Islander

You needed a heavier head shell? You youngsters today are so picky. Back when I was young, we'd just tape a heavy coin or two to the head shell. No skipping then. And we liked it! Seriously, I once saw a record player with a steel bottle/can opener taped to the tonearm. Tracking weight was probably 50-100 grams! BTW, great taste in music.

Could be worse. They used to come without a plinth or tonearm...

A Belle Klipsch goes very well between La Scalas, too. Also, it can be hard to find a single. I had to buy a pair to get one ideal centre speaker/TV stand. Yes, the Belle is a dual-purpose speaker.

Somehow, that all-black treatment gives your turntable a sinister look. I've got an SL-1210M5G, which has a silver tonearm and pivot assembly, and it looks more run-of-the mill, compared with the monochrome look of yours. It does have the speckle black paint, though, so that's a different flavour of cool. It's funny how Technics can bring out a new turntable that appears to be mostly the same as previous models, and yet clearly sounds better. Yes, the bronze platter and the new motor must play a big part in the improved sound, but the classic style is preserved. If I listened to my LPs more often, I'd be looking at a 1210G myself. Happy spinning!

Up goes the volume! I remember hearing this album at every party back in the 80s or so. As soon as it came on, the volume would be cranked up, by popular demand, and everyone paused to listen to Boston. Cool!

In my experience, the higher wattage brings a greater solidity to the sound, especially in the bass, where the sound gains a feeling of more authority. Of course, this assumes that all conditions are equal, as in the amplifier being the only change in a given system. When comparing one system with another, the room size and dimensions are probably different, along with the speaker positioning. I bring up speaker positioning because of the effect it has on both speaker sound quality and sensitivity. I have the impression that to achieve their advertised sensitivity, most Heritage speakers should be located very close to or directly in two adjacent room corners. If your room makes this inconvenient or impossible, the speakers will not be located in the ideal 1/8 space, but in 1/4 space, or maybe even in 1/2 space in extreme cases, far out into the room. Most often, the speakers will be located in an approximation of one or two of these spaces. Accordingly, in a listening room like mine, where neither speaker can be directly in a corner, due to a baseboard heater on one side and a large room opening on the other side, the speakers can't achieve their potential sensitivity. As well, the speakers are voiced to sound correct when they're placed close to or directly in the room corners. Chief bonehead is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong. Once these speakers are placed along a wall, rather than in a corner, their tonal balance will change, with the most noticeable effect being weakened bass. This situation calls for the help of a subwoofer or two, just to regain the proper bass response, not to augment it. I had wondered why some people are quite happy listening to La Scalas without subs, and had thought it was because of different tastes in music or the like. However, thinking back, at least one LS owner posted a picture of his system with the speakers placed tightly in the room corners. In that situation, his La Scalas would certainly produce more bass than mine, apparently enough to totally satisfy him. This combination of factors makes it hard to compare one system with another. In the absence of absolutes, we may just have to fall back on that inexact ranking by satisfaction level, maybe something like 1: "I give up. I'm buying Bose!" 2: "Could be better. A lot better." 3: "Pretty good on a good day." 4: "Really good, but could benefit from some upgrades." 5: "This is it. It's all I've ever needed or wanted." Sound about right?

Pretty cool!

Still? That's about what I paid in 2008. Heck of a deal!

One of the benefits of larger speaker wire/cable is that the damping factor of the power amplifier is preserved more than it is with skinnier wires. Although most of the Klipsch speakers are very sensitive, meaning that relatively small amounts of current are travelling through the speaker wires, it's still a good idea to go with at least 14 AWG, or even 12 AWG wires. The difference in price is minimal, and this is one of those small details that can help bring out the best in your components. In this way, when you're sitting and enjoying your music, you'll know that there's one less thing to think about taking care of. Done!

I agree with about half of what you say there, and not at all with the other half. Yes, in spite of all the measurements, home audio can still be pretty subjective, with some very dedicated fans of one type of equipment or another. Where I strongly disagree is with your statements that minds cannot be changed. That suggests a closed mind, or even two or more factions, each with their own closed minds. That's the opposite of what the Forum is about, as I see it, anyway. We're here to exchange and share ideas, and to share the joy that our sound systems bring us. Yes, I know that some guys would not ever want to admit to using the word "joy", when they're sober, anyway, but that's what great sound, or great bikes or cars, for that matter, can bring us. Yes, belittling and name calling, in other than well-intended attempts at humour, bring down the level of everything good on the Forum, so that's obviously no good. I'll mention something that I think I've only mentioned once before, a long time ago, so there should be no eye-rolling if I relate it again. Here it is: I've been a big motorbike fan since I was a teenager, and I still enjoy talking about them. One day I got chatting with a co-worker, back when I was a millwright. He told me that over a long period of time, he'd owned a BMW RT sport-touring bike, a Harley-Davidson Sportster, and a Honda Gold Wing. He'd found that each one was a good bike, very effective at the type of riding it was intended for, and just what he liked when he'd owned it. What made him laugh was that each bike had its own group of dedicated, maybe dedicated to the point of being rabid, deadly serious fans. As far as each group was concerned, their Chosen Bike was the greatest thing on two wheels, and anything else was pretentious trash, ridden by ill-informed suckers who either would benefit from hearing what they should be riding, or who were too far gone to learn anything at this point. Sound familiar? No, we don't have to get along, but it's a much better Forum if we do. Also, there's so much that we can learn here. As well as making friends, I've probably tripled what I knew and thought I knew when I first joined. Let's keep it that way, friends.

I think he was referring to the Hi-Fi Fairy, the lovely young elf who's dusting my K402 tweeter horn in my avatar picture in the left margin of my posts. If listening to the Little Sweetie amplifier could remind me of her, I'd say that it was a really fine amp.

Okay, I'll start at the beginning. Please don't be reluctant to post here. Like you, and like quite a few others here on the Forum, I've technically been an adult for roughly half a century. Wow, what a wild concept! So, that should mean that most or all of us have got it all figured out by now. Hah! If this were a public square instead of an online forum, and I asked everyone to put up their hand if they'd never said anything stupid, or accidentally offended someone, it would get real quiet and everybody would be looking around to see who thought they were perfect. Well, none of us are. The main thing is not to confuse what you say with what you are. You say you have good intentions, and that's good enough for me. We all know how typing out our words misses our various emphases, our body language, and so on. For most of us, except those millennial types, and you know who you are, we didn't learn texting/keyboarding at the same time as we learned to speak, so we don't do it at an almost instinctual level, with very few misunderstandings. Hmm, I don't have a millennial nearby whom I can confirm this with. Maybe they screw up as often as we do, even with all those emojis to convey the nuances of what they're saying/typing. Rambling? If that was a problem, I would have been booted out of here long ago. Next, feeling cantankerous is not the same as being cantankerous. One may last minutes or hours, the other can last a lifetime. Worn out? Oh yeah, I can relate. Still, gotta get out of bed sometime. It might be a bad day, but it's not a bad life. Thanks for getting back to me about the tube amps. I'll have to have a listen to one sometime, but the idea of replacing tubes like lightbulbs, and whatever tube biasing is, make owning a tube amp sound like some kind of work. Is it like that? Or is it like owning a chain-driven motorbike, that needs to have the chain lubed regularly, and needs the chain slack to be checked regularly and adjusted sometimes? That didn't seem too bad when I was doing it.

Why not have a look for a clean pair of La Scala IIs? They look much better than the original type LS, and sound better too, with stronger bass and cleaner treble. They've been out for a little while, so they're starting to show up on the used market. They've only been out since 2006, so mint one-owner models are not rare, plus the prices can be surprisingly good. It seems that La Scalas, and other Heritage Series speakers, depreciate at first as you would expect, but after 20 years or so the prices start to creep back up, so by around 30 years of age, they'll come close to their original selling price. I paid $1200 CAD for my 32-year-old La Scalas in 2006, and they sold for $1050 USD in 1974. See what I mean? Used LS2s are a bargain now, and will be for at least another 15 years. I found mine in the Garage Section here on the Forum, but there's also US Audio Mart, as well as several other sites to check. As always, the two keys are patience and cash. Keep looking every week, and be ready to jump in with the money when you see what you've been looking for. What to do with your perfectly fine 1976 La Scalas? In my case, I thought about it for a few minutes, decided I didn't want to deal with the hassle of selling my 1974 La Scalas, and pushed them behind and to the side of the sofa and armchair, put them on 13"/30 cm risers so they wouldn't be firing directly into the furniture, and hooked them up to the Surround speaker cables, replacing the Heresy IIs I had been using. I also got a good price for the very clean 1990 Heresy IIs, so it became a practical decision. Decadent? Sure, but Surround Sound is now more even, like when watching any of the various Star Trek series. You can hear the background engine sounds all around, with no sense of a division or distinction between the front part of the system and the rear section. The good old boys are now 49 years old, and still sound great. All that's been replaced are the capacitors and the tweeters (in 2006), so they should be good for another 20-30 years before they need any attention beyond dusting them. Just a thought. Also, your wife will probably like the better styling of the LS2s. They really did upgrade the look of my living room, while the black OG La Scalas are less noticeable behind the furniture.

No worries, you didn't know. However, there used to be a lot of discussion on this forum about various mods, sometimes using non-Klipsch parts, that would address various perceived imperfections in the speakers, mostly Heritage Series models. When it got to the point of sounding like "This model sounds like crap until you do this to them", using such-and-such parts that would have been impractical to have been used in factory production, changes were made to the Forum, and sadly, some of the more active and interesting members left. There was a Mods and Repairs section, but now it's called Technical/Restoration, because it was starting to come across as "Sure, the engineers at Klipsch do a great job, but listen to what I've come up with. It's so much better.", which understandably rubbed people at the company the wrong way. Nowadays, the Technical/Restoration section is all about returning older models to their original brand-new performance, or upgrading them using Klipsch upgrade kits. One of these kits is for the Heresy II, and upgrades it to complete Heresy III spec, for only around $300. I bought one for a Heresy II that I was using for a front centre channel (it's since been replaced by a Belle Klipsch, and the Heresy III is now the rear centre speaker in my 6.2 system), and can highly recommend it, since it's very complete, and the improvements are immediately obvious. Accordingly, now discussion of modding Klipsch speakers with non-Klipsch parts is strongly discouraged.

Why do you have 6 for 7 very similar amps on the go at the same time? Is it a quest for the ultimate synergy or optimum co-incidence of manufacturing tolerances? Or is it that each one has features that the others don't, so that not one is actually your ideal amp, although they all come very close? And what's a board? Is is a particular circuit on a circuit board? Just curious. Oh, and since I have not heard a serious tube amp, I have no idea just how good they may sound. If I ever heard one, I might think it's the best thing ever, but as it is, my pair of dual-mono 500 Wpc Class D statement product amps, with vanishingly low distortion and noise figures, along with 100 dB crosstalk, sound great to me, with amazing detail retrieval, allowing me to hear new nuances in songs I've been listening to for 50 years. They seem to have great synergy with the crossoverless JubScala IIs, whose HF sections are replaced with the big K402 horns and K691 drivers, while the LF sections of the La Scala IIs are stock. The complete HF sections are disconnected. Now the signal exits the source (LP, Blu-ray/CD, Net Radio), goes through the preamp, then into the Electro-Voice digital audio processor, which is able to EQ the sound more accurately than any passive crossover. From there the signal goes to the amps, and then directly to the drivers, with no capacitors or transformers to muddy up the signal. Each woofer and each tweeter has its own channel of direct-fed amplification, which is another variety of purist signal routing. It sounds really good to me, possibly because everything is operating within its most linear range.

I'm glad to hear that you've found the amps that make you happiest, and I'm being sincere. I try to avoid BS. I've never heard really good tube amps, so I have no opinion about them. I know that the amps I use were designed for home use, and have their lowest distortion figures in the 6 to 10 watt range, and below that, they're still really good. They are the amps that make me happiest. Yes, truth and facts are important, especially in a hardware-centred hobby like ours, but making friends is at least as important as trading specifications, don't you think? They can certainly co-exist, and that's the kind of forum that I like. Keep in mind that perfection is a bit like the speed of light: it can be approached, but never attained. If a perfect amplifier was ever created, what would the company have to do to get repeat business? The Bold New Grille? Eventually, everyone who wanted their amps would have them, and that would be that. Time to shut down the business, unless they can get by selling company-branded shirts and caps.

Ridiculous question? Okay, maybe the power range I suggested was too narrow. Should I have said 2 watts to 200 watts? I never mentioned price, but for $25k you can get a variety of fine-sounding amps. I wouldn't tell anyone they were wasting their money, if their component or system makes them happy. People who have a sound bar under their TV for music listening either can't believe their ears or think I'm insane when I reply to their question about the price of my system. So do you consider a certain power output to be optimum when powering very sensitive speakers? Maybe I got here late or am about to fall asleep, so please keep it simple. Almost forgot. Sometimes sound quality comes first, and power is less important to the purchaser, like myself for example. I really like the clarity and detail retrieval abilities of my amplifiers (my LS2s are bi-amped), and the power was less important, because I very rarely listen at levels you can't talk over (65-85 dB). However, my amps are, or were, Yamaha's statement amps, so they were designed to power any speaker, no matter how high or low their sensitivity might, and to be able to produce concert-level sound if required, with any speakers. Accordingly, I don't see the watts I don't use to be a waste of money, because the amps help the speakers sound great at any volume, from whisper to fff.

Henry, am I correct in understanding that you feel that there's an optimum power availability for a given speaker, and any other power level is inferior?

Different amps have different characteristics, and vary in their sound presentation, clarity, detail retrieval, and so on. That said, a variety of amps can be said to sound excellent, while all sounding slightly different. In the same way, there are many different restaurants, all serving different styles of food (different "cuisines"). Which one is best? Which food is best? There can be many "very good', some "excellent", and so on. Best? Is great French food better than great Japanese food? That would be impossible to say. I have not heard Cornwalls, but I can say that La Scalas can sound great when powered with amplifiers putting out anything between 5 and 500 watts per speaker. The advantage of higher power is that clipping is less likely to become an issue, but depending on your choice of music and listening levels, that may never become an issue, so that factor could be irrelevant to you, while it might be a major concern for another person. So one can say that there is no best power amplifier for any speaker, just as there is no best speaker, although the Heritage Jubilee would have to be among the very best speakers, of course. There's no point in insulting each other, because this goes beyond the specs, as I discussed above. Beyond a certain threshold of sound quality/performance, there is a variety of amps that can be extremely satisfying to listen to. Can we just agree on that, and quit the sniping at each other?

WELCOME TO AUSTRALIA!!!

Years ago, I used to watch 3 live cams that were in three parts of downtown Belfast, my home town. Sometimes, if I had stayed up late, I'd pull up one particular one and watch the sunrise in Belfast, in real time, five hours before the sun rose in Toronto. It was a small thing, but it made the city seem a bit less distant for a few minutes.

What really kills me is when someone refers to a quality brand of gear and asks, "Is it as good as Bose?" In the Bose Lifestyle system, the low frequency speaker is called a "bass module", not a subwoofer. Is this because a government agency found out they don't go nearly deep enough to be called subwoofers, or did they apply that name without being required to?

Hi, Tony! When I went to replace the 32-year-old caps in my La Scalas' AA crossovers, I found THREE cans stacked at one spot, so that was something like 5 caps per speaker, but after they were replaced with just the three modern ones, the speakers sounded much better. Have you noticed a difference, and can you put it into words? Some qualities can be hard to describe. As for your solder joints, if current passes through them, there isn't so much solder that they're touching something next to them, and they don't come apart when you give them a tug, they should be fine. Fun, right?

So you want/need a parlour guitar, maybe something like the custom Larivee that's floating around the ISS...

So now you have two pairs of La Scalas? Congrats on getting a great deal on this pair. Now you just need another Scala or a Belle Klipsch to have a great 5.0 system!