avguytx

I've seen those listed on CL for awhile and wondered what they had in them. Just never got around to asking. What woofers do they have? Did you find out or did I miss that above? Or are they just the cabinets?

Man....if you were only closer. Or I was closer. Glws!

It looks like his eBay auction went crazy and he ended it. $9,200? Something is amiss... http://www.ebay.com/itm/sold-klipsch-lascala-and-belle-3-speakers-/291467170639?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=HUiTOIqyEMZ5Yxy%252BQcgIlA0SK8U%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

You know, I might just do that, in exactly that way. I've spent months making one little change at a time, and listening to each of the differences in sound (if any) just for the sport of it. I try to be brutally honest with myself, but sometimes I'm just not sure what I'm hearing. I'll leave it to others to tell me its a placebo. (and they might be right!) Me personally, if I'm going to that trouble to the trouble of separating two boards from the terminal cup crossover, I'd go ahead and replace the resistors and caps at the same time. There's less chance of messing something up doing it once and, with larger caps going in place of stock caps, it would be easier to plan out and do at one shot. But that's just me.

This "seems" like a decent deal. Right? http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/ele/5028856491.html

Too bad I'm not closer....these might be fun. http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/ele/5032504277.html

I took my KLF-30's to my best friends house and, in his living room and practically the same equipment, they sounded tons better. They just don't match up with my living room so they will be sold off here before long. It was worth a try and I enjoyed the build process as always. Back on the search for some Cornwall's and see how they work out in my living room. I do have another buddy fairly close that owns a small arsenal of speakers including Cornwalls and has owned LS's and K'horns. Maybe he'll let me borrow the CW's for a week or so.

Yep....found it. https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/152523-klipsch-cf-3-crossovers-updatedmuch-better/ Check with PartsConnexion for a great selection of Mills resistors; that's where I usually get mine from unless PE just happens to have them. http://partsconnexion.com/resistors_mills_mra12.html I'd be glad to help you out with the crossovers in your CF-4's if you decided to redo them.

Dave, those boards separate and let you work on them fairly easy, although rather tight in space. I replaced all of my CF-3 resistors with Mills 12w versions and have used Mills resistors with Solen caps for maybe 25 years in home and car audio with outstanding results. I thought I had posted pictures on here of that...I'll have to look.

CF-3's are back as the mains. Maybe the 30's sound like they're supposed to and they're just not my cup of tea and/or not made for this living room. No worries. The CF-3's will stay in place unless/until a pair of 4's come along.

I've jacked around with some equalization on them, both graphic and parametric, within JRiver and they sound pretty good. Sure is a lot of tinkering but it's better. Not the CF-3's but ok.

I listened to lots of various music tonite and still can't get a grasp on these. I'm also still curious if some sort of sub par mid diaphragm might've been used. I messed with equalization within the JRiver program both in standard and parametric and even that left some to be desired. Sheesh..

No worries. They've stayed in the living room but I haven't had time to listen to them sine Sunday. I doubt I get any time to work on them this weekend as I am building a new butcher block style dining table for my wife for mothers day. Plus I think I have to go to someone's graduation...gotta check that.

My thoughts exactly. I heard these speakers many times in years past at CES, the store I worked at, and people's houses and they were impressive. That's why it's hard to come up with a viable solution ad to what's holding them back. They don't sound "awful", just too hot in the midrang. But surely nothing is wrong with all 4 woofers. When played loud, they definitely rock the house with Eagles - Hell Freezes Over playing on them.

Yes, I've had that go the other way in the past but it was worth a try since they didn't sound that great before. They actually have a tad more low end but that low vocal range that the woofers would typically produce just isn't there...before or after. If the horn wall was affecting the mids that much, one would think it would happen in everyone's KLF's and not just a few. It could be just a null in the bass wave since the sound reminds me of improper placement of a home sub where in the listening position, it sounds muted but other parts of the room are pounding. When I was the rep for Sunfish and PSB, I'd recommend my dealers to put the subwoofer in the spot the customer sat and go listen around the room to find the strong bass by walking around. Then, locate the sub where that loud spot was and it would sound strong at the seated position. 90%+ of the time, it worked based on if a sub could go in that spot. Obviously I can't do that with these. Ha I wonder what the probability of the 97uf capacitor in the low pass section of the crossover being out of whack and lowering the crossover point. I never lifted a leg to meter it and see. It could happen but...

Yeah, it was kind of disappointing for them not to sound that much better than they did before hand but I wasn't sure what to expect. Once I saw how little of glue was holding the panels I was kind of hopeful that there would be a difference. My ears tell me the midrange is too dominant and an RTA says the same. I may try reversing the phase on both and see what happens. They were wired correctly per the terminal markings on the crossover boards. I might even reverse the woofer phasing on one side and see what happens. I do know the sound of drivers being out of phase sounds like as I spent many years building and tuning high end car audio vehicles plus was a certified SQ judge....when it meant something. And all the years of home A/V work, too. Let's say I'm listening to Allison Krauss. Well we all know her voice has a nasally kind of sound occasionally but, on the KLF-30's, it's almost overbearing and I take the mid control down about half way to make it tolerable. Never have to do that with the CF-3's or others. Then most any well recorded CD sounds great on the CF's but lacks that same mid bass/low bass definition that the CF-3's, and others, have. I keep thinking phasing on the woofers and it seems like I did reverse one side and it sounded like a$$ but I forget. Not a big deal to pull and switch for short term. It they were truly out of phase, I could hear it....it stands out like a turd in a punch bowl. I was in a local home/car A/V dealer over the weekend and I could hear the radio playing from one of there display rooms was wired out of phase. There's just a distinct sound...or lack of....that it sounds like. Borderline annoying. I don't play crazy loud because I'm married and have two kids....and no dedicated room. But I gave them some volume and they do sound quite good up loud IF you've got the Loudness on and the midrange control backed down. If I happened to be using my completely rebuilt Carver C-1 with no mid control, I'm afraid they'd really be awful. They'll stay in the living room for a tad longer as I'll give them time for break in on the tweeters and caps....which isn't that long. I'll try reversing the phase on the mids (both sides) and then reverse the woofers phasing (one side) and see what happens. Otherwise, they aren't looking like keepers.

KLF-30's are finished enough that I can get them back in the living room. The tweeter diaphragms were changed to titanium versions, cabinets braced/glued/nailed/screwed/etc, I moved the (4) foam pieces per cabinet more towards the bottom versus where they were at the top and stapled them into place, sanded and repainted cabinets back to satin black with the Lowes Valspar Satin Black (turned out very nice). I still need to recover the grills, get new screw in feet for the bottom since they're just open holes except for the little felt pads I put on them for going on our wood floors. I didn't get around to damping the horns and woofer baskets but that's no major deal to go back and do. Highs sound nice with new tweeters, midrange still overly dominant like before, and bass might be a little better...but not much. I think it's just these don't work well in the living room and that's it. The CF-3's sound better, as do the Norman Lab Model 9's and my (sold off) Polk SRA SRS 2's. I'm going to try them at a friends house on his setup and see how they do there. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel trying to make something sound better in a room where they apparently don't. Some music you can listen to and they sound really impressive and then other music just sounds unbearable. And on the music that sounds unbearable, sounds fine on the CF-3's. They may end up going away in the near future and I'll just use those funds towards something else. Or, I'll stick them in our bedroom or in the closet for another time. Maybe a pair of Cornwall's or La Scala's will turn up. I'm still wondering if maybe the mid diaphragms were replaced with something sub-standard and they didn't mate up well. But that doesn't explain their bass inefficiency. But it was a fun project as always.

You should look up some YouTube videos on doing this if you've never soldered before. Having just done a set of crossovers in my KLF-30's I'd tell a person they're easy to do, but, I've done lots of passive crossovers in the last 30 years. Hot glue holds caps and resistors down and it might help with some heat from a hair dryer to soften them up. Or just razor blade them out little by little and de-solder them from the back side. It's 3 caps and a resistor per crossover so they're fairly simple. You do have to remove the 4 binding posts to get the boards where you can work with them.

One crossover recapped tonite. Forgot to take a picture but will add one tomorrow. Not that most everyone hasn't seen a recap before. I used Axon caps and Mills resistors this time instead of my usual Solen caps. Parts Connexion was/is running them for half price and I've used them in the past with good results.

Finished other speaker today and swapped out the poly tweeters for the titanium domes. I had to go to father in laws birthday this afternoon and then its been storming some so I guess that's it till next weekend. So nothing new for pictures thus far. Hoping to get cabinets sanded down and repainted next go round and then work on crossovers while they are drying. Cabinets are definitely more solid so I'm hoping this improves them.

Titanium diaphragms came in today from Bob...dang that was fast. But I guess when you're an hour and a half away, it works out well. Won't get to work on them till the weekend though. Maybe I'll be able to hear one of them.

Using RCA cables from the Denon (?) receiver's sub out straight into the amplifier and then hooked straight to the speakers. Yes, meaning wired correctly. Being that they're dual 4-ohm coils and you're wiring them in parallel for a 2-ohm load per woofer, that's pretty cut and dried for simplicity. What about with one woofer hooked up to the amp at a time? Does the amp have an inverting switch of any kind? No other amp you can try them with?

What about just taking a line signal straight from the receiver/source into the amp and test output? Did you try that? You don't have another amp to just drop in place do you? Definitely sounds amp related in what I've read in the posts. And I'm assuming they are in phase. Many, many times through my car audio years did I see my installers wire DVC woofers up wrong and not have any output.

I've got a tone generator that I used to use back in my car audio days for tuning an woofer enclosure to the vehicle so I'm going to play around with tuning for these in my living room. Same principles apply.

So there's no return policy from where you bought them?