Colin

awesome - you must be so proud!

I have been tracking vintage Klipsch model re-sales for several years now. The data is old, but with the pullback in prices recently, it still provides a good guide to what to look for and expect: If Quartets are like KG 2s then three sales on eBay average $347. I think they provide about 40% of the Khorn sound. I only have ½ a dozen KG 4.2 sales on eBay, from 2006, and they ranged from $106 to $355, with shipping about $50. A lot of sound for the price. Four dozen Heresy pair sales on eBay, in 2004 and 2006, sell from $200 to $590, establishing the average value at $405. Shipping averages $80. Posted: 5/2/2006 10/15/2009 Fortes I and IIs are similar to Chorus models, though less-sensitive, and roll off slowly below 200Hz. In 2004, a half-dozen pairs sold on eBay from a remarkable $158 to a high of $930. In 2006, a few moderate sales lowered the average to $550. Shipping averages $100. Posted: 5/2/2006 The Chorus uses a 15" woofer, but frequency response extends down only to 39Hz instead of the 12" Forte woofer at 32Hz! Chorus sound much like Cornwalls, but with a narrow, more modern looking, practical cabinet. The Chorus are larger and weigh 22 more pounds than Fortes. Klipsch specs show Chorus above Cornwall models, with the same sensitivity, but less of a fall below 50Hz. Chorus are cheap to the market compared to Cornwalls. On eBay sales in 2004 and spring 2006, Chorus sales average $559, with shipping at $215. Posted: 5/2/2006 10/31/2009 Cornwall I and II models do NOT have horn loaded bass, have smaller mid-range horn than the larger Heritage models, but have a 15” woofer and amazing 100 dB/w/m sensitivity! Despite their size, they still fall off quickly below 50Hz. From 2-dozen eBay sales from 2005 to 2009, Corns sold from $500 to $1,400. An exception was in 2004, when a pair went for $1,800. With a steady decline in prices, Corns generally average $915 now, although all the recent sales have been near $500. Shipping is usually not specified, but the Klipsch forum does have a Cornwall shipping Vault that we share. Posted: 5/2/2006 6/11/2009 8/16/2009

try passive dual amps; one on bass bins, one on mid and upper horns!

On the monthly charts, light sweet Texas Crude did test lows below $30 at the beginning of the year. Although I hate to admit it, the story of 2009 has been a steady firming of oil prices, with several double bottoms. Continuing improvements in the global economic picture is likely to keep Crude on a steady uptrend, probably for the next several months, possibly for the next several years. Double bottoms at $60 and $70 project for a near-term test of the price gaps in the monthly chart above $90 and $100 a barrel. The realities however, are that even today’s tight supplies will eventually catch up with tomorrow’s perceived demands. This is a classic case of “buy the rumor, sell the fact.” I think that when the news of the economic recovery is off the front-pages (next year, after the mid-term elections?), prices above $60 per barrel will encourage more supply and new alternative energy sources to bring the price of Crude back down. So it is with price squeezes. So it is with commodities. Happy Holidays! May you enjoy your family and friends.

1. ditto 2. ditto 3. ditto

good, now you can upgrade the crossoveers on the mains and add room treatment - those changes you will really notice!

just what you need to drive...cone speakers! why not just bi-amp or tri-amp for a few thousand?

Sunday, Dec 13th New Orleans at Atlanta - NO Denver at Indianapolis - Indy Cincinnati at Minnesota - either Carolina at New England - NE Philadelphia at NY Giants – could be good!

Can Denver stop Indy? Otherwise Indy could have perfect season! Can Dallas stop NO Saints? Otherwise Saints could have perfect season too! Vikings season looks rough, can Benegals stop them?

Good games today! NO @ WAS NE @ MIA PHI @ ATL TEN @ IND

I think most refurbished, vintage integrated tube amplifiers would sound wonderful with big ole horns for the money. The ASL Wave 10s are nice, low cost, kinda punchy sound for big ole horns. I have heard the copper-faced Cayin TA30 integrated tube amplifier on classic Klipsch Khorn loudspeakers at preacher man DaddyDee’s Khorn gathering in Arkansas, back in May, 2004. I then auditioned the TA-50 for EnjoyTheMusic.com and can certainly recommend them for big ole horns also. I serious auditioned, in my own home, in two locations, and three speakers, on my own equipment, for EnjoyTheMusic.com, the ASL AQ1003DT for about one thousand dollars. This too is a very competent, good, solid performer of an amplifier with no obvious shortcomings for big ole horns. After a wonderful listening day with modified LaScalas at Mike Lindsay’s 2006 Florida get-together, I strongly recommend investing in NOSvalve’s KT88 VRD monoblocks – very solid bass for a tube amplifier! All that being said before, a really powerful sub-woofer helps give tube amplifiers a solid bottom end.

For me, it was a Mercury Topaz, what a piece of s**t! Everything went wrong on it all the time.

OK, I am admit it. I am old, fat and balding. Maybe that is why I don’t get the blogging thing. There are a few influential news outlets on line these days (USA Today, Washington Post, NY Times, Wall St. Journal). There are a few influential literary magazines left (Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker). There are a few really good authors who I have to consume all of their works (Pat Conroy, John Sanford, John D. MacDonald, Sue Grafton, James Lee Burke, Robert B. Parker, etc.) And yes, there are a few titillating blogs I read just because I am a living, breathing, thinking, single male animal (http://www.literotica.com/stories/new_submissions.php, http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/SexAndLove#, http://thelatebloomerfinallyblooms.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50)! So my point is, who has time for all this blogging and Twittering? With the exception of my charming friend Harley May (http://harleymay.livejournal.com/), who is an exceptional easy writer to read, what does anybody care what Joe Shmow says? Several decades ago, the eminent science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, wrote an article for Business or News (?) Week lamenting that the problem with direct democracy is that it gives equal votes to both idiots and geniuses. The same logic applies to talk radio and TV. Who cares about the uneducated and inexperienced opinions of morons on the Jerry Springer show? This is about as entertaining as cold tea. Give me the grasping, greedy, bloody power struggles of news reality, the archly crafted story of literature or the venal, prurient appeal of porn. Give me something with a double shot, not the unfiltered rainwater of the masses. Color me elitist then. But I would rather be mentally, intellectually or even physically stimulated than waste my precious time sucking down the tepid drool of some Idiot AsIsMe.

Now will any body call it? No Steelers? No Giants? Minnesota is 9 and 1! Saints and Colts are unbeaten with 10! Five teams are 7 and 3: Dallas, Arizona, New England, Cinci and San Diego

My Khorns get plenty LOUD with 3-watts, but of course do not have the solid bottom end feel of a super amplifier: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0202/passx250.htm I do use a thigh-high sub-woofer for the lowest and deepest notes. You don’t say which amplifier and that leads me to wonder why? What are the specifications for THD at 1 to 10 watts for each? That will really make a difference on your ears in the long run…

NO 6-0, Indy 7-0 Indy @ NE 11-15 at 8:20 Indy @ Denver 12-13 at 1 PM

subwoofer! CDs have “musical” things happening below 40 Hz, no matter what the subject matter! Using the Real Time Analyzer in the Behringer DEQ2496 UltraCurve Pro, let me tell you, even the human voice has harmonics that extend below 40Hz. Rock/population music certainly does get below 40Hz, unless there is no kick drum, bass guitar or piano! I think 40Hz is the low string on the bass guitar, which means there certainly are harmonics lower than the initial 40Hz note. The kick drum makes a 30Hz note and can reach momentary peaks of 120dB! That alone should indicate the deep for very big, very deep and very powerful sub-woofers to sufficiently replicate the music.

Tube pre-amplifiers for big ole horns With their ultra-high efficiency and amazingly low distortion, big ole horns love tubes. Tube pre-amplifiers or amplifiers with big ole horns make music, but only if you ignore conventional solid-state and cone driver specifications. Let your ears do the listening. (Just look at the Total Harmonic Distortion of a violin or trumpet – it is enormous!) Many horn lovers think that tube pre-amplifiers are better than tube amplifiers with big ole horns. They do have a point. It is a good way to soften the harsh jitter of digital sources. And although the sheer wattage output of amplifier doesn’t matter as much with ultra-efficient horns, even tiny class T solid-state chip amplifiers, such as Red Wine, Trends or Sonic Impact, will still provide plenty of bass control compared to all but the most beefy tube amplifiers. So check out frequent forum poster Craig at his NOSvalves.com for ideas of vintage integrated tube pre and power amplifiers. Vintage equipment must be checked before judging it. Just like an old car that you are putting back on the road, many of the worn parts need replacing. There is a wait while the unit is being refurbished, but the result compares with far more expensive new equipment. These vintage integrated amplifiers have a lot more going on in them, and much more to offer than any of the modern integrated amplifier. You get a REAL preamp section, with a PHONO stage, FIXED bias which runs the output tubes properly, tube rectification, a balance control and tone controls. An integrated amplifier with pre-amplifier outputs will let you run the horns either with tube power or with your existing solid-state amplifier. Even better is passive dual-amplification, with tubes on the mid & high end and solid-state amplifier on the bass bin. But that is a topic for another discussion. Tube pre-amplifier brands to look for are the same as the amplifiers. Look for classic brands like Scott, Eico, Fisher, Pilot, Dynaco, HK, Heathkit, Bogen, Knight, possibly Quad, Quicksilver. Consider new ones like ASL and Cayin. Certainly the excellent pre-amplifiers of the now sadly defunct Juicy Music. See my EnjoyTheMusic.com review. You could also investigate better placement, nicer cables and room treatments. All of which will make your big ole horns sing like no other low cost musical solution can do. Posted: 12/19/2003 4:57 PM 10/30/2009

great soundstage for orchestra music, but low dynamics

uum, bigger is better generally, the bigger the speaker the more effceint it is the more effceint it is the louder it will get with a certain amount of power check the output level, louder is better you do need subs - that is where the energy is, subs provide more cheap power, which bass needs

try the receiver first

Movies that show off your home theater must have incredible pictures and sound tracks. Therefore, modern musicals are the first to come to mind: 1 - My first nominee: Chicago. Bob Fosse’s Broadway titillating hit about love, betrayal and exploitation (theirs and ours) is brought to 2002 celluloid with surprisingly good song and dance performances by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, John C. Reilly, Queen Latifah and Richard Gere. Stylish set with interesting plot and delightful sound keep this moving and entertaining. Bound to be an enduring classic. His All That Jazz is wonderful also. 2 - Then Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGrehor in Moulin Rouge. A cacophony of sound and sight. 3 - John Cameron built a special limitless horizon studio and combined Robert Ballard’s actual deep sea submersible footage for Titanic. Then it won the Academy Award for sound in 1997. 4 – Jamie Foxx in Ray (Charles, 2004). Great acting. Great music. 5 - Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddessy. Now we all know Antonio Lucio Vivaldi. 6 – And of course, George Lucas’ Star Wars. “John Williams' scores for the double trilogy count among the most widely-known and popular contributions to modern film music.” 7 – Then of course, movies with some of the deepest, baddest bass: depth charges dropped on the otherwise horrible Matthew McConaughey and the always great Harvey Keitel in U-571. 8 - Steven Speilberg’s Saving Private Ryan, puts you in each scene as the first major motion picture using hand held video with bullets whipping from front to side. 9 – The use of spot color in Speilberg’s powerful Schindler’s List, with Liam Neesom. 10 – I personally like Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, both of which were nominated in 2003. And Russell Crowe again, in Gladiator. Yet, I end this list with the amazingly 5-Hz footsteps and close-up dinosaur breath of Jurassic Park. Does Spielberg know how to combine tales of peril with music or what? These are all awesome movies, worth of watching again and again. The music makes them classics. The screens are alive with the sound of music! 6/17/2009

like Blair Witch, which was influential technically, young people seem a lot more impressed with this movie than adults...

Andrés Segovia meets U2’s Edge Finger Picking Rock Star, Shaun Hopper, is in the House By A. Colin Flood The dream of tweaking audiophiles - especially those like yours truly, who can not play a single musical note - is to reproduce the sensations of live music in one’s own home. A friend of mine took this idea one-step further. Following the growing trend, she recently hosted a live concert in her home. In a word? The event was awesome. In 2007, the Atlanta Journal Constitution is voted Hopper the "Best Musician on the Rise." In September 2009, he won “Best of The Bay” from Tampa’s Creative Loafing magazine. They said the “Most Unassuming Monster” has “fingers of doom, no two ways about it. A true world-class talent on finger style, flat-top acoustic guitar, Hopper effortlessly channels Chet Atkins, Tommy Emmanuel and Segovia, blowing minds and dropping jaws everywhere between his twin home bases of Tampa and Atlanta. To top it off, he’s just as nice as could be, humble and without pretense, a true Southern gentleman whose nonexistent sense of entitlement contradicts his prodigious talents on the fret board." Hopper’s live play list includes a number of covers, including the crowd pleasing sing-along, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He has a CD of course. But audio only CDs and iTune files fail to communicate his dimensions. The setting for this house concert is unusually idyllic. With glimmers of blue lake visible through several acres of verdant Florida, the two-story cypress cabin is a garnet infused with rural peace and tranquility; a drop of red in a palette of urban greenery. Double French doors in her living room open the house to the screened lanai. It is a house of magic. There, with an intimacy impossible in any commercial venue, attendees were thrilled with Hopper’s performance. For tweaking audiophiles, who care as much about the hardware as the music, Hopper projected his instruments with a black Bose L1® Model II professional audio speaker system. This single, five-foot high, tower is typical Bose. It has twenty-four of the tiny drivers, the ones that made their Jewel cubes famous, set in a line array as narrow as a hand. A bass module, like their home theater systems, stands next to the tower like a boulder near a tree. The system has four-channels with special effects. The effect is a tall and wide soundstage that filled the typical-size living room with a clear, balanced sound. In addition, Hopper used enough guitar pedals to resemble the cockpit of a single engine plane. With a handful of commercial endorsements, Hopper plays Larrivee guitars. Unassuming, casually dressed, with a mop of curly black hair, Hopper clearly enjoyed the up front and personal nature of a house concert with two-dozen people. With self-deprecating humor and a vivacious wit, this son of the Deep South gave a uniquely friendly, funny and entertaining presentation. His darkly somber posters and Web site belie the upbeat and enthusiastic tempo of his performances. Think classical guitar and the popular Spanish master Andrés Torres Segovia comes immediately to mind. Classically educated, Hopper can certainly channel Segovia. Yet he doesn’t just play classical music. Think Irish rock band U2. The unique tonality of their popular guitar riffs are the creation of guitarist David Howell Evans, known as “The Edge.” Jimmy Page’s “It Might Get Loud” move shows that The Edge works hard to convert simple notes into distinctive and compelling sonic articulations. Yet Hopper doesn’t simply wow with special effects either. Hopper uses long, clear acrylic nails with dual finger and thumb picks. He combines sparkling fingers with modern electronics. He merges Segovia with The Edge. The result is neither classical nor modern. It is neither merely physical virtuosity nor digital product. It is however, electric. Hopper is a finger picking rock star. With the arms and shoulders of a wrestler, he didn’t just pluck the strings pizzicato style; he tapped, knocked and thumped the amplified guitar body like a drum. He stroked the shapely wood. He spanked the fret board. He clacked his ring on the back of the giraffe neck. He slid a metal train down its rails. Hopper picked the top and bottom strings with such precise syncopation it seemed like two or three guitars playing simultaneously. He wove rhythms as tight as Moroccan carpet. Hopper sings very few lyrics. Yet the talent of this consummate finger-painting virtuoso lifts the voices of angels to a higher plane. The highest achievements of the most talented artists approach this level of higher consciousness. Think Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Walt Whitman and Frank Lloyd Wright. With his rare gift, Hopper is no exception. Relaxing to the relaxing sonorous strings and escaping to this plane, there is a chill of recognition. He speaks the language of Olympus with his music. Forget stadiums, bars and coffeehouses. A house concert is close to the venue for tweaking audiophiles. It a place to gather in friendship, enjoy gentle nature, freethinking people and the magic of accomplished artistry. I will not miss the next one. Hopper plays next month at Tampa’s funky hippie bar, Skippers. It may not be the ideal venue for tweaking audiophiles, but I will not miss that one either. More Information Event photos: http://www.meetup.com/40andFun/photos/742562/ www.concertsinyourhome.com Tampa house concerts: http://livemusic.meetup.com/96/ Host Judi Shila: http://www.livingartsstudio.com/ http://www.shaunhopper.com/ http://www.skipperssmokehouse.com/

Yeah, the mid-bass bump of the Cornwalls is quite enticing. Loved it for a decade. Jonathon Valin in The Absolute Sound (September 09) gave a rave review to the $800 Odyssey Khartago Power Amplifier comparing it very favorably to much more expensive amplifiers.