hklinker

Nice work on the horns. Keep the posts and photos coming. Just finishing a pair myself![]

A trip to the "Mancave". You know that you have become obsessed when you drive two and a half hours to see speakers! Go to Yeehaw Junction, hang a left and go about 40 miles! Groomlakearea51 invited me down to see his collection and workshop. I believe he has more cubic feet of Klipsch per square foot than anyone in the world. The living room has the Wall of Corn, three pair of modified CW's surrounding his flat panel. Talk about surround sound! K-horns and Heresy's (or should that be Heresies?) in the bedrooms. But the highlight of my trip to Klipschmecca came upon entering the "mancave"; a converted Florida Room that featured four pairs of speakers, each connect to it's own Sansui integrated amp. On the opposite wall was the control center which was more complex than the instrument panel of the space shuttle! The next two hours were spent listening to a variety of tunes, an eclectic mix of old and newer rock and pop. With each song, Groom would jump up like the mad Dr, Frankenstein (that's Fronk-en-steen) and completely change the timber, tenor and soundstage simply by adjusting the gain on one or more of the amps. It was most impressive! Thanks to Groom, my grills will be professionally rebuilt, and I pickup up a pair of original K-77's. Horns will be arriving on Friday from GotHover!

I am beginning to learn that;-) I made my own beeswax from a block of wax and turpentine. I think you are probably right about the shellac, it came from Lowes and the can was dented so who knows how long it was on the shelf? I will look for some shellac online, do you have a source?

Won't the Z-braces that BEC sells do the flush mounting in the existing holes?

Thanks Pete, this was my first restoration. It was from a smoker's house and was nasty. Wires cut, capacitor bad. I went through a can of denatured alcohol and a box of q-tips to clean it. I picked a second one about a month ago that was an earlier serial number and had it running in 3 days. I still have to let it run for about 15 minutes to get it to run at full speed, but once it gets there it runs dead on forever.I see you have two 124's side by side in your system. Nice! Herb

Bliss, Are those dot magnets that hold the grill panel to the cabinets? Herb

Un Disastro! Took a mulligan. Not really but still frustating. The top of one of the cabinets had some brush streaks so I decided to take a rag with some denatured alcohol and knock them down. Misstep#4 or 5 I've lost track? Made a mess of the top, all blotchy! Decided to strip the shellac off and start again, this time using the rag method. This gave a much more uniform finish but still not what I was looking for so I got a can of spray shellac and applied a lightcoat. Now it looks much better but a late downpour kept it too tacky to work on before darkness. Oh well, always tomorrow.

Our cabinet maker/carpenter at the school where I work uses a beeswax finish on some of his projects. I'll ask him on Monday. It may be Skidmore's, but I don't remember for sure off the top of my head...Bruce Thanks for the info!I found some small pucks of beeswax at Ace Hardware. Not exactly what I wanted, but spent the fourth quarter of the OSU/USC game shaving the puck into small slices. Added turpentine and went to bed. I must have added too much turp because it is supposed to have the consistency of soft butter and it is more like blue cheese dressing. I will try leaving the top off so that some of the turpentine evaporates. Now I just have to be patient, not something I'm good at.

Testing 123...The Cornjubalscala, the Cornscalajubal, The ...Whatever? Raining all day in the sunshine state. Went all over Lake (Lack) County looking for beeswax, to no avail. Going on line to see if I can get some from Rockler Hardware. Took the woofer out of my JBL L65 Jubals to re-foam it and discovered that the foam surround is too big. Now waiting for the replacement. Decided to rig up a substitute. Installed the K-33 woofer in the cabinet and ran a wire down through the port and connected it to the Jubal. Then took a K-55 and put it on the monsterous K-400 horn and set it on top of the cabinet. Then I took out the Jubal's midrange and connected the K-55 to the leads. I left the JBL tweeter connected. It's a 2405 and sounds very nice. Fired up the system and put on some Michael Buble. The difference in efficiency was the first thing that jumped out. Had to rebalance toward the other Jubal to compensate. But two significant sonic qualities were also noticable. First, the horn made vocals much more pronounced and realistic. Bobby Darin's voice at the end of Moon River goes noticably off-key, but I never noticed it before. The second big improvement is in the soundstage. I thought I was listening to Phil Spector and his wall of sound. The soundstage on the Cornscalajubal was twice as big as the Jubal side. Imaging also seemed much more defined. My first run was good but using the JBL crossover & tweeter was less than ideal. The K-33 was very alive in the 500-1000Hz range which tells me I need the right X-overs to get an accurate read of the woofers. The cast metal K-400's seemed very hot but replacing them with the wooden Fastrac should tone that down. Now back to my quest for beeswax!

Can you send an updated picture of the problem? Maybe someone out there has an idea that will work. A good refinishing solvent (50/50 lacquer thinner/denatured alcohol) will break down the existing finish and allow you to blend it into the problem area. Then, a good stain will reduce the blotchiness even further. I have the same Cornwalls and I am just finishing the cabinet refinishing now. Here's the link: http://community.klipsch.com/forums/t/124427.aspx Good Luck!

I sanded the little lip off the adaptor as I thought that might supply a little more direct surface contact with the lens. Here is a close-up. I think they look, well...priceless! Herb

I am still learning the nuances of finishing with shellac and wax but I came across this article written in 1998 by the same guy who wrote the article in this months Woodworkers Journal! Great reference piece. http://books.google.com/books?id=nPYDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA60&dq=pure+bleached+granulated+beeswax#v=onepage&q=pure%20bleached%20granulated%20beeswax&f=false

Pete- Thanks, your project is what inspired me to start mine. Those are just beautiful. I wanted to do mine with veneer but they will be going into a built in set of cabinets so I thought that would be a waste of time, effort, and most of all, beauty. Thanks for the kind words! Herb p.s. Picked up an SPE/T with my second TD124. No needle. Will get re-tipped once I stop bleeding $$ with this project. Which SPU are you running?

Cabinets are almost ready for the components. The original K-33 woofers are a slam dunk. The tweeters became the next issue. Misstep #3: For some reason I thought that the original K-77's could be retro-fitted to accept the Eminence APT-50 supertweeter so I began watching eBay for a pair. Only after talking with GotHover did I realize that it would require a special adaptor. He referred me to kg4guy who told me how to build a pair from cheap parts. He turned me on to Orange County Speaker who supplied the driver and adaptor, and he supplied me with the horn lenses modified to mount into the K-77 holes. Finished epoxying them yesterday and they came out great! I also decided to pick up a pair of vintage K-77's from Groomlakearea51 as he and I live fairly close to each other. This way I can compare the two to see which sounds better in my listening room. Hopefully we can get together this week. Grill cloth and wire just arrived from BEC. Wow Bob, that was fast! Thanks. Now all that remains are the Fastrac horns and X-overs, which are coming from GotHover in smokin' SoCal next week and then it will be showtime!

and the same after staining and applying one coat of shellac

Next I had to decide on the finish. The October issue of Woodworkers Journal has a great article on "green" refinishing, and using shellac and beeswax as a finish. I'd used oil and polyeurathane before but never attempted shellac (so 18th century). I stained and sanded the cabinets and began putting on the shellac with a natural bristled brush. Misstep#2: Should have read the article more closely! Shellac is alcohol-based which means that it dries fast, very fast, like it tacks up in about a minute or two. I saw a spot that I missed and went back over it, Much to my chagrin, the finish globbed up as I dragged the brush across the top. Had I read the article carefully, I would have known that the preferred way to apply shellac to a large area is to use a rag, flood the surface, and use the rag to wipe off the excess. Using that method has yet another advantage, when your done you allow the rag to dry and throw it away. No brush to clean out! Very Green don't you think? Shellac has one other advantage. If you screw up like I did you can take a rag soaked in denatured alcohol and gently wipe the surface. Immediately you will feel the finish melt. The more you rub or the harder you rub, the more finish you remove. If you really screw up you can take it completely off and start over. I opted for the repair route. Although the finish still isn't perfect, a little hand sanding with #600 grit wet/dry an several coats of beeswax will take care of the irregularities. Here is a picture of the top before application of stain and shellac

I knew that Paul Klipsch was a revolutionary in a very exciting period of audio history, the post-war era. Just as the space program drove the current digital revolution, World War II created the foundation of high fidelity sound. I have to admit though, I knew very little of the designs of PWK. I thought I wanted to build cabinets from scratch as part of a built in cabinet to display my other gear. I consulted BEC who gave me the criteria for the bass bin. I quickly decided that it would be much easier to find some cabinets to modify. My ignorance led to a few missteps along the way. I learned from BEC that I needed to replace the squawkers. Since the LaScala used the K-400's I thought it would work...WRONG. I found a pair on eBay while on vacation and had them shipped to me. When I got home I unpacked them to find they were huge, over 22 inches in length. No wonder they were put into the corners! Misstep #1. This is where you guys really helped. I learned from JWC about the Fastrac that GotHover was producing. I picked up a pair of K-55's from him, When they arrived I took the wires off the midrange on my L65's and connected it to the K-55's attached to the K-400's. As Keith Jackson would say, "Whoa Nellie!! This jerry-rigged setup blew my mind. It sounded like Tony Bennett was standing in my living room. Next I came across a pair of K-77's on eBay for Buy it Now. They were gone before I could bid but I found that the guy had the cabinets and woofers and that he lived about 5 miles from where my brother worked. We negotiated a packaged deal for both and the next day my brother delivered them to me. Paying $50 for the cabinets was a sweet deal but they had to be refinished. I decided to stain them a red mahogany to match the other woodwork in my living room. They had some gouges and burn marks, as well as white paint on them. I am a big believer in minimalist refinishing and I wanted to preserve the patina of the finish. I used a 50/50 mixture of lacquer thinner and denatured alcohol with OO steel wool to break down the existing finish. While this takes longer (it hardly will touch polyeurathane) It does allow you leave as much or little of the old finish as you like. Attached are some before pics.

It is amazing how these forums bring people from all over the world together. Starting with the Thorens projects I made friends in Italy, Switzerland, and even Pennsylvania! I ended up with two Thorens TD-124's. It took three weeks of cleaning, disassembling, cleaning more, then reassembling every moving part to restore the first one. The second took only three days! I then bought the Mac MX-110 and MC-275. I began surfing Audiokarma and AudioAficionado forums for ideas to build out the amplification for what now was becoming my 1960's Vintage Hi-Fi system. It was there that I met Frank Gow (Gordon's son) and Terry Dewick. Terry did the upgrades on the MX-110 and the first time I listened to them together I was back in audiophile nirvana! It was on those forums that I came across Bob Crites. I knew I wanted to go completely bonzo and finish the system with a pair of Heritage Klipsch speakers. I started researching the LaScala and the Cornwall, and quickly learned the deficiencies of each. Then I came across the Cornscala. It seemed like the perfect combination! I am so impressed by the overwhelming responses I received from many of you. The success of this project is due to the generosity of your time, expertise, and even supplying some the components needed to finish it! What follows is a pictorial of the project.

Outstanding! This will make things go much quicker!

Hello, my name is Herb, and I am an audioholic. I start this thread to chronicle my re-entry in to the world of the unhearable. I first entered this world over forty years ago as a teenager in Central Florida. This was indeed a primitive world. No CD's or iPods. Hell, even cassettes were in their infancy, pushing out the venerable 8-track player. By the time I entered graduate school, my system included a Dual 1219, McIntosh C28 and MC 2105 and a pair of Advents. I spent my free time building Dynaco kits (solid state of course...tubes were so passe!). Then it happened. I met the girl of my dreams, got married, had a kid, got promoted, moved, had another kid, got promoted again, moved again...you get the picture. Traded the Mac gear for a Yamaha receiver and a CD player, turned my JBL L65 's into endtables with table skirts, and the once impressive system became totally invisible. Until this spring. My wife has complained for the past ten years how my records were crowding her closet. We live in a 1920's Spanish Colonial and if you have ever lived in an old house you know...there is no closet space! I was rebuilding my home theater room and had a set of custom built cabinets to go into the Florida room. My wife agreed that a vintage turntable would look good sitting on the heart pine countertop. I saw my opening and like a puma I pounced. I went on eBay and typed in "Vintage turntable". I knew of Garrard, Dual, AR, and Thorens as well as Technics. Then it appeared, the most beuatiful thing I ever saw. Some guy in Sweden had a Thorens TD-124 with an SME 3012 and an Ortofon SPU cartiridge and original plinth. It was like love at first sight! It had just a few hours left and it was up to $1,800. I told my wife, "This is not just a turntable, it is a work of art!" I told her that I could probably get it for $2,400, and she said go for it. I did my usual... wait to the last minute and go in strong at $2,400. Boy, was I embarrassed! In less than a minute it sold for $4,700. But now I had my taste and I was hooked. My desire became insatiable. I watched more that 50 items, and logged in morning noon and night. Within weeks I had bought two Thorens TD-124's, a McIntosh MX110, and a McIntosh MC 275. It got so bad that my wife finally did an eBay intervention. I was spinning out of control....I needed rehab! (next up) I got friends in low frequency places.

You guys are killing me! I can't wait till I get mine put together. Cabinets are done except the cutout for the new horns. Gothover, can you send me a PM with the dimensions so they will be ready to mount the new horns? I am going to start my post of the project tonight.

Dave, So these are mounted from behind like the original squawkers? Herb

Gothover, Is this the Fastrac that fits in the standard Cornwall like your doing for me, or the deeper ones? Herb

I am building a pair of Cornscalas and want to use as many vintage parts as possible. Looked at the the tweets built by kg4guy and the one's offered by BEC and like both. I have picked up a pair of APT-50 drivers but want to use the original K-77 horn to mount in the cabinet. I didn't know what adaptor that would require as the Eminence driver is thread mounted. I was thinking [*-)] that there may be a pair of blown K-77's out there or even a good pair that someone would be willing to sell. If you know of any let me know! Thanks, hklinker