TBrennan

The T-350 (not to be confused with the ST-350) was a T-35 with a much larger magnet to "brute force" more extended highs than the T-35 and was the tweeter used in Patrician. Many hornies, including myself, consider the T-350 a significantly better sounding tweeter than the T-35 and their value on the used market reflects it.

I know Tom Danley and when he lived in Chicago and worked for Servo-Drive heard several of his systems at his home and at Chicago Horn Club meetings. The systems consisted of his Unity horns and Contrabass woofers and sounded superb, as good as anything. Danley has an original mind and knows what he's about.

It would be hard to find Western Electric and Stephens drivers.

Symbiotic (807 and 808) and pascalite (809) diaphragms are also aluminum. I've never seen a pascalite but the symbiotics have a synthetic surround rather than the aluminum surround of regular aluminums, that's where the higher power handling comes from, that and more space between the diaphragm and phasing plug (the space being the main reason the highs suffer). The aluminum surrounds could crack under stress. 804 and 806 drivers have less extended highs than 802-902s because of their smaller magnets and are IMO not the Altec drivers of choice. They're fine though if you're using a tweeter.

2. a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty. If someone came in asking about what Bob does, I sure wouldn't want anyone coming in and saying, "Hey, call Dean, he'll tell you all about it." Oh, I come here very seldom anymore, has using this forum for self promotion and personal profit become less frequent?

Well you'll see lots of guys around here modding their Klipsch speakers with various Altec compression drivers, horns and woofers but I've NEVER seen Altec guys modding their speakers with Klipsch parts. I've considerable experience with both Klipsch and Altec speakers and IMO the Altecs are much smoother and have a more realistic midrange and late model Altecs with compensated crossovers (Models 14, 15, 18 and 19) have highs at least as extended as K-77 tweetered Klipsches. IMO the Altec Model 19 was the best turnkey speaker ever made. Others have different opinions that are just as valid.

Actually the DBTers are more egalitarian as they often think they can get as good sound from cheap gear as from expensive gear. You don't have to justify why you buy something to anyone. And you can make any claims you want. The other day I bought two Rado watches. They don't keep better time than a cheap watch but I don't care, I bought them because they look cool. That's it.

When memory doesn't give pleasing results you assert memory is unreliable. But even differences supposedly identified through long term listening depend on memory----if you didn't remember how things sounded before this long term listening how could you identify a change? Are you asserting that memory is reliable when identifying changes over long periods of time but not over short ones? I think that the longer the period of time the less reliable memory is and the more time one has to rationalize and obfuscate. It's interesting that many of the changes people are unable to identify in DBTs are claimed to be dramatic and not subtle.

Only two camps? This reminds me of the old joke "there are two kinds of people in the world, those that divide people into two different kinds and those who don't". There are people who discard some audiophile notions because their minds are open not closed. Personally I don't belong to either faith--that nothing makes a difference and everything makes a difference both seem overly dogmatic and based on faith and personal expectations for the hobby. You imply that the adherants of those two faiths will have different sounding hi-fis, I don't think so, I don't see why, my experience is that both technical and non technical people can own good sounding hi-fis.

I don't know. But what's at issue as I see it isn't what a theoretical "98 out of 100" hear but what do you and I hear? And can it be demonstrated? Speaking of which the sceanario you paint hasn't been demonstrated but the difficulty in telling differences between certain types of gear has.

You make an argument ad hominem and build a straw man. You'd never get away with that in a Jesuit high school. Many who value DBTs don't deny things can sound different but they want to know which things really do sound different. That's how progress is made for one thing. It's also how you avoid wasting money and effort. And if a cheaper device can sound the same as a more expensive one then isn't that a good thing? I think many don't dare put themselves to the test. And I must add that having bullshitted myself I've no doubt of the ability of others to do the same.

Note that DBTs are done to detect differences not preferences. You can either hear a difference or you can't, it's pretty simple. Not that the basic simplicity of this stops some audiophiles from rationalizing at great length how they supposedly hear things they can't show they hear. I've taken part in DBTs and they're sobering. You can either deal with the fact that you may often bullshit yourself and learn from it or you can deny the validity of the process and continue to bullshit yourself. Your choice.

I don't think hornys need vindication or approval from the so called "high end" press. These people have been full of nonsense for 35 years and NOW they know what they're talking about?

Hell Tom, this hobby IS a never ending cycle. Most of us old timers started DIY speakers by ear and I'd hesitate to discouage a fella on his first project by making things seem so complicated he might say "to Hell with it". Sure there are nice tools and resources out there now but they're generally more useful to the fella that's getting pretty involved, it's still possible to make yourself a pretty good sounding speaker just messing around with simple methods and acting on your own notions. And don't forget Berenek's Law. Regards

"How To Build Speaker Enclosures" first printed in 1966 was the first speaker book many of us old timers had and has some folded horn plans including two Jensen Imperial plans and an early Klipsch shorthorn kind'a thing. As the book was written by two Altec engineers, Alex Badmaieff and Don Davis, it features several Altec plans including the famous 825 combination horn-reflex design and the 820 basshorn-reflex design for twin 15s. Also plans for several Altec reflex cabinets AND the mighty Bozak Concert Grand. Has interesting cutaway views of the KHorn but no plans. The authors considered the KHorn an excellent performer but discouraged it's building by DIYers as too complex. Also featured are the huge concrete 300 cubic foot infinite baffle enclosures built into the fireplace of John Hillard's house. Hilliard was the head engineering honcho at Altec. While at MGM he discovered time delay distortion and headed the famous MGM Shearer Horn project. Hilliard is the Zeus of the Great Horn Gods. With Olson, Lansing and Klipsch being Apollo, Ares and Hermes. The book is indispensible to the DIY horny and comes up often on ebay.

Thanks. So I take it the K-53 is the Hepnerish ferrite driver, probably with a smaller diaphragm than the Atlas. I had some oddball Hereseys with those.

51----What's the difference between a K-22 and a K-24? The K-55 and K-53?

I'm with ole Colter, just listen to the things for awhile. One assumes you bought them because you like the way they sound.

Length, adequate length is the most important quality of a speaker wire, wires that are too short have a bad effect on the sound.

Passive bi-amping and fool's bi-amping. Note the difference; passive bi-amping is just like active except that passive rather than active filters are used between the preamp and amplifiers.

Hello Fini.

Best single drivers I've heard would probably be the various Lowthers I've heard in Hedlund and Medallion horns. A pal used to use Fostex FX-200s in open baffles augmented with a sub, those sounded pretty good too. Now this fella is using Tone Tubbys full range (though augmented with subs) and likes them alot. I recently fiddled with those 4" Tang Bands with the bamboo cones; they're on sale at Parts Express for only $30. A very nice little driver with an underhung coil, cast frame and neo magnet. Anyway I used them from 400 cycles up with Altec 15" woofers handling below 400. They sounded OK, not at all bad but not to my taste. Clarity and tone were good but dynamics and "they are here" realism was lacking but then you know to expect that when using such speakers. I'd say that for $30 each you can do alot worse, Hell, you can spend $3000 and do alot worse.

Nah, I ain't goin' there, not on this forum. Now AA, that's a different story.

The Belle and LaScala are VERY similar speakers and in comparisons (many years ago) I could tell no audible difference between them.

IMO you won't need tweeters if you use a compression driver capable of extended highs when properly EQed or "compensated" as they say. There are many such drivers around----Altec 802-902, GPA 902, JBL 2420-27, various B&C, Radian, 18Sound and BMS drivers among others. You need to choose the type of overall system you want--whether you want direct radiating or horn loaded bass, whether you want to go 2-way or 3-way. Then having chosen a goal you have to figure out how to do it. Your easiest was to go would be a 2-way with a good high efficiency-high output woofer (most likely a 15) in a vented box crossing over in the 500-1200hz range to a 1" compression driver on those horns you like. The crossover is the hard part but if you model your speaker on a known speaker like the Altec Nineteen or JBL 4430 you can copy the much publicized crossovers of those speakers and get in the ballpark. Or use an active crossover and active EQ. What I would do would be to build 2-ways with 15" woofers in vented boxes. I'd use the Altec-GPA 416 woofer combined with the Altec-GPA 902 compression driver (GPA is the company that now makes the old "real" Altec gear, it's the same stuff but you can buy GPA new whereas Altec must be found used) or I'd use the JBL 2226 woofer with the JBL 2426 compression driver. There are other good combinations but I've experience with those.