DavidF

I have two concerns in approaching a repair. Agree with earlier comments on how MDF changes when it gets moisture into the material. The separation seems to be around the front baffle which is rabbeted into the surrounding panels. First is whether the “curl” has become so permanent it puts a lot of stress on the repaired glue joint. Will it hold assuming you can get everything clamped up with enough glue in the effected areas? Second is whether the baffle will remain loose after the repair since I can’t think of a way to get glue deep into the rabbeted section.I think it is worth a shot. My Heresy cabinets were similarly affected at the back bottom corners. Not to the same extent admittedly. Otherwise you have to trash them anyway. I would try to glue and clamp all corners at the same time. That will require having at least 4 clamps to use. I would prefer to have 8 clamps altogether. Find some 1 inch heavy ply cut to the dimensions of the panels front to back and side to side along each seam. This will give better tension all around the loose joints. If that seems to work out well after the glue cures I would add cleats to the inside of the baffle on all side, top and bottom panels. Add some cleats cut to 45 degree angles to each corner where the sides meet the top and bottom. All to better hold the joints and firm up the baffle in case it has loosened up somewhere. You will likely need to replace the veneer as it won’t join up and may be in poor shape anyway. If you end up with not-quite-tight seams get some bondo and use for filler instead of wood putty. Bondo is stronger and makes great edges. So strong that its stronger than the wood so some care is needed when sanding down the filler so as not to take away too much of the wood stock.

What are seeking when you mean balance? I would think such completely different amps would have output impedance, gain and possibly polarity differences that would easily throw off the balance between the separated outputs. If you are passively biamping and want to keep the system frequency response matched to the single amp configuration it makes sense to me to use the same model amp. I have a second amp-out with variable gain on my preamp that I use to tweak the levels when using different makes/models of in passive biamp (horizontal) configuration or when I want to lower the output a bit for the mids and highs compared to the woofer.

Loose-fiber fill materials have been part of speaker building for decades. What exactly are you asking about, though? Whether anyone has experience with using poly fill or even this particular kind of poly material?; whether any enclosure could benefit from a poly fill (assuming it was not designed with same to begin with)?; whether THX actually drills down into specs so as to call out what kind of fill should be used?

I would not oversimplify the need to match the woofer and enclosure. Maybe you did not mean to imply that just increasing the enclosure volume results in deeper bass but that’s how it reads. Increasing the volume of the otherwise stock Heresy will alter the damping of the bass response but have little effect in delivering a perceived lower bass response. There is a popular perception that sealed enclosures are better than vented designs in all cases. I don’t agree as a general rule. All woofer-enclosure systems involve compromises. In my experience well damped vented systems have worked better. I have not had a sealed design that will pressurize the room the same way as a good vented design. Just my experience and I grant you that your experience and preference will differ, of course. One thing I have never come across though, is a high-sensitivity woofer in a small enclosure (ported or sealed) that has bass response down to the 30hz threshold. The give for lower bass is lower sensitivity for the same enclosure. Replacing the stock Heresy woofer with a different driver with the same sensitivity, or better, in a 1.7 cu in box and getting response down to 30 or even 40 hz makes this driver seem to be rather extraordinary. I would like to try them myself except for the many other unfinished projects I have around.

The capacitor in parallel has the effect of bleeding some some of the signal off the driver as frequency rises. The combination of the coil in series with the cap in parallel will increase the roll off effect of the filter "system". The two components combined with the reactance/inductance of the driver are all inter related. Change one and you have to change the other to keep the same filter system characteristics. You can tune the filter roll off response by using higher or lower cap values. This is usually termed the 'Q' of the response and comes into play in getting the smoothest blend of the drivers at the crossover frequencly. You also need to factor in the driver acoustic response and its impedance curve.

Is that the front door covered up by a speaker? So, think this HiFi junkie was married?

Maybe for the same reason I could never live with 5 1/4 inch woofers and shoe box speakers. Just no dynamic range. Not an excuse for excess on average SPLs though. You would think people in the business would be particularly concerned on anything that may damage their hearing, wouldn't you?

Good ending to this movie. Ain't the internet great? And this community?

Abysmal. HBR, painted black, some cosmetic damage to edges and corners. I'm at a familiar crossroads, one foot in the water, one foot on land. Despite what seemed like a good deal at the moment, $251 on ebay with a semi local pickup, I think I chose poorly. For around $100 to $150 I can make them (assuming the rest of the drivers are ok, which I intend to check asap) functional again, but the cabinets need serious wood project time. I could also buy a nice looking newer version of the Heresy's or a set of Forte II for about $250 (both local enough to pickup). I'm almost certain I am buying the Forte II today. The "smart" future of the HBR I think is as spare parts for a nicer cabinet. I had good luck in rehab of some heresy cabinets. Used bondo to square up the corners. Used a 2 foot piece of 2x4 with heavy grit sand paper stapled end to end to avoid rounding the edges/corners. Then applied new veneer. With all the square edges of the Heresy enclosure it was not too difficult and the results looked good. New paint on the baffles front and back and almost like new.

"Of course not. They have different box designs and volumes. Even with the same exact woofer they will sound different. " That would be part of the difference, yes. I tried the Hersey woofer is a Forte box. It was boomy and thick in the mid bass. So swapping multiple woofers into a given bass enclosure might be an issue as far as the low end, it sounds like to me. But there is a difference, too, in the power range. The system integrated a bit better with some additional attenuation of the mids and highs. The Forte woofer may be a little more sensitive, granted, but is the Heresy woofer as flat as the Forte woofer through the xover to the mids? Did not sound like it to me. I have worked with other non-Klipsch systems and from my experience the woofer response at its high end does effect the system sound. Sometimes to a great extent, sometimes not so much. I have not tried different woofers in the Heresy enclosure, with the Heresy crossover and with the Heresy's mid horn.. So, for my part I will leave it that the OP should consider your experience with different Heresy models as more relevant than my experience. Thanks.

Therefore a Forte should sound just like a Hersey II? Mine don't.

The advantage with going with the orignal woofers is that they were used to voice the speakers. Who knows how close a recone today might match up with the original's specs. That said the Heresy has had a long life span and there was certainly a lot of variation in driver runs over the years. If you want to experiment with different drivers then again you are faced with different specs and response issues. Sensitivity is sort of a relative thing when using subs since the sensitivity of the system is that of the subs. Might be a help if you are running low watt amps for the mains but otherwise not much to gain in trying to increase sensitivity. My thoughts are to try to get a pair of the original 22-E or, alternatively, give Bill C a call and talk with him about how his replacements might match up with the originals in terms of response and imedance curves. Have fun. PS, how do the cabinets look?

"If you listen very closely to the final "famous" note on the Beatles A Day in the Life (from Sgt. Pepper's) you can hear some studio noises in the background. This includes (what sounds like) an A/C unit that is running to cool the room." Ah, so. One of the books out in the last few years mentioned this. They had all hands around that day, literally, bang out that last cord on a few pianos and hold it. The control room rode the gain up as the note faded away to provide some sustain. One of the sounds is Ringo's butt shifting on the piano bench.

"...The last time I played the song it sounded like my left tweeter was breaking up at the beginning. As I went into a panic, ..." I've had those moments, too. Yes, there is grunge that sounds like an overload in the lower mid. Sounds nasty. Maybe that's why it stayed in?

24 hours in the summer if you really can't wait longer. 3 days is better. 4 days to be sure.

You are assembling an assortment of parts into an enclosure approximating the Klipsch Cornwall. If for your own personal use, no issue there. But the Klipsch brand is a very treasured asset of the company for sure and use of it on, or in reference to, your own designs would be a trademark problem. In my DIY projects I am very clear to not use brand names even in a liberal sense. I rehabed my Heresys with all the original parts and no change to the specs. I still call this a Klipsch Heresy. I have the drivers of the Forte gathered from several sources and used in my own enclosure. Here I am careful not to call it a Forte or Klipsch. I think the use of 'Cornscala' in this DIY context is different in the sense it is not a real Klipsch product and used by many as a template for a DIY project. Going to eBay and advertising your Cornscala project as a "Klipsch" though would definitely cross a line.

The black Klipsch I have seen are not truly flat black but a satin finish. That is there is some sheen to the paint. If I am correct on that and the ones you are looking are actually flat, that could suggest someone painted them post production. That means that the original veneer was up to snuff and has some amount of oil or finish that would keep the black paint from getting into every pore in the wood. So, making a refinish more promising.

Central planning influence in China. Perhaps some production issues from the disater in Japan, as well.

I get an error message accessing the adds. I am routed through Comcast digital cable. Is that a common among those with problems?

Yikes, suggests intermittent and so a grounding or crossed connection somewhere. Maybe you mentioned before but is this a passive or active bi amp setup being used. Were the original system terminal boxes set up for bi amp?

You want to shoot for stiffness or mass, or both, to manipulate the resonance frequency. Plywood, by nature of the lamination, is very stiff compared to solid woods or most chipboard materials. MDF can be very dense and thus gains mass but in my experience is not all that stiff. Lower grade plywood will have significant voids that create pockets in the plys. Bad for stiffness and resonance diffusion. Higher grade ply will be consistent in density and bonding in the layers. Marine grade birch being a good example. I like to use MDF because is less expensive and I can stiffen it up with bracing. I haven’t built large panel enclosures but I would consider stiff ply for such an application.

I think the only thing I have not heard mentioned is the speaker wire. That would be common to all of the interchanged components?

Oh, no doubt they were engineered to sound best floor placed and against the wall. The problem reflections are more in the mid to upper bass. Room effect no doubt and very difficult to tame. Reorienting them to the longer wall might help but not a good option for other reasons. Getting them out in my room opens up the image, gets a good punchy bass with clear distinct tactile feel. But I lose the low bass in the trade.

I had to bondo some of the corners to square them off. I then used a 100 grit with an orbital sander to take down the grain of the veneer. Some areas the sanding went well down into the veneer but that did not concern me. I then stapled multiple sheets of sandpaper to a length of 2x4 longer than the longest dimension of the enclosure and used that to take out the high sections and get a good flat surface corner to corner. I used two coats of filler/primer and sanded down after each application. This was to fill in the grain of the wood a bit. Take good care to remove sanding dust from the surface before gluing up the veneer. Paper backed veneer is easier to use, especially for large areas but I generally have used non-papered thinner stock. Harder to work with but I like the look of the edges better with the thinner material. The edges are the trickiest part when using cross cuts to the veneer grain. I like to use tape or a spare piece of veneer as a spacer to the cross cut saw to leave the cut piece a bit long. I then very-gently sand that down with a wood block and sandpaper. Avoids tears in the grain but takes much longer.

I have taken some crude measurements with the Heresy . Not sure of the accuracy and I am not so sure they bear on someone else's experience in their own room set up in any event. In general the Heresy II of mine have a general rising response operating out from the walls and up off the floor. This makes my Heresy a poor candidate for stand mounted out from the wall. The sound is lean and bright and shouty. Seems to me they were voiced as if intended to to be on the back wall to offset diffraction loss in the lower midrange and then down on the floor to pick up some boost in the lower bass. Using a combination of equalization and added padding on the mid and tweeter I much preferred them up and out from the back wall. Better imaging, wide soundstage, lot smoother and blended. In my room there was probably too much reflection when right up against the back wall. I never liked them on the floor mostly because I do not like the sense of a looking down at the stage. I liked the system high enough to look down the mid horn. Surprisingly, I could get them quite close to the sidewalls without buggering up the response.