jhawk92

Own: '68 Klipschorns (2-ch) '94 Chorus II (HT) '93 Chorus II (spare pair, will make one a center) '93 Forte II (HT) '94 KG 1.2 (HT) '94 Academy (HT) '75 Heresy (bedroom) Previously owned: KG 1.2 (HT) KV-3 (HT) KV-4 (HT) If you count Klipsch in the family, then add the following at my parents' house: Chorus II (2-ch) Forte II (HT) Forte I (HT) KG 1.2 (HT) Academy (HT)

PB- Yep, I've been trying the Harman website, but I can't get them directly either. Too bad, as I'd love to get the 730 manual. I must say it sounds quite nice on my Chorus IIs. It's in very good shape, but I think I'll do a pot/chassis clean like Andy recommends before I get too much listening time.

Craig- While I don't need any 7591s, I would be interested if you can get the 7868s any cheaper. In talking with Paul over at Bizzy Bee, he really likes the Sovtek 12AX7 LPS as a substitute for the Tele smooth plate 12AX7 in the Fisher receivers, and Doug has those as well. So if anyone would be interested in getting some of those...I'd add into the order. He also has the Sovtek 5AR4 for a pretty good price, so this could be a big tube order for folks. If not, I'll just put in an order on my own.

Andy- I recently picked up a 730, and I'd like to get a copy of the owners manual for that. Do you know of the link for that one? Thanks. Rob

In additional searching, check out http://www.dougstubes.com. He has the JJ 7591 quads at the same $70 a quad, and he's in NY. He also has the new EH 7868 tubes for a very respectable $78 a quad. It's certainly better than the $100-$140 I've seen for the EH quads on other sites. I may order a set of the 7868 for my Dad's Fisher 400 to see how they sound in comparison to NOS.

Charles- Congrats on the purchase! Looks like you will have quite a system. And the price, while not as good as Gary's freebies, is still damn good. Not sure if you would be able to do a family roadtrip to pick those beasts up, unless you get something big to drive. When I picked up my K-horns, there wasn't room for any passengers in my Explorer; HF cabinet riding shotgun and the two bass bins, other HF cabinet in the back. Any passengers would have had to hang on to the roof rack. If I were still in CT, I'd make the trip down with you; that would be fun!

And I missed the Denver date. Hope some of you East-coast'ers can check this out and post pics.

Griff- The series mode units do not have a joule rating, therefore no lifetime limit. smart- Yeah, it's a LONG thread. But the post I directed you to, on page 2, pretty much sums everything up. Still, lots of good info on these type of posts. AVS is good for that. Also good for extreme opinions, but such is life.

FWIW, my '68 K-horns have the clear pie slice logos.

I just picked up a nice condition H/K 730, so if your offer of the service manual PDF is still open, I'd love to get a copy of it. Thanks.

Rick- Is this the Blackgate mod you are talking about? I have the 5-disc changer, 975SA, and have been very pleased with it so far. I got my factory fresh for $149+ shipping, though I can't find it on the web any longer. Do you think the 963 mod would work in my 975?

Gary has a point; make sure all the drivers are working. Swap the speaker wires to make sure it's not the amp. But, even if all drivers are working, they might not have matched output. I had a similar issue on my '68 K-horns, and when I sent the K-77-Ms to BEC for diaphragm replacement, he also found that the output between the two tweeters was slightly different. He matched up the magnets between the two and now things sound even better.

Bill- Series mode units are not supposed to wear out like metal oxide varistors (MOVs). Companies like Panamax and Monster use MOVs in their units, which, can eventually wear out, sometimes fail catastropically. Series mode units, most likely, will never fail, so I would assume going the used route would be fine. For a really good tutorial on series mode vs. MOV, check this out. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=2421176#post2421176

Bill- Your 15A line will not have any problems with your gear. In my previous house I ran my Denon AVR-4800, a separate 2-ch power amp, DVD, CD, TV, and SVS sub all on the same 15A circuit and never once popped the circuit breaker. There is a good thread I started in the Technical Questions section about series mode gear, titled "Surge Suppressors." I went with a Zerosurge unit and have been very pleased with its performance. They are the original folks to use series mode technology, and the price was a bit cheaper than the Brickwall unit. And yes, the Zerosurge and Brickwall units are identical. I don't know much about the Adcom units, but Surgex also uses series mode technology. They were at the higher end of the price scale.

I'll throw in Enya's Watermark as a great mood-setter. Also, as someone mentioned, Bolero is pretty good too. Any put up a pic of the 3 of you sometime so the rest of us can high-five you.

Frz- I would sure look into it. I thought my 36 yr old K-horns were sounding good, but replacing the caps and the diaphragms made them even better. My caps were only about 5-7% out of spec, so yours could be at least that different. Bob's explaination of the different materials for voice coils and diaphragm materials makes sense to me, and why not do that tweak? It costs very little in terms of potential gains. Think about it; how many times has the voice coil been exercised in just a year, let alone 36yrs for mine or 42yrs for yours? All mechanical things can wear out. Klipsch sounds good, so why not let them perform at their best? Tony- Yeah, it was a pretty amazing difference; one I could hear almost immediately. I was a bit skeptical that I would be able to hear a difference, but within the first few notes, I knew the changes were good and worthwhile. I am not sure which change made the most difference; cap replacement, diaphragm replacement; or matching up the magnets. I do hear a bit more hiss through the speakers when the Scott is on and before I spin some music. So I know the cap change has had some impact in terms of letting all the sound come through. K-horns certainly reveal any flaws in your upstream components. Matching the magnets has certainly helped in terms of overall balanced output levels, and that definitely increases my enjoyment. There's nothing like closing your eyes, enjoying the music, and then opening them and realizing the artist isn't there with you in the room. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the cap replacement has provided the biggest improvement, since that has an effect on the entire spectrum. Maybe Bob could throw his two cents in?

Ok, you guys have me convinced. I'll give the 401 another shot, but right now, I'm enjoying the sound too much to want to swap the horns. I'll find some 3-day weekend and give it a try. Besides, I have new gaskets coming in the mail from Klipsch, so that will be a good reason to pull things apart again. I would like to keep one of the K-400s in, to try and compare between the two. Have any of you had one of each horn installed in a pair?

Tom- I could have sworn the pic was there originally. Oh well, here it is again. That's a good idea about using a wood screw to mount the L-bracket. I bet I could just use the original bracket, but just move it forward the appropriate amount. The original screw mount would still be there, but that's not a big deal. I'll look into this idea over the weekend. Thanks.

Nuts, missing photo...

I got home from work this evening to the pleasure of a big box from Arkansas. After some initial work to swap out one of the K-400 horns with a K-401 proved unsuccessful (see my thread on that subject also here in Updates and Mods), I got down to installing all the components. Things went together pretty well, and soon I had the K-horns tucked back in their corners, ready for their unveiling. I turned on the Scott 299B, and put on a CD. Even though the amp was not warmed up, I could tell an immediate difference. The mids and highs were crisper and cleaner and the one tweeter that seemed lower in output was perfect. I sat back in my sweet spot and just listened with a big grin. The phantom center was perfect and the vocalists were in the room with me, dead center! Before, the left speaker was slightly overpower the right, so I didn't have the best imaging. Now that was gone and things sounded better than ever. According to Bob, the caps were up to 0.5 ohms in Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR). Not as bad as some he's seen, but certainly well above 0.02 ohms for a new one. I can certainly agree with the philosophy that replacing the caps in older speakers like mine gives a very good bang for the buck. I'm glad Bob recommended refurbing my Type A crossovers rather than getting a set of his Type A/AA boards. I was pleased with the Type A before, and now I like it even better. I don't want to start a flame war, but I don't see any need to try anything else in terms of x-overs. The new diaphragms in the K-77s are certainly a good investment as well. Bob said that vintage ones like mine had aluminum voice coils and the phenolic diaphragm was not as consistent thickness as they are now. That, plus the ability to use copper in the voice coils for better conducting and increased power capability makes replacing them a no-brainer. So, overall, I am very pleased with what I am hearing so far. I will certainly listen a lot more over the next several days, but things sound wonderful. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bob for a great job. He is certainly an asset to the forum and I'd highly recommend folks with older speakers like mine to look into these easy tweaks. The performance change is well worth it.

So, off they went to Bob. He called me last weekend to update me on the status. Turns out the caps were down only about 5%, which is much better than others he has tested. He still recommended replacing the caps, and I agreed. The K-77Ms did need new diaphragms, and Bob said these were ones he had never seen before, due to a difference in construction to "other"K-77s. Bob can explain this in better detail than I can. He also said that during testing, he noticed the tweeters had a slight difference in volume. He spent some time troubleshooting and ended up swapping the magnets which made them nearly identical in output. The K-55Ms turned out to be in perfect condition. Bob goes into detail in another thread, so I won't dwell on it here. But I really appreciated his phone call with that info, giving me the choice of whether or not to replace the diaphragms. I did not, so Bob packed things up and sent them on their way. This is a pic of the crossover with the three new capacitors on-board.

Here is another view of the original crossover. These '68s are in great shape with very little wear and tear.

I wanted to get my initial thoughts down on BEC's work to bring my 36 yr old K-horns back up to "factory fresh." I learned of Bob's work here on the forum several months ago and started to correspond with him via email about his philosophy was on upgrading networks. Since I had been extremely pleased with the sound of my speakers so far, he recommended refurbing the Type A crossovers to get them back up to spec before I try any other mods. This made sense to me as Bob said the caps in the networks tend to drift over time, so what I was listening to would most likely not be what they sounded like from the factory. We also discussed diaphragm replacement on my tweeters as I think I had one that was at a lower output than the other. We kept in touch and I finally made the decision last week. I was going out of town for a short vacation, so having the K-horns torn apart wouldn't really bother me. Thanks to some great help over in the 2-ch forum, I got the networks, K-77Ms, and K-55V drivers removed and packed up to ship to Bob. We decided to check and see if the K-55Vs would need a diaphragm replacement as well, but they still sounded ok. Attached is a pic of the original stock crossover.

So, at a loss for a next step, I gave Bob Crites a call and explained the situation to him. He was kind enough to search around and find a couple K-400 horns. The ones in my K-horns have the mounting hole very close to the throat of the horn, as you can see in this picture. Bob had a couple of these laying around and verified the same situation. But as he searched more, he found another K-400 horn that has the mounting flange closer to the mouth, by about an inch or so. He was also at a loss, since he had never come across anything like this situation before; here were two K-400 horns that were identical except for the location of the vertical mounting flange. In all my research, and Bob's as well, we have never heard of this problem coming up before. It looks like that sometime after 1968, Klipsch modified the K-400 horn, and the new K-401 horn was patterned after this newer K-400. I decided to pull the K-401 horn off, since I didn't think it would be smart to leave the rear of the horn unsupported, though it isn't that heavy. I thought by not attaching the rear of the horn, some unwanted vibrations could be introduced, though I may be mistaken. So, here's my question to the forum in general, and Tech Support specifically. Is there any way to mount up the K-401s in these speakers, or am I "stuck" with using the K-400 horns. I really don't want to do a whole lot of modifications to the speakers themselves, as I thought this would be an easy swap. If I won't be able to use them, does anyone want to buy a set of mint K-401 horns? Thanks for your input.

Needless to say, I was a bit mad, but mainly disappointed, since I was really interested in comparing the two midrange horns once I got my networks reinstalled. This pic shows an upclose shot of the difference in the holes. You can ignore the slight vertical difference, as the K-401 horn was resting at an angle. Once it was properly adjusted, the vertical difference would be gone. However the horizontal difference was too big to overcome. I think it is about 1.5", maybe 2". I looked into moving the metal bracket, but it is mounted from underneath, and there are two pieces of 1/2" plywood directly underneath the "floor" of the HF cabinet that prevent any access to this bolt.