I applaud Arktype for his post, and applaud Klipsch for having allowed such an open discussion in this section of the forum.
I too am disturbed by the tone of Mr. Hunter's comments, as delivered through Amy. Arktype and Al have presented a strong case for why those comments have struck a nerve in some of us. I'd like to comment on another aspect of the remarks that simply seems to overlook a bit of Klipschorn development history, a history that involves changes in the Klipschorn design that it seems (at least to me) came from my own early modifications. I've never talked about this on this or any other forum before, but when I read a sentence from Mr. Hunter like "While we allow suggestions to be made on this forum and certainly want to foster creative freedom, we neither condone nor approve of any "improvements to our design, and stand firm in believing our designs are the best they can be (until proven otherwise)" I am disturbed at the lack of acknowledgment that Klipsch has learned from owner improvements and previously has used that knowledge to modify, and presumably improve, its designs. So I hope you'll indulge me in this little bit of history.
I bought my first Klipschorn in 1970, bought a second pair in 1973, and a few years later bought a Belle. They were used with Audio Research equipment until 1980 when I met a young electrical engineer by the name of Carl Staub. Carl helped me improve my Audio Research pre-amp, which led to us to other audio projects. We were some of the first people to be involved in modifying the new Hafler amplifiers for improved performance. At that time P. Woody Jackson was the Klipsch rep for the Western States. He was interested in us modifying a Hafler for him, and though he lived at the time in Santa Cruz, he spent quite a bit of time over at my house in Carson City, Nevada listening to my Klipsch system and talking audio. He would often rather enthusiastically comment that my system was the very best Klipsch system he had heard, and how much of the increased realism seemed independent of the amplifiers we switched between.
Between 1976 and 1981 I had made quite a number of modifications to my Klipschorns and Belle, most of which none of us (Carl, Woody and myself) were aware of having been applied to any Klipsch product previously. I may have been the first to enclose the backs with sheet lead lined plywood, mount the horns to the front of the panel, and I know that Woody was unaware of anyone else having modified the crossover design and upgrading its components to polypropylene capacitors, large gauge air coil inductors and the like. I showed these all to Woody and gave him the explicit instructions on making these modifications to the speakers. Carl and I made for him new crossovers for his Cornwalls as well as modifying his Hafler. There were many other modifications I showed Woody, including our early efforts at dealing with the time delay, but these were the one's he was most interested in applying to his own speakers and he told me he was taking these modifications to the factory.
In the next couple of years I went off to become a neuropsychologist and Woody went on to become National Sales Manager for Klipsch. Interestingly, at this same time Klipsch made changes in its (now) Heritage line that closely followed on several of the modifications I had shown and provided to Woody. In 1988 Woody became President of Klipsch and Associates and continued in that role throughout the 90s. Now I have no idea if Woody ever explained to Klipsch where these ideas came from--and just maybe they were being developed coincidentally at Klipsch at the same time I was making them available to Woody, but the changes in the production models did occur, and within a couple of years after Woody became aware of them.
I haven't felt there was any point in commenting on this for over 25 years, but in the context of my knowledge, Mr. Hunter's remarks were particularly grating. I suspect my early modifications are not the only one's that were translated into factory production changes. To imply that modifications are not to be taken seriously if they don't arise from the Klipsch engineering staff simply does not jibe with my own understanding of Klipsch history.
Lyn J. Mangiameli