oldmako

Threw my Nakamichi BX-2 (??) in the dumpster 30 years ago.

Because I did not know that at the time, and every place I called did not have a suitable replacement. Only Bob Crites. I would have preferred to drop in the proper replacement. My first phone call was to Klipsch. Maybe I got the B-Team that day.

Crites has a suitable replacement woofer. Or, used to.

Regarding the spikes on the CFs, In the KLF line, and perhaps the CFs as well that spike is a threaded affair that resides within a hard rubber foot. It can be retracted IOW so that it won't destroy your flooring. You might want to take a look. The entire foot assembly can be unthreaded, the spike then flipped around and rethreaded into the cabinet leaving just the rubber. My first pair of Klipsch were CF-3's though I am not certain if they are the coveted version or not. Mine have the 3 inch deep ports if I am not mistaken. I urge you to chase all leads to resurrect them and get them back in top shape. You will not be disappointed, especially if you jam a LOT of power into them. Mine came alive when I hooked them up to an ancient Phase Linear 400 - "the sonic turd". I only paid 240 bucks for mine. I then invested a few hundred bucks in having the crossovers being completely rebuilt by Bob Crites son. I don't recall the exact nature of the malady which drove me contact him but there was an imbalance or loss of signal of some sort. This was an excellent solution and I was very happy with the results. They came back 30 percent larger than they were and his work was absolutely beautiful. Sadly, mine are just sitting upstairs and are not even hooked up. My Cornwalls took their spot. My son in law has his eye on them but I am dragging my feet. Good luck in your quest.

Thank you, billybob. I have been AWOL for quite a while. Life. Curveballs. Plate tectonics. Coriolis. Unfortunate stuff like that. My quest ended with my Cornwalls and now I am of the age that I need to start culling the herd. While that SUCKS, my daughter will be thrilled! She just needs a larger house!

Shazam. My special lady friend had been "cleaning" and the connections were dorked up. One loose and barely a wire touching. Whew!

The tweeter and the midrange on the same speaker.

I am verklempt. Neither of the two horns appear to be working on my port speaker. Is this indicative of a bad crossover? Or something else? I thought perhaps I could swap the crossovers L to R and give a listen to see if it followed, but I'm kind of a dolt and just guessing. Any additional ideas?

No, but I got my sphincter bleached!

Funny thing about A/B tests and Klipsch speakers... My very first pair were monstrous CF3's. I had only heard Klipsch bookshelf speakers before, I believe they were the RB35s at my brothers place. Was blown away that such a small pair of speaks could produce that sound. Not that volume, that sound. So when I saw a pair of Cherry CFs for sale on CList not ten mins from my crib I jumped. No idea what I was going to look at. I didn't know CF3 from a BM or a DC10. So I give a look and a listen and every bone in my body says, "You cannot possibly put these two phone-booths in your tiny condo irrespective of how they sound!" They were audible sex to be sure... just huge and gorgeous. (THE GUY PUT ON AN FM TALK RADIO STATION for the audition....what the hell?) So, I hem n haw. The the guy lowers his price. Hmmmm! Ten mins and one HIDEOUS offer from me later ($250) they're in HIS truck and he's following me to my crib to HELP me unload them. My bemused neighbors had NO idea what they were in for. Fast forward a year or so and I see a pair of Mint Walnut Fortes nearby ($400). Of course I go get em, STAT. I A/B them with my CF3's expecting them to sound better because by now I'm all over this forum reading all about Heritage, etc etc. So I'm ready to be blown away. I'm not. Don't get me wrong, the Fortes sounded positively fantastic, but better? No. DIFFERENT? Hell yes! So much for A/B settling the score once and for all. Then came the KG5.2's. Similar result. Then some KLF20s. Similar result. Then the Forte IIs. I didn't bother! I just hauled them into the bedroom and set em up. EVERY TIME I tried to validate a new purchase I've come away with a smile and the feeling that I didn't really need new speakers after all. But I never quit looking at CList! So now I have Cornwalls, KLF30s and CF3's along with a several others and I love them all. Do I prefer some? Yes. These Cornwalls are just sublime. But if I want to wake the dead? The KLF30s and a down-firing 15 inch sub (on a crawl space no less!) can really summon the cops FAST! Got a house now and there are Klipsch in every room but the crappers n kitchen. Too old to move all the crap around now and too blind to see all tiny crap on the back of my gear so that I CAN A/B them. I just hook em up and enjoy.

Sorry, I have never A/B'd them. I'm a slacker. They both make me smile, that's about all I can say.

When I was in high school I was standing in Audio Associates listening to a pair of Heil ESS AMT 1's (?). They had some weird tweeter and I thought they were absolutely amazing. I think they were 400 bucks a piece. As a HS kid, they might as well have been 4000 a piece. No way I could afford them. Fast forward to my old age and my audio gear, most of which I bought for pennies on the dollar when compared to their original prices. When I consider how much enjoyment I am getting out of 40-50 year old audio equipment it makes me smile. When I amortize the enjoyment that a 500 dollar piece of gear would have given me over 40 YEARS I realize just how "worth it" that gear was at the time. Too bad I was making 1.75 per hour! I found a 40 year old Marantz 2240 on Clist (in near mint condition) long ago. Craigslist. 40 bucks. It was probably 450 bucks when new. Yes, it had a few dirty pots when I bought it but that's it. I added one can of aerosol magic and have enjoyed ten years of smiles. I am about to send it off to have it recapped and throughly gone through. All this to say that even at 1000 dollars, a pair of Fortes is a pretty good deal in my opinion. You'll give them to your kids after you're gone.

Nor do I. Many thanks for turning my pic into an actual pic!

IMG_5805.HEIC Interested party says that this passive is bad. "Creases" says he. Is it? Interested party no longer interested. They just appear like marks from something bumping up against at some point. I bought them like this. I don't believe that the speaker material itself is damaged. But I score pretty high on the "Just how ignernt are yew anyway?" scale. What do you think? ** I can't get the close up pic to load. Says the file size is too big. My ludditeness rules the day.

HEY THANKS!

I've got another pair of Forte Is and they're walnut and mint. So that makes this pair somewhat less desirable even with the upgrade. Plus, I am not fond of black speakers this large. The Walnuts are elegant and beautiful. And since I only use them at low levels in my bedroom in the morning their sonic abilities are less important to me. I'll still have my Cornwalls, KLF 30s, CF3's, KG5.5's, Heresies, etc. At this point in my life I am probably done collecting so it makes sense to loosen the gate at the corral. The only thing I covet now are LaScala's and a big McIntosh Amp. And after what's been happening on Wall Street lately, my Govt Cheese Retirement plan won't allow for either of those. And I'm more or less a 2CH guy anyway. My HT setup is KG 5 fronts, a 13 inch sub and a C-7 center. My house is a bit funky and open and doesn't really allow for the whole shebang. And then there's that whole "wife" thing. All of my gear will go to my only kid when I croak and my guess is that she'll sell all but the Cornwalls or CF3s. I don't need to burden her with more things to put on CList. I never paid much for any of them, except the Walnut Fortes. Those set me back 400 bucks. HA! And the KLF30s were $800. But that included a c-7 center. HAHAHA. Everything else was idiotically price by idiots who had no idea what they owned. Marantz 2240 for 40 bucks, for example. Mint. Prob more than you wanted to know, but I'm in front of the CWalls with a beverage or two, relaxed and a bit bored. Be well.

No idea what's up with the pics. Now that I've cleaned them up, I'd say they're an 8. The cabs are not beat up at all, but have a few light scratches here and there. No plant rings or cocktail rings. Hell they've got to be 30 yrs old by now. I've taken great care of them but they were a Craigslist find and I didn't pay much for them. Just hooked them up and enjoyed them. The speakers themselves appear to be in fine shape with zero wrong that I can see. Even the passives still have their cones and no little kids or cats have violated them. They're not perfect but not beaters either.

IMG_5791.HEIC

IMG_5794.HEICIMG_5796.HEIC

I'll toss up some pics later. Thanks!

Greetings gents. May I indulge your patience for a moment? I'm getting a bit long in the tooth and have decided to try and move a few of my children out of the house. I have not been paying attention to things lately since most of my time centers around keeping kids off my lawn, PoliGrip and arguing with people I do not know on the internet. I have an old pair of Forte IIs finished in Black. A local guy has expressed an interest in them. I don't know their vintage but the serial numbers are 246299451 and 452. One has had its woofer replaced with the proper speaker from Klipsch. The data tags say FII FIN. BLK. #19 GRILL They sound great (of course) and are in decent shape. The very bottom of the risers have some rash from them being moved around on carpet. Carpet fibers grab the veneer and tear it. Other than that, they look pretty good. Say, no worse than 8 out of 10. And after I shine them up a bit, perhaps a 9. I have a pair of Walnut Forte I's that I am going to keep since they are in near mint condition. Edit *** I decided to remove the risers and trimmed a quarter inch from the 4 sides (the bottoms) on a table saw to eliminate the crummy areas. I then ever so gently sanded a tiny 45 degree bevel on the new edges to prevent this from happening in the future. This made a HUGE difference in their appearance. So my question is, what are they worth? I looked at completed listings on eBay and of course, they are all over the map. I am astonished at what the new ones sell for. I am not interested in shipping them. If he doesn't take them, I will happily sell them to anyone else who may be interested in them. I live in Virginia Beach, VA. Thank you for any help.

I read an interesting article about these amps once. While I don't recall the specifics, all the amps that entered flambe-mode had been seriously compromised because idiots were putting HUGE fuses in and tossing the factory sized fuses into the trash. Apparently Bob Carver used a radically different method to produce power than most electronics makers used. Somehow, he massaged the ample power avail through the normal AC current to create High Power amps and that when someone replaced the fuses with significantly larger ones, the end result was generally catastrophic. Hence the term, Flame Linear. I ran my CF-3s on one and my 5.2s on another for a while. I used a simple splitter to get to line outs to the amps. The result might not have been what most audiophiles like to hear, but it sure made me smile and vibrated anything not bolted down all over my condo. My neighbors did not approve. Those were the days.

Ding Ding. I've heard them described as "sonic turds" but they sure opened up my CF3s. They loved the power.

Perhaps some more esplainin' will help... First, the pic. Second, I am in Virginia Beach and found them on Norfolk Craigslist. I find it a bit difficult to accurately compare them to the CFs for a few reasons - 1. The room is probably far too small, maybe 12 X 14. It's a FROG or, furnished room over garage and has a peaked roof. The dudes carpet really ties the room together, however. 2. The shit eating grin on my face is pushing my ears into an unnatural and awkward position to accurately hear what the hell is going on. 3. I'm RFO and have been listening to The Who and others for a LONG time. 4. I fly noisy airplanes for a living and have for 33 years. 5. My bottom feeder gear and heavy duty lamp cord wires are probably sucking sound out and shooting it off into the stratosphere. 6. There are two other reasons evident why my hearing sucks in the pic. . What can I say? The Bass on the CFs is far punchier, but it seems like the mids are better. With the tone pots at FLAT, I found that I needed to wind the bass up more on the Cornwalls. Less tight thump, but still plenty of Bass. When I got the Bass right and selected the CFs, it was too much. Alcohol was involved. If I jammed a sub between the amp and the Cornwalls I could probably rule the world.

Finally picked up a nice pair of Cornwalls. I think they're 1's, as the serial numbers are stamped into the wood. The factory stickers are in poor shape. 23U132 and 23U130. Oiled Walnut with new Bob Crites tweeters. They have also recently been recapped though I have no knowledge of what went in. I have all the original parts. The grills need new cloth. They each have some minor tears and marks but nothing heinous. The cabinets are in fair to good condition. They each have a few nicks in the veneer but they look great from across the room. Blasted them for two days an old Sansui 5700 so I could A/B them with my CF-3s. Every time I compare my CFs (my first Klipsch) to new speaks I wonder why I ever kept buying speakers. I love the CFs and they still make me smile. But these Cornwalls are a marked improvement. So far, not as much Bass response but the mids are scary bright and FULL. It sounds like I put four speakers in the room and not just two. I just wired them to my Fisher 500B. So far, great. I think the thing holding them back is the room is too small. Guess I need a new house. 700 Bucks. - Happiest guy in the hood!