thackmate

Bill H. It may be that when Klipsch Inc regained the pro division they focussed primarilly on cinema products and little else. Prior to the sale of the pro business unit to WWR Technology/Klipsch Professional Klipsch marketed their products to the cinema industry in the USA via an exclusive dealer agreement. WWR/Klipsch Professional changed that, developed more products and went to market direct.

Michael, When WWR acquired Klipsch pro business unit the KP prefix for complete products was in place. I can only assume that when Klipsch Inc regained the business the prefix of KI came about. This was in fact being very retro as the Klipsch professional product group used to be called the INDUSTRIAL range. the 262, 362, 366 and 456 were definitely a WWR development and the circular motorboard concept was developed by WWR/Klipsch Professional as well. This came about as we were working on a flyable dual 15 bass reinforcement cabinet for the 362 system and decided that the 'rotatable" motorboard section did not need to be square but round would work just as well and indeed gave more options. (For your further information we also began developing circular coaxial mid/tweeter horns that were based on the same outer dimensions of 15", 12" and 8" woofers.) The MCM, LSI, TSCM & KP600 were well into production before the WWR/Klipsch Professional days. The LSI was a laScala at first with an option to upgrade to a heavier duty woofer (K-43). FYI it was also an option to have the K-43 fitted to any laScala. The TSCM was a Klipschorn LF with the outer "walls or corners" fitted and a high output mid/HF unit that was built for behind the screen cinema operation and you could call them rare but quite a few were built and sold. There were many MCM systems built but by far there were many more MWM's and MWM-S's sold not in the complete system. The KP600 was succesful in its own right with many being permanently installed such as the 12 box cluster that we painted white with white grills and had installed in the First Baptist Church of Little Rock. New Orleans convention center had about 60 KP600 boxes and probably RAM and NE Sound had the largest road rigs. Tom Gallagher sold quite a few road rigs and I sold probably more to fixed install. The KP682 was a wood version of the KP680 of which the prototype was wood and Bob @ Ram had those to test. All of the 4 digit series were developed at WWR does this answer your question?

to add my 2 cents to this thread........... "If my memory serves me, the K-501 from the 450 was a 1 inch exit and was a tractrix horn(? Roy might have to correct me on this). The K-506 horn was from the 456, had a 2 inch exit and was a tractrix horn. The K-506 might be hard to find in the used market. Guys like JoeyB, have a hard time parting with their KP-456 cabinets." As I recall the K501 was in the 450HF and it may have been a tractrix hybrid but not the kind of tractrix that became the K506 for the KP456HF. I am not sure who designed the K501 but it may have been Tracy Crawford. I think the K506 was a Delgado/Marlin creation but it may well have been Bruce Marlin's first Tractrix. The 501 had an odd pattern in that it was a 100x80 and we developed the 506 to suit the 1132 driver and to make it acceptable to the small cinema cineplex market and to gain THX approval. The pattern of a K506 is 90x60. By the way the exit of the K506 is much larger that 2". The 2" refers to the entry point of the horn or the exit point of the driver which in this case was an 1132 with snout. (Tom Gallagher called it the Canadian 1132 as in 1132-A ...............1132.eh?)

bhendrix........... When Klipsch Inc sold the pro business to WWR there was a good but rather "limited" pro product range at the time. Also Klipsch Pro at that point in time did not have a grip on what we called the contractor installed system business. Then they were relying on Heresy based product along with KP301 (Chorus) and KP101 for the bulk of "installation"product needs. MCM, LSI, KP450, TSCM had cinema applications and not suitable for what was the bulk of the business like houses of worship. (Ok so we did install some white KP600 systems) We needed trap boxes that could cluster and fly so the 262 and 363 were born out of that need and we had the parts for them so we literally dressed the same old girls in new dresses. We had the 602 horn which is a 60x40 and that was the ideal block to build upon. That was adapted to accept a better driver that had some extension in the upper end and Emininence provided that piece. In developing the 262 and 362 we opted to "voice" them on the intended application of vocal and live instrument reinforcement rather than strive to get the flattest possible frequency response curve. HiFi buffs love flat curves but that means little to sound reinforcement. Take a look at a lascala response curve .... not pretty but that speaker is the quintesential PA system. And I guess that answers your question and you can see the "theme" we were on. By the way we continued on with the tractrix wave technology and developed a tractrix horns to replace both of the "heresy" horns. This tweeter horn was used in many other applications as well. John Post designed the conical tractrix used in the 102. This was his first horn design that went into production. Also we developed new compression drivers utilizing neodymium magnets and we had a variety of metals and polymers for dome structures. Bringing these into replace phenolic domes caused many days (and nights) voicing the new and newly updated models. Hope this helps those interested in what we were doing at pro in the 90's Thack

Colter ...... RE K602 I'm working on vague memory about this here .....as I recall the K602 was an early Delgado Tractrix horn that had a K57K driver which was used in the Chorus II and Forte II product and entered pro in the KP320. When WWR acquired the pro business there was a manufacturing agreement with Klipsch Inc who for one year provided many of the MF/HF parts, most of which came out of the Hot Springs plant. The tool for the 602 mold was sold to WWR and it needed repair so we did the repairs and at the same time modified it to accept a better driver which was a screw on fit. I believe that became the K604KP (being for 60x40) and I think that Klipsch Inc had made another horn around that time that also had the K604 nomenclature. Maybe I should dig up my old docs and see if this was so ............. it's been a while

I was looking through this thread and found this comment from bhendrix.............. "Glad you got the 262's singing, Michael. They really do sound quite good, as do all the Klipsch pro speakers. Must be Klipsch has a pretty good pro engineer. Klipsch/Klipsch Pro have had many good engineers and a few marketing guys that knew what it took for a speaker to be really "pro". It was always a collaboration between the two to come up with the products that we did. The common thread between engineering and marketing undoubtedly stemmed back to one man and what he taught all of us .................. yes, THE man.............. Paul Wilbur Klipsch. If you are talking engineering and about the 262 then that engineer was Bruce Marlin. It was essentially one of those E&M collaborations and it was somewhat a parts bin engineering effort. The 604 horn was a rework of the 602 horn that Roy Delgado did. It was reworked to accomodate a better driver and have better roadworthiness. The cabinet design was market driven. But when it came to sound ............Bruce "voiced" it beatifully. We went on to develop the 362 within days after the 262 was signed off and the 366 came along not long after the excellent market success of these two. We were clearly on a good theme. Thack

yes M. Passive networks in the stubby sub 115 and the 480 were designed principally with the "speaker on a stick" mobile PA operation in mind. (Be that the 201, 250, 320, 301 et al small system products.) That being said I have heard of "permanent" installations done by some that utilized these networks and, they served the purpose.

Colter, Bob @ Ram and I probably are the resident "old" guys [] and we get along fine. Now a comment about the X/over point - In the early days we knew what the 480X network sounded like under LSI's and it was wrong but we figured that anyone who added a 480 to an LSI or 450 rig then they would want to use an active filter and exra amps. A switchable unit with 2 or 3 points would have cost so much more and price the product out of the market. cheers

Bob mate ....... I didn't say it was an accident. I was merely commenting on a previous statement that said it was designed for the LSI and ..... you are absolutely right the 450 system was in consideration. When it came time to take to market and have a road ready version (suffix A) for where most would be sold then other products like the KP250 came into consideration and with that the passive network (suffix X). The end result was that most were sold with network and used with the 250 on a pole and that is why I commented on them. BTW have you spoken with Bruce lately?

I just stumbled onto this thread and thought I'd give y'all my 10 cents worth. The KP480 initially came about as a way to fulfill a market need for a compact subwoofer. It needed to have grunt and earth shaking low end but how to do such in a small box? It was not intended to be an XLF for the laScallywag but that certainly came into play as designs were being considered. The passive radiator certainly worked and although there were some early problems with reliability in the field many were sold and still enjoyed. If you have two of them try laying them sideways so that the drone cones (bottom) couple together. A lot of night clubs do this in the B version. Many a KP480-AX product was sold with a post and a KP250A sitting on top and latterly many were sold as KP4000X and KP2502. If you bi amp a KP480 with the LSI you will find that 70 cycles is a good crossover point (I noticed that someone was mentioning 80-100 in this thread) Thack

if you are flying clusters you may want to alternate the orientation of the cabinets to reduce or hopefully eliminate comb filtering of the HF's. I.E. let's say you are flying a cluster of three speakers near the ceiling then on the outer two of the 3 have the woofers adjacent to the ceiling and the middle speaker opposite.

The K41 did have an M suffix as in K41M and the M suffix designates it was an EV product built in Buchanan Michigan. But is it the equivalent of the DL10X? I would not think that looks makes it so. Better check that out in detail beforehand

The K-49-KP is/was one of two 18" woofers built by Klipsch Professional (as designated by the KP suffix - if the suffix is "K" then it was built at the Klipsch & Assoc or Klipsch Inc Oakhaven, AR plant). It has a nominal impedance of 4 Ohms, power handling 400 W (that's AES standard continuous pink noise 50-500Hz with 1600 W peaks), sensitivity is 99.0 dB SPL @ 1M with 2.83V input, frequency response 30 - 3,500 Hz, min impedance 4.1 @ 160Hz, highest recommended crossover frequency 800Hz, recommended enclosure volume 3 -12 cu ft It was used in the KP480 and KP4000C compact subwoofer systems which was a relatively small bass reflex enclosure vented via a drone cone (passive radiator). It had a sister woofer the K-47-KP which was a nominal 8 ohm unit that was used in the KP680 and KP682 systems. I have Theile-Small parameters if you need or maybe Klipsch has an old cut sheet of the K-1847/K-1849 products as the woofers had this nomenclature when sold as "raw drivers" Hope that this helps Thack

For those reading about the protypes the LB was for Little Bast**d and BMF was the Big Mother ******. The engineering crew was an interesting lot to say the least in those days and those who worked on the BMF a.k.a. MCM1900 was a who's who of horn engineering. Paul Klipsch, Gary Gillum and even Don Keele (of EV CD horn fame) worked on it.

let's move the forum here if you want to talk old Pro stuff

hey Arkansaw, I'm always up for a few proper pint .... do you know or have heard of an Aussie that isn't? I didn't get your name?

G'day Bob ...... what do you mean you are in your 36th year? You two should have retired long ago and sailed off into the sunset. my email is thackmate@yahoo.com.au drop me a line mate

all of the K-Pro series are carpet and are made of OSB not MDF Oriented Strand Board I'll put together a timeline for pro and then come back and cut & paste it in for you by the way this conversation should move ................ whay are we doing this forum under Mr. Roy please?

Joey Brogna !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! G'day mate

Michael, FYI .......... Klipsch Inc sold the professional products business unit along with certain assets and licenses to WWR Technology who then successfully launched an IPO on NASDAQ with Klipsch Pro and 2 other insignificant electronics companies. WWR was then bought by Consolidated Technologies, another penny stock Wall Streeter. We just stuck along with always calling it Klipsch Professional (or Pro as it was known in the Klipsch community). Now to answer your question: The "thousand" series as you call it actually had the series nomenclature of K-Pro and we called them rat fur as well. Initially we outsourced the cabinets as we did not have the knowledge of building boxes out of OSB and covering with carpet. Then after much experimentation we mastered the "art" and built them in house at the Klipsch Professional plant at N. Industrial Rd, Hope, AR. They were shipped smelling of contact cement not beer and smokes Yes we did pay special attention to the crossover networks. Albeit based on the Heresy the KP201 was all pro. The networks were assembled onto our proprietry input panel in Mexico and along with fuse protection and real connectors had to be built to withstand the rigors of roadies. This typically demanded higher quality components and strong PCB's. This likely causes a perception of sounding better. As for the KP262??? not just the network making it sound good as this was designed in our parts bin mode but was "voiced" as a vocal sound reinforcement system. We used human voice on microphones not smooth sounding CD's to acheive this and the curve may not be flat but yes that box is an animal that purrs as it roars!! Hope this info is helpful to you Thack

MI = Music Instrument and the term in the context of speakers here is primarilly what sound reinforcement products are sold through music stores like Guitar Center, Washington Music etc. They are used as small PA rigs or in mobile disco etc. Carpet covered was desired to reduce box maintenance and the other side to that was they are cheaper to build and therefore can go to market at lower prices. This "K-Pro" line was done as a fill in to maintain and actually gain market share while we developed moulded poly products. In fact what we were doing in many cases at Pro was "parts bin engineering". We would adapt exixting parts to new designs and product upgrades.

Hi Greg, I recognize your surname but like you cannot put a face to it. We likely were in meetings together when we were looking at Telex assisting with KT product development. I recall there was also a bloke named Gangesh back then. Cheers Ian

you'd remember me Greg, The Australian with the big moustache that introduced the Heritage consoles for Midas, sold more XL4's in one year than ever B4 and re-energized Klark Teknik in USA.

John Fricks ... there's a name from the past. Bad thing that he went the way he did.

Greg..... my name is Ian Thacker and I was GM of KT Group with my office in Buchanan, MI. I reported to Dave Merrey in Kidderminster until he was let go. Who are you?