Dave A

February 8, 2018

email sent

February 8, 2018

I did the same with one a cat used as a pincushion. It was unsightly but worked just fine then and still is. Black speaker cement worked like a charm.

February 8, 2018

" My hole is on the surround, looking for a scrap of old surround material if anybody has some to spare.

Coffee filters work well so you don't have to waste a buck next time. "

When I get my rebuild kit in if you are serious I will save the old surround as best as I can for you.

February 8, 2018

Sorry I don't have that capability. All I can do is put things in mono and play one after the other and make a subjective observation.

February 8, 2018

9 minutes ago, jason str said:

Just for a passive drone cone that price is very steep, guess they are in no hurry to sell stuff.

I was thinking about buying a set myself but for that price i will just make the repair to the old passive on my Chorus II.

Just for the heck of it I took a KG4 KD-12 drone and used it for a Forte KD-13 since they are the same size. I could not hear a difference but then my hearing is not perfect either. I am going to try the Simply Speakers route and have an original Klipsch KD-15 and a re-coned klipsch KD-15 side by side and see. I really like the idea that the kit is cheaper and looks like the heritage drones and not the new rubber tire sidewall thing. I can see where the new ones might have more extension but that differing appearance is a problem when selling speakers.

February 8, 2018

The K-42-K is a different size than the K-42-KP in the KP-250's UNLESS you have one of the earlier 80's models. I have gone round and round with the K-42-KP's and nothing from Eminence fits without routing larger or is smaller than the stock Klipsch hole.

February 8, 2018

OK today I was quoted $76 + shipping again for this drone from Klipsch. I mentioned the price earlier in this thread and the guy said misquoted so someone got lucky or a dealer price. Since I don't want two different appearances on the drones for speakers I am selling I am going to try the Simply Speakers recone kit route. The new ones may be better but I have to tell you on another Forte where I replaced the old drone with a new one the new one sticks out like a sore thumb. You replace two of these just to look right and there goes a bunch of money.

February 7, 2018

Thanks and I will check for sure.

February 6, 2018

I had just bought a pair of KP-450's before these came up. The bass on these is far better than I remember the Cornwalls that have gone through here having and none of the booming box sound I associate with the Cornwalls. These things are big and bad and Cornwalls are kinda cute. Playing the same music the Cornwalls have played if the bass on the KP-450's is not as deep as the Cornwalls there is much more presence and the bass is not mushy. I expect the 456's to be this and more. I am getting to the point where what I keep for myself is all Pro line and the other stuff I buy and sell because people want it. The pro stuff is more sound and less money and if WAF is not a factor check it out.

February 6, 2018

I will be going to pick up at least two pairs. If anyone is interested in buying from Tim in the Nashville area I can take a covered trailer with me and bring them back for you space permitting. I would imagine there will be plenty of space.

February 6, 2018

Do the prayer rugs on the floor come with it?

February 6, 2018

Last time I ordered one which was three weeks ago it was $76 plus shipping for one and ran right at $87 dollars total. If you have information that tells me where to buy two for $90 I need to know.

February 6, 2018

Anyone have some KD-15's around I am looking for one.

January 28, 2018

3 hours ago, Maximus89 said:

What's the difference between the KP-301 II's vs Chorus II's other than the pros being ported and in a smaller cabinet? The drivers are titanium, which you can buy for the Chorus II's as well. Just curious if a modded Chorus II with high end parts in a new crossover would be "better" than the pro or equal? I believe @CECAA850 had some for sale recently near me. I should have jumped on it when i had the chance.

Having had both I prefer the sound of my current setup as noted above. My preference in general is for ported speakers over speakers with drones because I can put them anywhere and get great sound. Outside away from walls or corners it just does not matter they sound good. Chorus II's on the other hand have to be placed in specific conditions to work right. Interestingly enough the cubic inch displacement of the Chorus and KP-301 is almost exactly the same. Pro stuff as far as I know is all Baltic Birch to and no MDF junk.

January 27, 2018

22 hours ago, Emile said:

As noted before ... go "Pro." I just got the 904's (OK; there are bigger and better ones). Dual 15" woofer and 3" voicecoil with 2" throat horns. Unbeatable

Cheers, Emile

I think so to. I have a pair of KP-301 II's and KP-115's right now in the shop. Cost $1,000.00 and absolutely heads and shoulders above the Chorus I's and II's I have had even though the bass is not quite as deep. I think I might build an OThorn and combine that with my pair of Pro La Scalas and call it done. The Pro La Scalas are much better sounding than the regular La Scalas because of the K-43 woofer and are cheaper to boot. No WAF though so there is that problem. If you are in control and pure sound is the determining factor and not pretty Pro is the way to go. I have some older KP-250's with the K-42-K woofers in them and man they blow Heresy's out of the water. Truthfully with the lack of bass as deep as the Fortes everything else is the same and those KP-250's rock. I think the earlier KP-250's with the K-42-K woofers are the ones to get by the way the newer ones are not nearly as musical.

January 27, 2018

44 minutes ago, MetropolisLakeOutfitters said:

freight is the only way to fly.

I think so to. I just shipped a center channel to Ca and at 27 pounds it was $54.18 dollars worth of overcharging

from UPS. Every package I received from FedEx in the last two months has been crushed in and I guess they look for gorillas to hire. I had a $150.00 plus packaging quote given to me for two KP-250's and two KP-115's and two KP-101's from a Fastenal in Wi to a Fastenal near me in Tn. I just don't know how careful they are with shipments. You could always move to Nashville and then I would have a source of good boxes ;D .

January 27, 2018

Moderator if this is in the wrong place please move it to the right one.

I sell speakers on occasion on EBay. Right now I have a pair of Forte II's and people pester the heck out of me to ship them. I have refused to do so because of the hassle of finding safe shipping boxes and shippers and also I prefer people listen to them in person to make sure they are what I said they were. That way if they don't like them, which has never happened, I can refund the money on the spot. Does anyone here have experience shipping and have recommendations? My preference is to just say sorry no shipping.

January 23, 2018

I don't know what resources you have to search though but here is a suggestion. There is an older variation of the KP-250's that has a K-42-K woofer and not a K-42-KP. They are really musical and I have seriously thought about trying to make a mini Chorus I with them. As they are with updated crossovers they remind me of Fortes and yield sound far better than any small box has a right to. I would use these in a heart beat over the KP-262's.

January 23, 2018

24 minutes ago, Mallette said:

I have my theories on that, provided here: https://malletteblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/whatever-happened-to-hi-fi-the-american-pastime-of-a-passed-time/

Dave

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.

January 22, 2018

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.

January 22, 2018

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.

January 22, 2018

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.

January 22, 2018

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.