JohnA

Nah, it's gotta be "Afternoon Delight" or anything by the Bay City Rollers! John

That La Scala center channel is killer isn't it? I showed this to my wife and now she is letting up on me and my so called obsession! She never seemed to understand when I described this system until she saw the pictures. John

Q-Man sent me these pics and asked me to put them up. May God have mercy on his ears! Front Wall of Sound: Here is a close up of the right front, K-horn ala Scala: The rear 3 channels; I believe the stands for the La Scalas are the Jensen Imperial replicas: A close up of the left rear: John

Yeah, Arny didn't come back did he? I wish I had your tools and wood working skills. I would like to have a wooden K-400. I could finish it easily enough, but making it isn't goung to happen around here. I've got a line on an aluminum K-400 and driver; maybe I can figure out how to make it attractive. John

Gil, How are you coming with those mid horns? How do they sound? John

Boy! Those wooden horns are exciting! I'll be really interested in how they sound. It looks like you've done a great job so far. I think you should try to make the throat as perfect as possible. Getting the wave front started out right seems like the most critical thing. Could you use some sort of router bit to help you transition from round to square, or does the adapter do that? How do you plan to finish them? Cherry and hand rubbed oil would have to look rich. I could imagine one and a T-35 on top of my C7 covering the upper ranges. John

Q-Man, Your suggestion of strips across the back was my original idea to help fronts without changing their appearance from the front. My fronts are nicely finished already and I hate to modify them. But the rears are going to get stripped and redone, so they can be easily modified and still be finished well. djk, I'll make a sketch. John

My rear La Scalas need to go in to the cabinet shop for refinishing. When I do it, I want to stiffen the bass horn at the same time. I will add a horizontal brace acros the mouth extending back to the "notch". I've been thinking that adding a 2' x 2' x 3/4" plate to the outside back of the bass horn attached with glue and screws would add mass and stiffness and reduce resonance. Have any of you done similar mods? Will this in fact add enough stiffness to control the bass horn's resonance, or is it wasted effort? John

I have a pair of Type ALs either of you can have. I'll take 1/2 of new. You should be aware that the Type AL is designed for a 109 dB, 16 ohm midrange driver, like the K-55-M. You can use it with another driver, but you may have to modify it. Several of us, esp. Al, can help with that. John

Assuming the K-401 is the same as the K-400 and that my memory hasn't succumbed completely to CRS Syndrome, the lower cutoff is 263 Hz. However, it will have just about lost direstional control and diaphragm loading at that point. The best crossover point is one octave above that. I don't know about the K-55-M, but it should be similar the the 1823 or 1824 at 260 to 300 - 6 or 8k Hz. You will have to call Klipsch to be sure. John

Put the caulking on pretty evenly, but mash it on really well to make sure t\you get good contact with the horn. John

Randy's correct. Most of the ringing you hear is the squawker horn and damping it the solution. OTOH, if you have Type AL xovers, you've got other problems, too. John

Hi Chris, Caps are capacitors. They are the small, tin plated tanks with 2 terminals on top. Back in the day, the paper in oil caps Klipsch used in the Heritage Series were likely the best there was. Now, more modern materials, found by research, have made capacitors more purely capacitive, with less resistance and energy stored and released as "ringing" or other distortion. Basically, a capacitor in series blocks lower frequencies. They can be used in combination with inductors to steepen the roll-off of either a high-pass or low-pass circuit. Klipsch used more modern caps in my KLF-C7, though not the $$$ expensive ones like Hovlands. It seems like I spent $110 for Hovland caps in each of my La Scalas. John

OR, an unused section of the autoformer is used as the tweeter inductor. Look at the connections. John

Al has the button I was thonking about! My worst pair was a house brand from Dixie Hi-Fi (who knows who that is, now?). They were a 3-way with a 12", 3" & a 1". My brother and I bought them with lawn mowing money in High School. They made noise, I'm sure they sounded awful. After the 3rd pair failed, we added more money and bought a pair of U.S. made Marantz (7s?) speakers. My sister is still using those, way more than 20 years later. John

Chris, The bucking magnet cancels, at least partially, the external magnetic fields generated by the driver's magnet. That reduces or prevents interference with the TV. John

Drobo, It's good to know the rope caulk works as well as the Dynamat. I have lots of it around and 2 rear La Scalas to treat. John

Check these pics. The first is dated 1983 on the HPS4000 site. This one is the Klipsch pro Jubilee. Something is fishy in Boston! John

I don't know anything about HPS. Since they changed the design, and the La Scala patent has long expired, I'm sure it's O.K. Since the site said the speaker was made for HPS, I think that's a clue. Les brags on his La Scalas with the K-43 woofer having more bass, a 106 dB rating may well be possible. John

Chris, Your tweeter can be repaired. Call Sam Stafford at Techstar in Nashville, Tennessee. The phone # is 615-242-2925. Their address is/was 750 Cowan St. #9; Nashville, TN 37207. Most any Pro Audio shop should be able to fix is as well. You need a diapraghm at @ $22. John

Well, we all bloody well know what THIS is! It is also EXCATLY what I had in mind for mine. Maybe it's not so ugly after all. John

Steve, I just corrected the typing errors in the link in your first message. Tham you're supposed to have something like at each end. John

Not the way you intended. Try this: John

"The capacitors they are using are very likely the most "bang for the buck" around!" Absolutely! The thing we are doing that improves the crossovers is the use of modern technology. Al's computer analysis and the newer cap and inductor designs all reduce the loss of signal or change in signal that any crossover network causes. In addition, the networks Al builds would probably have to sell for twice what he asks in a low production, retail environment. In short, the cost of each Heritage speaker would go up around $200, if Klipsch did the same thing. John

I got another pair of La Scalas. They are 8734029 & 30. Today, I took the bottoms off to inspect the woofers and Lo and Behold, they are labeled K-33-E and have ROUND magnets. My first set are 81/82 models with K-33-Es with square magnets. The first set have K-77-M tweeters with rectangular magnets but the '87s have tweeters that look the same labeled K-77. Is this just normal production variations? Have the '81/'82 pair been "updated"? I thought the square K-33-E was the latest version. John