KanedaK

Never heard the fastracs myself, but I've read a lot of good things about them. I'm using EV SM120A mid horns on my Scalas. Very smooth and neutral sounding, but they're too wide for the box: they stick out more than 1inch each side not really WAF-compliant

I'm personally against EQ especially to boost low bass. Not only do you insert another component in your chain, thus degrading (even so slightly) transparency and phase coherency, but you also put more stress on the amps, and more stress on the speakers. I mean, if the LaScala would be designed to be able to reproduce sub bass, we would know about it. I'm not advising anyone to cut through his bass bins and port them or whatever - at least you should do it reversible - but IMHO a good sub is the way to go... I'm sure EQ bass boost works to some extends. But what are the trade-offs, compared to the trade offs (if any???) of a good subwoofer?

I guess you'll enjoy the fastrac horns a lot. The worse part of a stock LaScala is the midrange horn IMO. Once you improve it, you won't believe what your hears have been missing. Let us know how it turns out!

I use Electro-Voice SM120A on my LaScalas, with K55 drivers, beyma CP25 tweeters, and ALK universal networks. I didn't compare with anything else than the stock K400 horns but I have to say they sound like heaven and image very well in my set-up, even when listening almost "near field". They fill the room (combined with the wide directivity of the beyma tweeters) with a wide, enveloping image while still allowing for a very good placement of voices and instruments; the sweet spot is also much bigger than with the K400.

I agree with almost all your mods and that's the road I will probably take. Not so sure about that horizontal brace on the front: not sure its effect is really big (since you already did all the strenghtening of the sides etc) and, if all the rest looks good and doesn't destroy the speaker's aesthetics, this last mod looks a bit over the top to me and makes the speaker look less good IMO. Of course looks are not supposed to matter that much but the LS bass bin looks so cool and "agressive" with its boat shape its a bit of a pity to add something there... I also have a black cat but he doesn't care that much about the sound. Our new female cat on the other hand enjoys sitting in front of the bass bin when music is playing. Go figure... maybe she was a pole dancer in a previous life.

My amplifier went "poof" two days ago. Left channel LaScala ALK crossover fuse melted, despite the amp suposedly "protecting" the speakers in case of such an event. Replaced the fuse, and LS is playing just fine again. If there wouldn't be that fuse in there... i would be faced with repairing the power amp AND ordering a new K33 from Klipsch. I say DO NOT replace the fuse with wire for "sound quality" concerns! That fuse is PRECIOUS!

Eventually you will notice that everything in an amplifier has a tremendous importance for the resulting sound quality: quality of the composants, quality of the connection, internal layout, quality of the case and chassis... A typical home-theater receiver has a very different purpose and suffers from everything non-audio it has to include in the same box, plus nasty digital processings, and not to mention it has to be done for less money than your typical Hi-fi amplifier. Not surprisingly, those amps fail to deliver real music.

Hi-Fi Plus in the UK reviewed the heresy III very positively few months ago. A french mag (i'll look for the name, i have so many i don't remember wich one it was) reviewed the Klipschorn Anniversary Edition a few years ago, another great review. Stereophile reviewer bought LaScalaII after reviewing. I'm sure you might be able to find others... Great idea to sell Heritage speakers in the UK!

I have to disagree... quite why you'd want to use 400watts amplifiers on speakers that are above 100dB sensitivity leaves me perplexed. I mean, MOST of the times, you will be using LESS THAN ONE WATT. While it's good to have some headroom, it's also good to know that THE BIGGER AN AMP, THE MORE LIKELY IT WILL SOUND MEDIOCRE UNDER 1 WATT (except maybe some very high-end or ClassA or no-feedback designs). I use LaScalas and my power amp is 120watt/channel (wich is already overkill). According to the vu-meters (wich, of course, only give "average" readouts but still) I'm around 0,01watts at night, max 1watt in daytime (I have neighbours and 1watt is LOUD, 10watts shakes the house and brings the cops at the door... the remaining 100+ watts are just headroom. While it's true that you need some power (i'd say current) to keep those 10inch woofers in check, IMHO 400watts is really, really overkill. If I were you I'd look for a less powerful, more upmarket option, possibly second-hand. Or save some money, buy only one NAD power amp and save some money for good cables and / or music. Just my two cents. 400watts amps are made for sluggish unsensitive speakers, not for horns...

Those look great! can't wait to see the final result!![]

15 pairs? wow... I would stack them, just for fun, make a "speaker wall", connect them together (alternating series/parallel connections to keep the impedance correct) on a big amp and blow myself away with half a watt

If you're using stock AA networks it's big time to refresh them at least; if you can afford them, ALK "universal" networks are worth every penny IMO. But be aware that if the harshness problem is in your electronics, a network upgrade / update will only make it more obvious by letting more treble information come trough. (that shouldn't discourage you to refresh your networks, you need to hear your LaScalas at their best and then decide if the rest is up to it...)

Yup, those meters are great. Intimate late night listening shows to be around 0,001watt average (0,01watt is already too loud at night if my upstairs neighbour is there -i live in an apartment); 1 watt is friends-gathering-party loud; when I occasionnaly hit 10 watts the house is shaking. That said, i feel the reason why it still sounds pure and clean at 10 watts is because there's 120watts available. It also helps moving those 4ohms 15inch woofers. The main thing with klipsch is to find an amp that sounds clean and balanced when used between 0,01watt and 1watt, and they're not so common. That's why a lot of amps that sound very good on conventional speakers sound harsh and grainy on Klipsch or other horn speakers...

Thought I would post something about my amplifier. I said it again and again and i'll say it more: in ten years of owning Klipsch (LaScalas), my old Technics SE-A5 is the one that makes them sing the best so far. It's sweet, transparent, fast, dynamic, and sound as good at 0,001watt as at full blast (120W/8ohms). It's totally free of nasty SS "graininess" or harshness, images beautifully, and will blow your walls down if you're being over-enthousiastic with the volume control. Looks totally cool, weighs almost 40pounds, and when Technics introduced it it compared very well against more esoteric brands such as mark levinson (I still have some reviews from the time, that's what got me interested in the first place). The nicest thing it's true high end for a very, very reasonable price. I would highly recommend it to anybody who's looking for a good amp on a budget. Many people see "technics" and "eighties" (it's been introduced in 1981) and think of it as another brutish, harsh, unrefined japanese SS monster but it's all the contrary. A very refined piece of kit but if you feed it trough a mediocre preamp it will let you know immediately... it won't beat a SET amp but if you're in the market for something such as McIntosh or Accuphase but don't have any hope to find the cash, i'm not afraid to say this amp (and it's bigger brother Se-A3) bring you IMHO dangerously close at a fraction of the price. Interesting enough, the top of the line Technics at that same period included some monster horn-loaded spakers with 18inch woofers (SB 10000) so there might be some synergy there.(big SS amps designed to sound good on horns?) see the link: http://www.freewebs.com/mondaca/ I paid 1,140 USD for mine in mint condition, obviously not cheap for a 30years old amp but i've seen some going for much less on Ebay. And i see a lot of stuff selling for much higher prices because of the name only...

Oh no....

Interesting post. Sometimes i'm amazed at how good my system images, the day after I put on the same record and sit on the same favourite chair and NOTHING, a flat, congested, collapsed image (i'm maybe exaggerating things a little bit but there truly IS a difference from one day to another). The most realistic cause I can think off is electricity fluctuations. My preamp seems to be very sensitive to it (I'd like to try a good conditioner but right now it's too much $$$) but sometimes I think it might just be my brains that's not "receptive". Who knows?

I have a table in the middle between my LaScalas, with on top my electronics and my Mac G5 computer. I don't really have another choice at the moment but I often feel that my Scalas would image even better if there was nothing standing just in the middle... I'd be interested to know if there's an actual theory / explanation behind it, or if it's just a psycho-acoustic phenomenon?

Hi Arash, what I meant was from what I see the speakers are not useable as they are (the AA crossovers just can't be used to good results in such a configuration, for many reasons) BUT if the parts are in good shape and you can build the enclosure over there (you need someone who's an experienced woodworker) I'd say go for it. That said, one thing you CANNOT use is the midrange horn. In a LaScala, the midrange horn has to reproduce the range between 400 and 6000Hz. You need a bigger midrange horn than the one in the pictures. I don't know what you can find over there in Iran, but two good examples (if you can't find klipsch K400 horn) are Altec 511B horn, or Electro Voice SM120A horns. Both sound actually much better than the klipsch midrange horn. Good luck and keep us posted! BTW, you could also build a Cornwall: the enclosure is much easier to build, it gives deeper bass, and you could use those nice-looking midrange horns (the x-over frequency for the midrange is higher in a Cornwall, so you can use a smaller horn). But then, you'd need a Cornwall network. You could not use the AA network. (you can probably find the schematics and build them urself).

Well, I live in Belgium and never see any pair of LaScalas for sale. They are very rare in Europe as far as I'm aware. I bought my pair for 400euros with extremely beaten-up enclosures and non-original woofers, ten years ago. I'm slowly upgrading them and they now sound fantastic. I bought them without seeing them because it was a "one chance in a million". I don't feel like those are really overpriced, as they seem to be in very good shape. Talk with the shop owner, you might be able to negotiate a bit...

I have to disagree with that. I own LaScalas since about ten years and have owned (or tried) quite a few amplifiers in the meantime, vintage and new, from brands as various as SAE, NAD, Musical Fidelity (B1, Typhoon, A100X), Marantz, Revox, Aura, ADC (?), Sansui, Technics, Rotel... The one that stayed the shortest time in my system after I bought it was, quite surprisingly, the (more expensive) big brother of the MF A1, wich is the MF A100X. It was then just a few years old. The amp that gives me the best sound ever is the one I use now: Technics SE-A5 power amp (Technics no-compromise line from the begin of the 80's). So this 30 years old powerhouse outperforms everything else i've tried so far, including much newer designs. Paired with a great-sounding Kaneda DIY preamp, I guess i would have to spend much, much more to get better results! I don't believe solid state amplification has evolved so much since the late seventies. Hell, they were already conscious of TIM distortion caused by global negative feedback! I'd say the only "new" amplification technology is class D or T but for the rest a top amp from 30 years ago is still a good amp now. That's my experience anyways (of course not comparing with $$$$$$$$$$ today's high-end)

If you already upgraded your midrange horns and your tweeters, you just won't believe how good your speakers sound if you install ALK Universals! I've been trough all those upgrades (EV mid horns, beyma CP25 tweeters) and thought my LaScalas sounded great until I got new Universals inside to replace my type AA. Just WOW! really, really jaw-dropping. My LaScalas now image like the best direct radiator systems i've heard, but they hit you with the strenght of a truck and the speed of lightning! be prepared to hear how your amplifier REALLY sounds (huh, sometimes it can be a bad surprise...)

Electro-Voice SM120A works wonders, if you can take the looks (but an experienced woodworker could probably build you a new top bin around it so you could just remove the original top bin and keep it safe). Sounds great with the stock networks; been using mine on LaScalas for years with stock AA networks. Only recently did I swap for ALK crossovers. The k55v bolts on to the EV horn with not a single adaptor needed. I haven't heard the other options, they were not available yet when I bought the EV horns, but overall they are a fantastic improvement over the K400 with a smoother, clearer, and totally not beamy sound. Being CD design they typically need EQ at higher frequencies, but in a stock Klipsch 3way configurationthose frequencies are handled by the tweeter. I drive them sometimes very, very loud on transient-heavy music and there's never been distortion or driver failure so they seem to load the K55V properly. They are well regarded and comparatively cheap. What might be a problem when used in a Khorn is that they fire very "wide" and this might cause first reflections on the side walls just next to the khorn; I use mine on free-standing LaScalas. K400 horn is more beamy and projects further into the room, making this less of an issue. But maybe it's not that important, I guess other people on this board used EV horns in Khorns with success. SM120A EDS.pdf

hi Arash, my cat comes from your country! more to the point, it's difficult to give an idea of the value of those "scala" but there's different things worth knowing: 1) second-hand klipsch parts and speakers are NOT expensive and the market is flooded with them so it can't be an argument for pricing those speakers too high, since the most valuable part was the... original LaScala enclosure. 2) you should try to know what crossover is inside. Any stock klipsch LaScala crossovers could only give bad, or so-so results in a speaker that they were not designed for (not getting into details here, but basically you have to compensate for the woofer's loss of efficiency since it's not horn-loaded anymore, and the smaller midrange horn asks for a different (higher) x-over frequency than the original K400 horn. A Cornwall network would probably work. 3) that midrange horn (is it really wooden?) looks good and probably sounds good too if it's been implemented correctly 4)the real LaScala is "bass-shy" because it uses a short horn for the woofer. The K33 woofer in a vented box like here shouldn't be bass-shy. 5)who built the enclosures? are they well made / heavy? do they resonate when you crank the volume up? 6)those flat-diaphragm Technics are only cool if you like to collect 80's vintage pieces of equipment, but there's just no way you can use them to "support" the Klipsch (hell, they're so inefficient, if you connect them together with the klipsch on the same amp you wouldn't even hear them, and btw don't do that kind of things most amps don't like it) hope this helps.

UPDATE: something still wasn't "right". The midrange is actually so clean with these new networks that it's possible to set the level too high without noticing; my default setting was 2-5; I had tried 0-4, wich was noticeably too "hot", and assumed the next level down 2-5 would be "correct", period. I now tried X-4 (next level down) and I'm in HEAVEN! The warmth is back, imaging is better, better front to back layering, clarity to die for without projection, and transients are fast as lightning without being "piercing". Really amazing. The "sharpness" was not the networks, or my tweeters, or my amp: the mids were just set a bit too hot! I'm relieved... These networks are really TOP NOTCH! MyScalas are soooo much more refined now, I don't see wich other speaker at the price (or even higher) could even come close! LaScala owners, give your ears a treat: EV SM120A midrange horns + Beyma CP25 tweeters (with L-Pad) + ALK universals = PURE BLISS!!!! Good job, mister Al K.! and thank you!!! :-)

The following thread goes a long way toward explaining to me why Al K's crossovers don't sound harsh like the AAs: he crosses the midrange via the network instead of allowing it to "cross itself" in the tweeter's passband. http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/p/71428/1455398.aspx#1455398 Chris Yes, that's what got me interested in those networks in the first place, instead of considering a recap of my old AAs. I like the idea of a driver "rolling off by itself" but the problem is the old K55V isn't the smoothest up there. Better to keep that solution for higher quality drivers (the K55V is really not a bad driver IMHO but needs a little help from the network it seems). I don't know if it's my ears adjusting to the new -totally different- sound, but the ALK seem less "sharp" in the treble today, more integrated and "organic". Is it possible that they've been in storage long enough to need some kind of "re-burning in" (they're not new, they've been used a lot before coming to me)? probably just my ears adjusting, but whatever... sounds great