wildturkey 2oo0

Loved to see the picture of the Grateful Deads system on this forum.I would like to add some info on the "Wall of Sound": Mac lovers will get a kick out of this. The system had a total output of 26400 RMS watts driven by 48 macs 2300's in the beginning of 1973, towards the end of 1974 it got up to 64 macs. It was fully quadrophonic and had 89 15' inch jbl's as well as 178 12" jbl's plus 320 5" drivers and 54 electro voice tweeters and "their" sound company Alembic did a lot of custom work for them .The wall produced in open air "quite an acceptable sound at a quarter mile, fine sound up to 500 or 600 feet, where it begins to be distorted by wind". The Dead were pretty well the first band who had two have two of these systems as it took two days to set it up. In the end the costs to run this system were too expensive and the oil crisis of 1974 put an end to it. The Clair brothers did rentals systems for them and the amps were phase linears 700's series 2 (eventually even a revised phase linear amp was produced just for them), however jerry garcia always kept his mac on stage with him even after they changed to Meyer sound systems (John Meyer did some work with the dead way back, he left for switzerland to study sound) which they descriped as superior in sound and compared to the wall very easy to set up. Anybody interested should check out the Grateful Dead movie to put this system in perspective, even looking at the movie now i can't believe the set up. Blair Jackson did a magnificent job on his Greatful Dead Gear book - gives all the information on the instruments, sound systems and recording sessions of the Grateful Dead, but also what was available at that time and what the limitations and inventions were. Of course nowadays 26000 watts are like a ghetto blaster compared to some of these rigs shown in this thread. I still use the phase linears 700's from the 70's to power my system at 1/10 of the Grateful Deads power ( enough for me now - getting older might fix that status quickly - lol). Keep on Rockin'.

It's late - i meant bi-amping the speakers - sorry!

I had the same issue with the risers - on the bottom of the cabinets should be a thread in each corner which had spikes covered with a plastic cap originally. I used replacement feet from a patio table with the same thread size and it worked great. Use the risers or whatever you choose as the speakers are akward to move. If you do blow the horn you are looking at about $120 each for the diaphram from bob crites as this is a 2" throat. I fused mine with a fuse holder (cheap at any electronic store) with the value you need. I fused mine with the phase linear formula of: Power handling of speaker divided through 4 times the resistance, square root of. In my case - 300:32=9.375 square root 3.06 Amp. Only use fast blow fuses as they protect your speakers better. Klipsch has a different formula which came out higher. David Haeffler for example states in his manual that 2 amp fuses are good for 32 watts in 8 ohm, 3 amp fuses for 72 watts in 8 ohm and 5 amp fuses for 200 watts in 8 ohms. I have run the cf4's with a 5 amp fuse on occasion for extended hours/days and it never blew. Mind you the phase linear puts out 350 watts per channel in 8 ohms continous and running it at 200 watts is not hard on the amp.If you are bi-amping the amp you will have to be super careful as the horn will take lots less power compared to the woofers. I asked klipsch customer service the same question and they recommended not to. I really don't think these speakers need it, just bi-wire them. Amplifier wise i would use the adcom, i doubt however that you need a 20 amp line for it as this amp puts out 200 watts and maybe peaks at 800 watts at best. A 15 amp line will provide more power than you need at this time. Also - i never turn off my amp as it is a class AB, only class A amps will always draw the full current - i believe the adcom is a class AB as well. Two hours warm up time - who can wait that long anyways? Hope that helps - have fun

I have the cf4's version 3 which is supposed to be the worst of all 3 series and accused of sounding like a boombox - not true.I heard the version 2 and did not really hear a large difference if any - mind you the larger tubes were installed but no crossover mods were made. I also talked to an older gentleman in the klipsch service department which was very helpfull - same opinion from him about the versions. He talked about that the original woofer was heavier and that it was replaced by a more efficient one and they raised the tuning of the cabinett as well. Listen to them first and then see what you like about them and also the kind of music you like is important too. I have yet to find a better speaker for rock'n'roll (classic-psych you name it) than these. They are set up in the basement and make the concrete floor float like an ice cube in my bourbon. I also have the cf3's which are more excact and precise and i use them mostly for jazz. The cf4's are powered by an phase linear 700 series 2 ( real 350 watts per channel in 8 ohms) and handle incredible power levels - as per specs they will do 1200 watts peak and they do that. They love lots of power so get something around 200 watts per channel and they will sing for you. I also recommend bi-wiring them, you will notice a difference. They do not sound like an klipsch heritage speaker but they are a tremendous speaker. I got mine from washington for 650 US and paid another 350 US for shipping to canada 3 years back, now they will probably cost around the same or not much more. The longer port tubes should be available at speaker shops or make you own from pvc pipe. In your case they should be 5 inches long - later versions they reduced them to 3 inches There also used to be a very caustic review on the internet - check it out.