JohnA

Yea, Rock City is fun around Christmas. I like to ride my Triumph the Maryville and turn right. There's some great roads up there!

It's good to see you and hear from you Mr. Ed!

Not all Heritage crosovers are at 6000. The Type AA is as 4800.

Have your house checked for a broken neutral. That causes plugs on different phases to show different voltage. Also check the plug and breaker for the low plug for oxidation or loose connections.

The first weekend of the month is out for me. I have a job those weekends. I'd prefer the 11th - 13th.

The Z-brackets are only for the tweeter. The squawker doesn't need it. The shortest wavelength the squawker is suposed to carry, 6k Hz, is 2.25 inches. The motorboard is 3/4". Since a Heresy is a sealed cabinet, it cannot use Z-brackets.

Q, You da Man!

Denon 3801?

The best match for your La Scalas is a Heresy with the same drivers. The Heresy is brighter than a La Scala, but the crossover is easy to modify to bring it into balance. A new enclosure and 2 Heresy woofers and single squawkers and tweeters would also work well.

So far, so good! I'd like to add driver is often used to differentiate the noise making component from the whole system. It is also used to describe the electro-mechanical part of a horn speaker: compression driver. The air in front of the diaphragm is compressed and forced into the "horn" part.

I my case, I notice 2 big differences. Without sounding like a reviewer for The Absolute Sound, the ALKs are cleaner and clearer; a fuzziness you never knew was there is gone. And the tweeter circuit is less lossy, so the tweeter is hotter, like the Type A network that came before the Type AA. The difference is only a dB ot 2. A Type AA with modern parts is quite similar in sound to the ALKs. If you have a pair of squawkers that have a noticible "bounce" in response at 9k, the ALKs will tame that nicely.

The late '70s to mid '80s networks are aluminum foil and paper in oil; motor start capacitors. I'm sure the older ones were, as well. I thought the Ak-3 were paper and foil in oil, as well. I haven't seen one in a long time. The caps you called cheap plastic are probably polypropylene film and foil and were not cheap at all. We all have our opinions of the best sounding caps. Changing my Type AA tweeter caps to Hovland poly film and foils was a very nice improvement over the motor start caps. Of course, my La Scalas were mismatched and my hand was forced. Changing the squawker cap to Hovlands was inaudible.

Hi George, Everybody has covered the age. With care, the older the K-horn, the better. The Type AA is an excellent crossover, one of the best. The AK-3 would be considered a minor upgrade. In fact the newest K-55-X driver in your '01 La Scalas uses the same diaphragm as the '72s. The OEM for the driver still makes its version, so diaphragms are plentiful. The K-33-E woofer is VERY durable and, without abuse, should survive and perform after 40 - 50 years, maybe more, none are that old. Nonetheless, it is also in production and cones are readily available, too. The K-horn in good condition would sell for up to $2200 a pair. You'll have to add the European premium for shipping and taxes. I could only guess what that really is. 2003 K-horns list for about $7600 over here, maybe that will help you figure the premium. 2003 La Scalas list for $4200. The K-55-M driver will fit the squawker horn of the '72 models and with the Type AK-3 crossover, they will sound like pre-2000 K-horns. The '72s will have AlNiCo squawkers AND tweeters. I've never heard of a Klipsch with a carbon fiber woofer cone. All K-33s have had paper cones and they live forever. Don't worry. The '70s Klipsch with Type AA networks and K-55-Vs are my favorite. My first La Scalas were mis-matched. I went back to the '70s configuration. You may want to check the woofers in the '72s to see which ones they are. If they are K-33-B or -P, the K-33-E is also a minor upgrade. It is my understanding that the K-33-E is quite expensive by the time it gets to England, though.

Hey Curtis, As far as I can determine, the K-55-Vs with spring terminals were unmodified PD5-VHs. Mr. Paul once called them "ball park drivers". The ones with solder terminals were built with Mr. Paul's new phase plug (2 slits, I believe), beginning in 1980, I believe. The graphed 4 - 6k response was better. Undoubtedly it was at the expense of LF response. Atlas never sold Mr. Paul's version, as far as I know. It was at cross purposes with their intended use, ball parks and paging systems and maybe a siren. The PD5-VH had usable output all the way down to 110 Hz. You were parbably at Klipsch when they were futzing with the new design. I have a small collection of the solder terminal versions, now. I guess I'm hoarding. I can't hear a difference between the 2 types, though. I suspect it is my ears, but it might be the music having little energy in that range. The new K-55-X is an Atlas again (Yea!), with more mods that make is smoother, but it lost a little output, it is said.

Oops! I missed Father's Day on Sunday the 20th. I guess we should pick the weekend before.

Now I get it. Klipsch is a wholly owned private company and not part of Tripp-Lite. I'll bet the attachment on the end of the K-55-V is incomplete and should also have a "bell" that covers up the "nose" to make it look like a typical paging horn. The K-55-V attached to it was just coincidence. An Atlas PD5-VH would normally be there, but since they are the same, and the K-55 was available, someone screwed it on. Your K-55-V is the midrange (squawker) driver for the Klipschorn, Belle, La Scala, Heresy, Shorthorn, Cornwall and a few pro audio speakers from the mid-sixties sometime to early 1981. A revised version ran from early '81 to 1982 and a further revised version runs from 2000 to the present. It is now called the K-55-X.

Take them to a nice restaurant and buy a bottle of wine.

Me Tarzan, ..... Klipsch does not release information on current production speakers. You will have to disassemble one and reverse engineer it. Sorry. We've tried.

O.K. I propose June 18 - 20. The 18th is Friday. I'd also like to propose we get to Indy early Friday for a gathering at the Hotel. Last time, some people brought their Klipsch speakers and an amp or 2. This time I'd like to see several setups and the time to listen to them, sort of a small Klipsch fair. I also want to request some of you with the more exotic Klipsch, like Shorthorns, Rebels, KGs, CFs, etc. bring a pair for us to listen to. I will try to work up a deal with the hotel, again, and maybe get another room or 2 without beds for the demos.

"Gezzzz JOHN !!! Your short answers scare the crap out of me ." LOL!! A lot of that depends on how much my wife is complaining about my normal explanations. She says I can't give you the time without teaching you how to build a clock. "Hi. My name is John and I'm an engineer." "Hi, John."

Hey Tom, I sent you an e-mail for help with my 902s and 511Bs. I'm getting a funny noise with a 650 Hz crossover point to my La Scalas bass horn. I used the Forum's mail facillity to send the e-mail.

Nevio, Here is what you want. The K-55-V is a PD5-VH. The late versions, not like yours, were modified to get better highs, barely to 6,000. They make lousy tweeters. What is the odd device screwed onto it? Atlas PD5-VH-VT1.PDF

The output transformer of a tube amp is there to match the high impedance/voltage tubes to the low impedance/voltage speakers. Using a favorite EE equation, Ohm's Law, V(oltage) = I(current) x R(esistance), you can see that as you reduce resistance, current must increase to balance the equation. Your tube amp's output transformer sets the output voltage range to the values appropriate for the impedance shown on that tap. If you run a 4 ohm speaker on an 8 ohm tap, you are drawing more current from the amp than its designer intended (and therefore more power). This MIGHT use up the tubes faster, depending on the amp's design and the phase of the moon. An 8 ohm speaker on the 4 ohm tap is just the opposite. Speakers NEVER have flat impedance curves. Al Klappenberger's crossovers come darn close. The original Heresy was all over the place. An H-II probably is, too. If the lowest impedance was a 3.5 ohm dip in the bass and the highest was a peak of 150 ohms in the bass and 120 ohms throughout the midrange, how would you rate the speaker? This is what an H-I does, as well as I can remember, and it is called 8 ohms. Use the tap that sounds the best.

Would you not have to remove / replace or reinstall the speaker cloth to inlarge the tweeter hole ? ( on a k-horn or belle ) Is this mod audible to the point of being noticable ? Yes and Yes.

O.K. Dave, here's another, experimental way to drop the tweeter and squawker output; changes shown in red. You could use aligator clips and jumpers if you wanted to.