pick me up a European 1A2 RD400 gas tank, which holds 16.5 litres, rather than the 13 litres of the North American 1A1 tank. It looks very similar, and is just about an inch taller. That went well with the lowered seat cushion. The stock seat was very thick, almost level with the top of the 1A1 tank, so cutting down the foam in the front half of the seat was a popular mod. The European tank was yellow, so I had the side covers painted yellow to match. I replaced the black Dunstall 3/4 fairing with a yellow one and added a vinyl strip of the “strobe stripe” Yamaha graphic, so it looked pretty cool. On a trip I took to Belfast, I picked up a set of Hawk articulated handlebars. They were based on the Laverda design, and were excellent. You could adjust the height and angle in minutes with a 5/16” Allen wrench, so they cleared the tank and fairing, and were easy to set for the speed I’d be cruising at. The extra range of the bigger tank came in handy on a 2-up trip to Tampa from Toronto, and on a trip to Vancouver from Toronto, by way of South Dakota, where I saw Mount Rushmore. I put 135,000 km/84,000 miles on that bike in 9 years, and hated selling it.

Bruce, if you want to get a spectacular view, Malahat Skywalk is the place to be. I haven't been there, but I think it's about a 30-minute drive North from Victoria. It's a spiral construction that puts you 5 or 6 storeys above the top of the Malahat. Of course, you'll want to go on a clear day. Mount Baker (75 miles/120 km East of Victoria) will be easy to see, but if it's really clear, you might be able to see Mount Rainier (125 mi/200 km Southeast of Victoria), peeking up from behind the Olympic Range. The water far below (about 1200 feet below) is Finlayson Arm, a long arm (or maybe fjord) of the Juan de Fuca Strait. The water south of Victoria is the Strait of Juan de Fuca, while the water to the East and North is Georgia Strait, which is called the Salish Sea nowadays, after the Salish First Nation, mostly the Coast Salish. You may have noticed that Mount Baker isn't directly East, more like East-North-East (ENE). That's because Victoria is actually south of the US border. Bruce, you seem to have brought the rain with you. This year, that's a good thing, since yesterday's rain was the first since early July. We had a cold damp Spring until late June, making us think we wouldn't have much of a summer, then it totally dried up and there was only about 5 mm of rain for the next 4 months. It was quite a bit hotter than usual, and warm weather records continued to be broken up until a week ago. We've been enjoying the warm evenings, but the farmers hoped their crops would survive, and the record low water levels in the rivers were dangerous for the fish. It's a good thing the rain didn't wait any longer to come.

There’s quite a few of those little trucks running around Victoria, as well as lots of the Mitsubishi Delica 4-wheel drive minivans. They’re all JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) vehicles, so they’re all right-hand drive. That doesn’t seem to matter, though. Don’t know where you’d go for parts, except for bidding ninja. Bidding Ninja is a site that covers auction sites in Japan, so that we overseas customers can access sites that would normally be difficult to deal with. I used them to find an obscure DVD from my favourite band, so the $25 fee they charge felt a bit high, but hey, I couldn’t find it anywhere else, so I paid it. However, their primary business is JDM car parts, so the $25 fee is insignificant next to the price of an engine, for example. Since that’s their main interest, I’d check them out. They could be just the source you need.

Looking good! When will the first customers hear this mighty system?

Good scoop! Was that $40 for all four or $40 each? When it comes to figuring power with AVRs, a more accurate way to describe it might be: “7 channels, 140 watts per channel with 2 channels driven.” The reason I’d put it like that is because, unlike with 2-channel receivers and amplifiers, the FCC does not require a precise statement of power output, like “XX Watts x 2, 20-20kHz, 0.5 % THD”. With the looser descriptions of AVR power output permitted at present, it’s easy to think that you actually have 140 x 7 watts = 980 watts, which is very unlikely. My AVR is a Yamaha RX-A2060, with “140 watts x 9 channels” listed as its maximum power. Does that mean it has 140 watts x 2 = 280 watts more than your AVR? Not likely. All I can be reasonably sure of is that it can put out 140 watts x 2 channels = 280 watts into 2 channels. Anything beyond that should be tested before any claims are made. Chances are that my AVR puts out 70 watts or less per channel if all 9 channels are driven. To be fair, there is a handful of AVRs that actually do put out their claimed power with all channels driven, but those models are way more expensive than the typical consumer models. On the bright side, with the high sensitivity of Klipsch speakers, power output is much less critical when setting up a system. Those speakers that you got also look pretty sensitive, so you should be all set in that regard. Also, welcome to the Forum!

She means well...

I was interested to see the use of the first mirror to see the screen while adjusting the set from the back, and it was amusing to see the second mirror used to keep an eye on the sticky-fingered kid. The caption is "I use that one to keep an eye on my tools."

jwc is the expert here. I wouldn't argue with anything he says on this topic, or any related topic. One thing that's useful to know is that the younger you are when you're diagnosed with prostate cancer, the more dangerous it is, because it's faster-acting/growing. One famous case of a person diagnosed in their fifties who died within a few years was Frank Zappa, while people who are diagnosed in their seventies or eighties are less at risk, because their cancers tend to grow more slowly. Of course, that's a generalization. Every person, and every cancer, is different. The main thing is to take it seriously, but don't give up at the sound of "the Big C", as it used to be called back in the Fifties and early Sixties. Nowadays, there are people walking around who've had cancer more than once, and often more than one type, but are still alive and well. Today, the important thing to know and understand is that cancer is no longer an automatic death sentence. Many types of cancer (there are around 250 types) can be treated successfully and even cured. Never give up.

Yeah, I’d like to see the other side of the bike. There’s the mass of the engine, but it all sort of blends in, like when you look under the hood on a modern car and see the big plastic noise damper that covers everything up. The pipes provide an interesting detail that stands out from the overall form of the bike. I hope Woofers and Tweeters doesn’t mind our critique of the style of his new-to-him bike. It does look great, but more than that, it has the performance to make it stand out for more than looks. BTW, congrats on getting to run at Daytona. I got my expenses paid to go there three times in the Seventies, but it was as a mechanic, not a rider, unfortunately. What were you riding? The white plates mean Pro class, right?

That’s a thing of beauty. It’s interesting how the engine dominates the bike, like a Harley Sportster, but different, of course. Looks like your Monster will be lots of fun!

Sevarexy exhaust piping. However, it's good to have a quiet exhaust, so you can leave your buddy's place (almost forgot, it's a Ducati, so you'd be leaving your mistress's place) at 1 in the morning without waking up the neighbourhood. I liked quiet pipes so I could roll by the cop doing his paperwork near roadside with his window open, while I was travelling at double the speed limit, without causing him to even raise his head. Quiet pipes save licences! Surprisingly, running stock pipes on my FZ750/1000 turned out to be economical. Yes, the mufflers eventually rust out, but new mufflers were around $500 each back in the 1990s. No worries, I'd head to the track for a track day. No racing, that was over and done for me. However, it was still fun to go to the track and ride as fast as you like, as opposed to riding faster than you like, the way it is in competition. If I saw another FZ, but with a performance exhaust, I'd ask the rider if he still had his stock pipes, and in most cases he would have them, taking up space and gathering dust. I paid some crazy low prices for mint or near-mint mufflers in the course of riding more than 100,000 km over 11 seasons. Helping fellow riders declutter while saving me money was always satisfying.

I had a great cat, who shared my home for 17 years. However, he had a few bad habits, including scratching the edges of the jackets of LPs that were in the record cabinet on the bottom level, so I still have those souvenirs, nearly 30 years after I buried him. He died in my arms at age 18. Anyway, he would also chew through the antenna wires behind my receiver. It didn't take me long to figure out why the FM reception was so poor, but there's no point in punishing a cat for doing what cats do. I seem to remember that after splicing the wires back together, I covered them in nasty-tasting tape, which permanently solved the problem.

A kitty and a crossover. Love it! That's not just cute, it's Klipsch Cute! A Scala and a skitty. I'm in a mood, and that's just what I needed to see. I'll stop now. BTW, has your cat tried to get around the back of the doghouse to see where the bass is coming from?

That setup should rock the house in righteous fashion! La Grange (by ZZ Top) would be a great tune to show what the speakers can do, since it has great dynamic range, from the understated low-volume Billy Gibbons "How, how, how, how" vocal, then the whole band kicks in at high volume. I sometimes use it to show off what my much smaller JubScala-based system can do, and it never fails to impress. The only nit I would pick is the open ports on the big bass units. Without covers, you may wind up picking bottle caps or even bottles out of the speakers at the end of the evening. One more thing: It could also be a good idea to try bumping into the towers, like a drunken dancer or staggering drunk might do. That way, you'll see if there's anything wobbly that might fall down in a worst-case scenario. We can't wait to hear how it goes with your primo sound system. Please keep keeping us updated. Thanks!

Thanks for sharing this. It was really good!

That's it!

The movie Cal, and its soundtrack, are quite good. As well as Mark's guitar playing, there's some use of uilleann pipes, the Irish bagpipes, which help set the mood in some scenes. Unlike the Scottish bagpipes, the uilleann pipes are pumped up by the movements of the player's right elbow. The instrument is played in a seated position, and the bag is at the player's right side. His elbow is used to pump it up. Unlike the martial and strident sounds (to put it kindly) of the Scottish bagpipes, also called war pipes, the uilleann pipes can convey a sad or melancholy mood, which fit well with a sad movie like Cal, which involves an Irishman who was the getaway driver in the assassination of a British Army officer in Ireland. Later, he's wracked with guilt, and starts to live in a shed on the farm owned by the officer's widow. The clip below shows details of the pipes, some of which was new to me. The bag is actually at the player's left. It's the bellows, which inflates the bag, that's at the player's right. Also, the pipes have lever-operated valves, similar to the valves of a saxophone. You may get all you need from the video in the first five minutes. You'll see a pretty Irish woman, who explains the operation of the pipes, and from 3:35 to 4:00 you'll hear someone speaking Irish, with English subtitles. It's taught in school classes in Ireland as a second language. The country is officially bilingual, with English and Irish as the official languages, but most people speak English. There are still a few remote (well, nowhere is really remote in a country that's only 200 miles/320 km across) rural areas where Irish is the primary language. Those areas are collectively known as the Gaeltacht, and there's a tourist industry for anyone who's curious about Ireland's native language and culture and would like to visit and/or spend some time in the Gaeltacht. In Northern Ireland, of course, you're very unlikely to hear Irish spoken, but there is increasing interest in the language in every part of the island. Also, I don't think Mark Knopfler can play the uilleann pipes, but he has used them in some recordings other than Cal. You would also have heard these pipes in the movie Braveheart, while you saw someone appearing to play the Scottish bagpipes. The sound of the war pipes just wasn't right for the mood of that scene, so a uilleann piper provided the horn sounds for it.

That's some timeless humour right there. Of course, we don't wear suits to listen to music anymore, not in most cases anyway. Could you imagine asking your wife, "I'm going to listen to some blues. What colour tie goes with blues?" Excellent wife responds, "Delta or Chicago blues, honey?"

I've seen that picture before, but I don't remember the brand of the compression drivers (it was a name with only 4 or 5 letters), just that they were very expensive and may have been made in Japan. Based on the length of the bass horns, I'm thinking that they (the bass horn/driver sets) might have been able to go all the way down to 20 or 30 Hz.

In the first picture, with his left hand to his ear, it looks like he's on the phone, confirming what his friend wants on his half of the pizza: "Yeah, pepperoni. No anchovies? Right, of course. Yeah, he's got it. Won't be long. See if he has any cash? Okay, will do."

tragusa3, you could use your Scalas for Surround duty, which would free up your Heresys for Height speaker duties, or another position called for by Dolby Atmos. When I replaced my Surround Heresy IIs with the La Scalas, there was a definite improvement in the sound. I wouldn't go back.

Yes, the Heresy was the world’s first centre speaker, AFAIK. PWK had a bigger room by then, so his Klipschorns were far enough apart that he ran into the “hole-in-the-middle” effect. Thus, he created the Heresy (but I think it was called the H700 at first). Sitting between two Khorns, deep bass was not essential, so sensitivity became the priority, in order to keep up with the Khorns. After a while, he replaced the H700 with a Cornwall for bigger sound, and then a La Scala. However, at that point, Belle Klipsch, his first wife, started to grumble about the big black box in their living room. This was the first notable case of Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF). Ever resourceful, PWK came up with a more pretty version of the La Scala that he named the Belle Klipsch. And the rest is history. But wait, there’s a bit more. In late 2005 or early 2006, the La Scala became the La Scala II, which looked much better, and was styled in a way that looked similar to the Belle Klipsch, so it was decided that the two models were too similar to keep producing both, and the LS2 sounded better, so 2005 was the last year for the Belle.

Yes, and you can imagine how it would look in a dark room with cool lighting! Trying to explain the sound path of a Khorn, or even one as simple as that of a La Scala, to someone who's unfamiliar with horn speakers, can be challenging, when you see that they just can't visualize it, no matter how expressively you move your hands, lol. Even drawings may be inadequate, but a see-through full-scale model is just the thing to make it clear in the listener's head.