Dave A

Rather long and very interesting. Back in 1984 we were building a night club and the SLV people were in there. I had heard a guy with a pair of Khorns and a pair of La Scalas in his living room so I wanted to hear what $100,000 was buying. They got out a cd player which I had never heard of at the time and took me to the middle of the dance floor. They flew a helicopter around the dance floor and even though their choices for speakers sounded poor to me the tech was cool. I guess movies can do this too but I don't watch TV or movies.

Darned right I do and nope they are not for sale until I build a set out of 1" Baltic Birch to replace them with. You just bought a pair didn't you? Those K-43's make a huge difference and you are in for a real treat.

It is cultural and with the decline in appreciation for finer things knowledge of what is good or not goes away. I am a facetor of gemstones and very good at it. At one time I thought to earn a living doing it. Around 2003 or so I gave up because it was getting harder and harder to sell. My perfect example is this. I had just finished repolishing the table of a magnificent 30+ carat medium blue Aquamarine. I took it to a store in Nashville to show a jeweler who could appreciate it. If I could sell it for my customer that would be good to since they had hired me to return the stone to a salable condition. In pops this lady whose husband was worth over 27 mil at the time. The jeweler shows her the stone and she says meh. By now being frustrated with how hard it has become to get anyone even interested in cut stones besides crap quality Diamonds Rubies Emeralds and Sapphires I decide to ask some honest questions and let the chips fall where they may. So why don't you like this? Don't you think it is pretty? Well yes it is she says. Do you know how rare this stone is and have you ever seen one like it before? Well yes it is pretty and no I have not and meh. Alright I say you have all the money you could ever spend and you think it is pretty and I want to know specifically why you are not interested in buying this. Well she says my friends will think it is a blue Topaz. My jaw hit the table. You what?? Why do you care what your friends think? Don't you see this as a work of art? Why don't you instead educate your friends as to what this is or better yet appreciate it for what it is and not worry what they think. What it boiled down to was her peers had no interest in learning about things. If it was not a poorly built house in the right neighborhood. the fastest CPU for gaming or the correct name tag on a car it had no status or social value. Since then the Jewelers Guide which was the appraisers tool for values went from hundreds of entries for type of stone and shape of cut to something one third as large and covered none of the lesser known stones any more. Society at large does not care to know these things and finer sound goes right along with it. HiFi Buys in Nashville sells this awful Bowers and Wilkins stuff to people like this who don't know better. They see the "Don't touch our $1,000.00 dollar Diamond Tweeter diaphragm please" sign and think WOW. I went there last year to ask about a DAC and what a mistake that was. Anyway I humor the sales shmuck and sit before his Buck Rogers looking B&W 12 and 22K stuff and give it a listen. In the mean time I am thinking in my shop is a pair of Pro La Scalas sitting on a pair of KP-480's and all totaled including repairs and upgrades less than $1,800 in them all that so completely blows this junk away. No diamond tweeter diaphragms though so no bragging rights for those who are name droppers of sound but not connoisseurs of sound. iPhone with gold case and overpriced earbuds OK big box looking things with radical quality audiophile sound NoK. In this electronic world society has become removed from things that take time to learn about and being willing to learn and not be a lemming waiting to be told what is coll for this week. Audiophiles generally are on a life long journey and like to learn and want to learn. We are aberrations in today's twitter length world.

I would not rule anything out but I have no idea how to go about doing this nor a cost. At some point in time when the hassle of selling becomes to great I simply sell body parts and move on because this was supposed to be a fun hobby and not a PITA. What do you propose? You do realize that for better or worse once they leave my door no refunds? All my speaker sales but one have been with a person who comes here to listen first. Sound is subjective and what I like you may not. A person who comes here can also get a Paypal refund on the spot because the speakers have never left and I know they are in the same condition as they were before the potential customer showed up. I have never had anyone leave without speakers (with the exception of a Forte tire kicker who just could not bear to pay $600. He wanted to hear them anyway and I said sure) and they all have paid the agreed upon ahead of time price. I know this is more information than you asked for but I want you to know why I lean 95% towards no.

FUD and truth are out there. Don't ignore this. I will tell you this. My critical workstations my business depends on NEVER go online. None of this junk worries me in the least because of that and my proprietary info stays mine. I have a separate PC which is allowed online and rely on being current on all updates and keep good antivirus programs current to. Knock on wood like most here I search for music files and torrents are not safe things to look for and have not been caught out yet with bad virus or hackers. Do not store your passwords in a file on your computer and do not use autofill for any site but trivial ones like here. Use a different password for everything and don't be stupid enough to use 1234, 1235, 1236 etc. Make backups at least once a month just in case because hackers hack and hard drives fail. Folks buy a cheap piece of junk to do your online stuff. $300 will get you more than you need and DO NOT store any financial info on there of any sort. Beware, AMD chip owners. For you Windows Secrets readers who have computers with AMD inside, these Spectre/Meltdown patches are causing more issues than they are preventing. So much so that Microsoft has halted release of the updates on machines that have AMD chipsets. Some of the relevant security posts include the following: Microsoft's KB4073707 on the issues with AMD chip sets and how Microsoft is blocking the patches until the issue is resolved. Microsoft's KB4073757 recapping the overall guidance Let's recap the big picture: Intel CPU chips have a bug in their very architecture. Researchers found a way for attackers to possibly steal passwords and other confidential information from our machines. As of publication, the attack has not been used in the wild. However, the potential is there and it'sreally concerning up in cloud servers as it could mean that fellow virtual servers could read information from a tenant next door. It won't be enough to patch for the Windows operating system, you'll need to patch the firmware on your computer as well. It's not a Microsoft bug, but because everything uses CPUs, pretty much everything needs to be patched ranging from phones to firewalls. So after you get your patches for Windows, go look for updates for anything else that has a CPU included in it (I'm not kidding or overstating the issue). A bigger concern to many will be the performance hit this "fix" will make on your system as discussed in a Microsoft blog. The older your computer the more the "hit" will be. If you have a computer that is a 2015-era PC with Haswell or older CPU - you will notice a difference. CERT goes so far as to recommend replacing the CPU hardware in their blog post. I'm not ready to go that far, but it would be wise to review how old your computer hardware is, evaluate the performance hit and plan accordingly. Check That Your Antivirus Is Supported Because this is a kernel update, antivirus vendors who have hooked into the kernel for additional protection could trigger blue screens of death if they are not updated for the change introduced by this patch. Thus Microsoft is requiring that before the January Windows and .NET updates are installed that a registry entry is made by the vendor - or by you if your vendor doesn't provide the registry key in an update - before the January updates are installed. Make sure you review the antivirus listing page that is tracking all of the antivirus vendors and when they plan to support these January updates. If your vendor doesn't support these updates, it's time to find a new vendor. If you don't use antivirus (say on a specialized server), you'll need to manually add the following: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion QualityCompat In the right hand side in the registry look for the value as shown below: Value Name="cadca5fe-87d3-4b96-b7fb-a231484277cc" Type="REG_DWORD” Data="0x00000000” For those who have to patch servers, you need to be aware that you'll need to perform all the steps done as you did on Windows client workstations - checking that antivirus is ready, and installing the updates - but also manually add two or three registry keys on the server. You will need to add two registry keys for a "normal" server, and all three registry keys as noted in the KB4072698 if the server is a HyperV or virtualization host. The registry keys that need to be added include: reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /v FeatureSettingsOverride /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /v FeatureSettingsOverrideMask /t REG_DWORD /d 3 /f reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization" /v MinVmVersionForCpuBasedMitigations /t REG_SZ /d "1.0" /f And finally remember that just about every device uses CPU chips. Start reviewing your phones, your devices, to see if these items need patches and firmware updates as well. What to do: Review that you are ready for this update and feel free to wait a bit longer to be sure your system and your antivirus is ready for this update. And then this from an earlier newsletter All supported versions of Windows are getting an emergency patch to fix flaws in Intel CPU chips that could lead to attackers gaining more information about your systems including passwords and other confidential information. You'll have read about this -- the press have already labeled the flaws as the Meltdown and Spectre bugs. As Microsoft said in "ADV180002 | Guidance to mitigate speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities:" Microsoft is aware of a new publicly disclosed class of vulnerabilities referred to as “speculative execution side-channel attacks” that affect many modern processors and operating systems including Intel, AMD, and ARM. Note: this issue will affect other systems such as Android, Chrome, iOS, MacOS, so we advise customers to seek out guidance from those vendors. Microsoft has released several updates to help mitigate these vulnerabilities. We have also taken action to secure our cloud services. Microsoft has not received any information to indicate that these vulnerabilities have been used to attack customers at this time. Microsoft continues working closely with industry partners including chip makers, hardware OEMs and app vendors to protect customers. To get all available protections, hardware/firmware and software updates are required. This includes microcode from device OEMs and in some cases updates to AV software as well. Because this is a kernel update that interacts with antivirus utilities, there is a big "BUT" in how you might get this update: You'll receive it once your antivirus vendor has proven that it can handle the update. The proof will be adding a registry key to the operating system. If this registry key is not added, you won't get the update offered up to you. If you want to visually see if your systems are prepared for this update, you can click on Start, type in regedit and click to approve the elevated prompt. Then you'll need to drill down to review the following registry key. Note that each bullet point represents a level you'll need to drill down to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion QualityCompat In the right-hand side in the registry, look for the value as shown below: Value Name="cadca5fe-87d3-4b96-b7fb-a231484277cc" Type="REG_DWORD” Data="0x00000000” If you see these values, your antivirus vendor has updated itself and it's safe to install this patch. If you don't see this registry value, this means your system (and, therefore, your antivirus vendor) is not ready for this update. Do not manually enter this key, nor manually download this update from the catalog site to install this update. This Google docs file is maintaining an unofficial listing of vendors that have updated to support this patch and therefore sidestep the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. For Windows 10 you'll see the following updates: KB4056892 for Windows 10 1709 KB4056891 for Windows 10 1703 KB4056890 for Windows 10 1607 KB4056888 for Windows 10 1511 KB4056893 for Windows 10 RTM (for those running Long Term Servicing Branch) Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 are also receiving out-of-band updates, but only in the WSUS channel. For home users, you'll see the normal cumulative update next week. For those in businesses, you'll see: KB4056898 for Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 KB4056897 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 For small businesses, my usual advice to wait for patch side effects to shake out applies: consider waiting until next week to wait to patch. In addition to these operating systems updates, start looking for firmware updates that eliminate the vulnerabilities introduced via Meltdown and Spectre. I would recommend going to your hardware vendors and look for any firmware Now comes the bad news: You may see a performance hit by installing this update. Some tech sites are indicating that performance hits on Linux can be as high as 35 percent. If you want to see whether your systems' computing performance will be impacted, run this CPU benchmark test before the patch and then after the update to see the impact on your own system. While you are there patching your workstations, review whether you have any additional overdue firmware updates that need to be installed. This isn't the first bug in the Intel chipset; in November, Intel posted about a series of chip bugs that the company has since fixed through firmware updates available via their advisory page. Please review whether you need firmware patches as well by downloading Intel's testing tool. What to do: I recommend checking to see if your system can receive the update. When your system is ready, test it to see what the performance hit (if any) will be, see if there have been any reports of patch side effects, and then update your system. This table provides the status of recent Windows and Microsoft application security updates. Patches listed below as safe to install will typically be removed from the table about a month after they appear. Status changes are highlighted in bold. For Microsoft's list of recently released patches, go to the MS Security TechCenter page. Patch Released Description Status KB405689 1-03 Windows 7 rollup Install* KB4056898 1-03 Windows 8 Install KB4056892 [1709] 1-03 Windows 10 1709 Install KB4056891 [1703] 1-03 Windows 10 1703 Install KB4056890 [1607] 1-03 Windows 10 1607 Install *Hold: Please note if you've installed these updates and are not seeing any side effects you can leave the updates installed. I'm only recommended holding off if you are severely impacted by these side effects. STATUS RECOMMENDATIONS: Skip — patch not needed; Hold — do not install until its problems are resolved; Wait — hold off temporarily while the patch is tested; Optional — not critical, use if wanted; Install — OK to apply. All supported versions of Windows are getting an emergency patch to fix flaws in Intel CPU chips that could lead to attackers gaining more information about your systems including passwords and other confidential information. You'll have read about this -- the press have already labeled the flaws as the Meltdown and Spectre bugs. As Microsoft said in "ADV180002 | Guidance to mitigate speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities:" Microsoft is aware of a new publicly disclosed class of vulnerabilities referred to as “speculative execution side-channel attacks” that affect many modern processors and operating systems including Intel, AMD, and ARM. Note: this issue will affect other systems such as Android, Chrome, iOS, MacOS, so we advise customers to seek out guidance from those vendors. Microsoft has released several updates to help mitigate these vulnerabilities. We have also taken action to secure our cloud services. Microsoft has not received any information to indicate that these vulnerabilities have been used to attack customers at this time. Microsoft continues working closely with industry partners including chip makers, hardware OEMs and app vendors to protect customers. To get all available protections, hardware/firmware and software updates are required. This includes microcode from device OEMs and in some cases updates to AV software as well. Because this is a kernel update that interacts with antivirus utilities, there is a big "BUT" in how you might get this update: You'll receive it once your antivirus vendor has proven that it can handle the update. The proof will be adding a registry key to the operating system. If this registry key is not added, you won't get the update offered up to you. If you want to visually see if your systems are prepared for this update, you can click on Start, type in regedit and click to approve the elevated prompt. Then you'll need to drill down to review the following registry key. Note that each bullet point represents a level you'll need to drill down to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion QualityCompat In the right-hand side in the registry, look for the value as shown below: Value Name="cadca5fe-87d3-4b96-b7fb-a231484277cc" Type="REG_DWORD” Data="0x00000000” If you see these values, your antivirus vendor has updated itself and it's safe to install this patch. If you don't see this registry value, this means your system (and, therefore, your antivirus vendor) is not ready for this update. Do not manually enter this key, nor manually download this update from the catalog site to install this update. This Google docs file is maintaining an unofficial listing of vendors that have updated to support this patch and therefore sidestep the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. For Windows 10 you'll see the following updates: KB4056892 for Windows 10 1709 KB4056891 for Windows 10 1703 KB4056890 for Windows 10 1607 KB4056888 for Windows 10 1511 KB4056893 for Windows 10 RTM (for those running Long Term Servicing Branch) Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 are also receiving out-of-band updates, but only in the WSUS channel. For home users, you'll see the normal cumulative update next week. For those in businesses, you'll see: KB4056898 for Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 KB4056897 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 For small businesses, my usual advice to wait for patch side effects to shake out applies: consider waiting until next week to wait to patch. In addition to these operating systems updates, start looking for firmware updates that eliminate the vulnerabilities introduced via Meltdown and Spectre. I would recommend going to your hardware vendors and look for any firmware Now comes the bad news: You may see a performance hit by installing this update. Some tech sites are indicating that performance hits on Linux can be as high as 35 percent. If you want to see whether your systems' computing performance will be impacted, run this CPU benchmark test before the patch and then after the update to see the impact on your own system. While you are there patching your workstations, review whether you have any additional overdue firmware updates that need to be installed. This isn't the first bug in the Intel chipset; in November, Intel posted about a series of chip bugs that the company has since fixed through firmware updates available via their advisory page. Please review whether you need firmware patches as well by downloading Intel's testing tool. What to do: I recommend checking to see if your system can receive the update. When your system is ready, test it to see what the performance hit (if any) will be, see if there have been any reports of patch side effects, and then update your system. This table provides the status of recent Windows and Microsoft application security updates. Patches listed below as safe to install will typically be removed from the table about a month after they appear. Status changes are highlighted in bold. For Microsoft's list of recently released patches, go to the MS Security TechCenter page. Patch Released Description Status KB405689 1-03 Windows 7 rollup Install* KB4056898 1-03 Windows 8 Install KB4056892 [1709] 1-03 Windows 10 1709 Install KB4056891 [1703] 1-03 Windows 10 1703 Install KB4056890 [1607] 1-03 Windows 10 1607 Install *Hold: Please note if you've installed these updates and are not seeing any side effects you can leave the updates installed. I'm only recommended holding off if you are severely impacted by these side effects. STATUS RECOMMENDATIONS: Skip — patch not needed; Hold — do not install until its problems are resolved; Wait — hold off temporarily while the patch is tested; Optional — not critical, use if wanted; Install — OK to apply.

KP-260's are gone. These KP-262's are now $400 per pair. They have the 2" Ti mid driver. These are nice and you can fly them. Next step will be parting them out which I hope not to do. Rescue these from the evil Dr Speakenstein who is getting ready to chop me up and use my body parts elsewhere.

I like stained Birch and those look very nice. Between stain and Poly when I did a pair with Golden Oak stain they just glowed and when I build some this is what I will do then to. One other thing I do which may be heresy in some peoples eyes is to take a file and knock off a bit of that sharp corner Klipsch leaves everywhere. It seems to help considerably towards avoiding top ply chipping from being moved and dinged. Now I only do this on Birch.

Watco Rejuventing Oil is what Klipsch recommends and get the stuff without stain or colorant added. You can sand some things out and you can also get into deep trouble quickly since the veneer is thinner than you can imagine. Dittos to what the moderator said above. Follow his link and get some Barkeepers Friend and do no sanding.

In the for what it is worth category.I just sanded the top of a Forte II piece of MDF crap. I don't like the stuff at all. It looks like just enough water from a planter soaked in to swell underneath the veneer and make a quite noticeable hump right where it hurts the worst. All the edges had small splintering in places at the edges where the veneer picked away from the MDF and the famous screw stripping in both drones because MDF and screws are not friends. I am going to build something later this year and I have decided that 1" Baltic Birch which can be had for $56.00 per 5" x 5" sheet in Nashville is the way to go. Just refinished a pair of La Scalas and the raw Birch with Golden Oak stain and Spar Polyurethane looked really nice. I bought a gallon of tintable Duratex a while back and tinted it to a medium brown and coated a pair of black painted KG-4's with it. That also looked pretty good and had a better WAF to the couple that bought them and that could be used on MDF. If I ever did anything MDF I would just coat it with Duratex. For the purposes of better sound I would rather brace more and or use heavier plywood any day. I have heard of La Scalas rolling down stairs and surviving but some how I picture chunks only if it were MDF. One of the projects I am contemplating is a pair of La Scalas with 1" Baltic and an OTHorn to go with it. I figure that will be more than enough to satisfy me for a long time.

Serious humor only. Speaker wire by the roll from Parts Express is fine as far as I am concerned. Finer strands mean you can bend it more times before breaking but other than that all this other stuff is fluff.

Well they have proven that even electrons have weight and if you allow your wire to sag in between supports they will puddle in the low areas. This is why you get that pop when you turn your amps on. Both the transient new electrons and the puddled stagnant electrons create an inrush to the speakers and thus the pop. This is why you should use pure Platinum wires as the specific gravity means the interstices of the atoms is more compacted and will allow for less puddling of electrons. I prefer pure Gold and Silver and best yet Platinum foil capacitors for this reason also.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/BAG-OF-12-1N3996RA-ZENER-DIODE-10-WATT-5-1-V/162807725816?hash=item25e818bef8:g:9boAAOSwa81aNUEy If these are the right ones for crossovers he is selling them 12 for $95.00 which beats the heck out of all the prices I have seen to date.

Well that is what I was thinking. I did not believe him this time since I have a good capacitance meter and I have checked the same capacitors new and then later after being pulled because I was curious to see if heat had affected them. I had to rob some 47uf's and 13uf's to use on a hot jobs and they were not altered at all.

My friend is pretty smart and I used to watch him maintain a whole commissary operation right down to repairing PC boards but I figured he was not right on this one. I had never heard of such a thing so I asked. I figured he had specific instructions for a delicate piece of equipment and projected that to everything else just to be safe. I like the Weller, quick to heat up and quick to cool and works well. Kind of like TIG welding where too little heat means higher total BTU input into the work piece as you struggle to melt metal I find the Weller does the job quick and the field is no different than the bench as the end result is the same and so is the purpose.

Talking to a tech savvy friend of mine today and he was horrified I would work on crossovers with an AC Weller soldering gun. He says he was taught that any solid state component, and he included Zenner diodes in this group, could be damaged by the electrical field of the soldering gun. He says he only uses a butane soldering iron for this reason on basically anything outside of lamp cord. I had never heard this mentioned on the forum before so I ask is he right?

Ok the attachment gives a list of what your year code means and what SHOULD be in your speakers. http://www.critesspeakers.com/crossovers.html will tell you about crossovers and years of production. Use this information to determine whether your parts are original to the build tag or not. Codex_V3_130823_635128700889860000.pdf

Well I don't know about blowing a KD-12 or 13 but I have seen a KD-15 laying in pieces along with the K-48 in the bottom of a KP-320. Typically what I see is cats using the passives for toys and odd things like wives vacuuming off one and punching a hole through it. Kids are tough on them to so you just never know.

I along with others here have had no end of grief finding KD-13 drones for old Fortes. I have been informed that Klipsch has run a new batch of these and they are once again available as OEM.

Sorry I have been busy today. Yes I found lots of stuff on ported La Scalas per your suggestion. I was typing in garbage and getting garbage back.

There is a possibility I will be doing a short job in Boulder in January. If I do get this job I would be very interested in these. I will know more this coming week whether I am getting this job or not. PM me with more information if you don't mind.

Bump

So I inquire about some custom built La Scalas with the claim of much lower bass. Since I am thinking of building a set sometime I am always interested in possibilities. Here is the modification claimed to work. " The top section of the speaker is opened up to the "doghouse" with a plate closing up the back which is normally open, with 2 port tubes facing the rear tuned to 30 Hz. This makes the ported section invisible as far as the appearance." Now I know La Scala mods have been beat to death many times over but this is a new one for me. Anyone familiar with this modification to know if it is even possible to do what the claims state?

Those K-42-KP woofers are a pain. Here in Nashville it took many MONTHS to get an old one re-coned and cost about $135.00 to do so. None of the Eminence woofers quite fit that K-42-KP cavity and every time I have used a current Eminence speaker I have had to route the hole out. I have some older KP-250's (1989) and they are much nicer sounding than the II's. You can rebuild the crossovers with Esre capacitors pretty cheap if you can solder. The Crites tweeter diaphragms are worth doing. Pro speakers can be hard to sell if you think you might end up doing so and all the KP-250's I have sold to date had either KP-480 or KP-115 subs to go with them and that is what sold them. I would go and hear a set of these before I spent money on them so you know ahead of time what you will get. EBay is your friend and sell the parts off or sell them as is there. You can always say no to lowballs and you just might be pleasantly surprised. A picture, price and location here just might get you a buyer.

Here are some pictures. These are as close to coming out of a time capsule as you could get and pretty astounding for pro speakers at least 24 years old.