tromprof

I was lucky and got a new one a couple of years ago when Amazon was blowing them out for around $300 or so. I have owned a couple of Yamaha turntables and a Thorens I bought new back in the 1980s, and the Technics is my favorite. Mine is totally silent and extraordinarily well built. I have it paired with a very nice Clear Audio cart. and a good tube preamp and I couldn't ask for better.

I used pocket scews on my subwoofer build and was very pleased with the result, and will be using them again on my next build. Since they were faced internally I filled them with the PL I was using to glue the panels.

Ditto on the Niles DPS-1. I have a couple of them and have used it to swtch back and forth between tube amps and SS. Didn't seem to have any impact on the sound.

At least your DA moment only involved a little smoke, mine usually involve a little blood. When I look down a see red smears I know I am making progress! [+o(]

This has really got my mental wheels spinning! I built a "tuba table" for my La Scalas, and ever since I have been thinking how fun it would be to add a big sub to the basement k-horns. This build looks a lot easier than the Tuba HT, and from what I have read should have similar performance. I am looking forward to reading your thoughts once you get it fired up. One thing I would have to figure out before I built one would be how to hook it into my k-horn system. The amp I am using is an integrated 8 watt tube amp with no sub out. I am not sure how I would be able to control the sub output with this setup. Keep posting pics!!

I wouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I bet a pair of k-horns will sound great in your room. When I first got mine I had them on the short wall of a 16x20 room and they sounded fantastic to me at the time. True, when I moved them to the longer wall they sounded better, but I thought the sweet spot was a bit forward of the couch against the back wall and I would often sit in a chair in front of the couch. You have the most important ingredient, corners. Go for it!

I think La Scalas would sound great with your Yaqin amp. I have mine paired with a little 10 watt Sophia baby and the sound is excellent and I would expect the same with your Yaqin. La Scalas are fantastic sounding speakers, but as I am sure you know they have one big character flaw, no low bass below 50-60hz.. This is made worse if they are not put into a corner. What bass you do get with them is big and full, but because of the cabinet size it just doesn't get down there like k-horns. The cure is obviously a good subwoofer. As to the price, $600 seems good to me depending on condition. I paid $700 for mine and thought I got a deal, but they are in excellent condition with full grills. The difference between them and your KG4s is huge, and even if I had to wait for a sub I would get them. I replaced a pair of Fortes with my La Scalas and it was 6 or more months before I made my tuba sub. Although there was less bass the quality difference more than made up for it.

Too bad, $70 would have been a steal!

There are a number of good new and relatively inexpensive tube amps on the market. Be very careful however going the Ebay route, the direct from China crowd have some mixed reviews, and I think you are screwed if you have problems. I know of at least one Ebay seller in Canada that imports Yaqin amps and claims to test each amp, has good feedback, and provides a warranty. My 300B SET amp is Yaqin built and re-branded by Grant Fidelity, again a company out of Canada. It is a fantastic sounding amp and the price somewhat reasonable as such amps go.

Back in the mid 1980s my brother was stationed in Japan and bought a pair of Fortes at the BX. He went on and on about how good they sounded, and about the even bigger and better models he had heard at the BX but couldn't fathom hauling around with all the base moves he would undergo. I was aware of Klipsch but had not heard them before so, with wife in tow we went over to Woofer and Tweeter in Boston over near Harvard. They were having some kind of Klipsch demo and we got to hear Heresy, Fortes, and Chorus models. I was hooked on the sound, esp. how well they reproduced brass. In a perfect moment of cosmic alliance WT was having a sale on some black Fortes. I owned those speakers over 20 years and moved them many, many times. After 20 years, many moves, cats, and small children they were looking a bit ugly and I finally sold them to finance the La Scalas.

J.River also works very well with Exact Audio Copy (EAC). I rip using EAC and J.River within seconds automatically adds the file to it's library.

Exact Audio Copy. It is as the name says, exact and very anal about getting the rip right. It is also free. If you are going to take the time to do this, rip them as FLAC files, then down convert to mp3 as needed.

I've got a nice pair of AR-11that I inherited from my folks. The sound is very nice and the bass quite good, but maybe I just like them because I grew up with them. I know I would love a pair of Altec Model 18s, even though I have never heard them or even seen a pair in person. Maybe Santa will bring me pair? [A]

In my experience the longer wall will make a greater difference than ceiling height (within reason). It is also important with k-horns to keep the area in front of them open though for the imaging to work well. Mine lived for years in my music studio and one music stand out in the room would mess things up, so keep that in mind as far as furniture placement.

In the right room, yes. I'm sure you have read how important having good corners and spacing is to k-horn sound, but if the room is right they are pretty much unbeatable.

I have had good luck using FedEx ground. Shipped a pair of heavy annoy studio monitors from Ohio to California for around $100. If your speakers fit, a great box to use is the "china" box from U-haul. I is very stout, big and tall enough for most speakers (I am not talking about Cornwall on up), and about $6.00. I bet a 5.5 would fit with room for lots of bubble wrap.

I have tried a variety of amps with my K-horn and La Scala speakers. My 300B Grant Fidelity sounds absolutely superb, but I recent acquired a little Sophia Electric Baby that I am using with my La Scalas. The price was quite reasonable, $400 in mint condition, used off A-gon. The sound is quite good and for such a little tube amp the bass is very good as well, better than many bigger more powerful amps I have tried. It wont blow you out of the room, but at least for me that is ok. But, If you can afford Mcintosh stuff you might want to try a good 300B amp, it is by far the best sounding amp I have heard paired with the big Klipsch.

I am not familiar the Yamaha model you have but I have found older Yamaha stuff to be an excellent match for Klipsch speakers. I own a nice CA-1010 that can run in Class A and it does the job quite nicely when asked with no problems well beyond listening levels I want to be around. Maybe there is something wrong with your receiver? If you really want to upgrade the sound, my old Fortes sounded fantastic with a simple 20 watt tube amp.

I am sure the new higher def discs sound great,and better than your LP version but at least for me that would tend to open a can of worms. I have found that by increasing the quality of the sound of the digital inevitably results in my wondering if I can get my turntable to sound as good, and vice versa. When I got a nice tube preamp for the TT suddenly the sound was better than the digital sources, which before had been superior. Lately I have added a nice tube DAC and evened the score, but it is clearly a dangerous thing to claim one is superior to the other. My result has been a mini analog digital arms race (but damn it sounds good either way). []

I do feel kind of bad not supporting a local merchant, but at the same time it seems that Radio Shack offers too many overpriced and poorly made products. I am lucky though, I live only about a 20-25 min. drive from Parts Express. They are almost as good as Monoprice for cables, and have a lot of speaker and pro sound related items as well.

I wonder every time I get an order from them how they can sell such good quality cable so damn cheap, My favorite deals so far are a 50ft HDMI cable for around $30, and a 65ft USB cable for around $25. Both are way better than anything I could buy locally. Last time I visited Radio Shack they wanted over $50 for a 6ft HDMI cable, and it was no where near the quality of the Monoprice one.

I have a "tuba table" sub with mine and am very happy with how well it matches up. When you get the crossover set in the right place, 80htz for my room, the transition is seamless. It produces an astonishing amount of low bass, and the tuba HT will produce even more.[] I did need to get an EQ for mine. It had a couple of notes that tended to get boomy in my room that the EQ (a Behringer DEQ2496) took care of.

Fortes are great speakers, but I sold mine when I got my La Scalas. Fortes are more versatile as far as placement, have a better WAF, and will play lower, but the sound for me wasn't close. The bass issue with the La Scala can be fixed with a good sub, and the WAF can be improved with grill covers and a nice glasstop to put stuff on.

Use it on the edges of the tail piece. The idea is to have the the insulation fill in any gap between the edges of the tail piece and the wall. This will greatly improve both the bass and overall sound.

Very nice looking pair, and only $900! I'm sure you know this, but the first thing to do is to get them TIGHT into those corners. Some pipe insulation along the back will help it seal and really improve the sound. Enjoy.