Welborne

Klipschorn La Scala 1 Cornwall 1

I am located in Hong Kong. And a guy is putting a Scott 399 for sale which is in immaculate condition.

Thanks! Really quick! How is the treble performance when compared to say Eico HF81? For most part of my journey I have always used modern single ended triode ampmifier such as a 300B/6c33c, and my only exposure to anything "vintage" was an Eico HF81 I borrowed from a friend.

What is your opinion on the Scott?

PWK's favourite amp was a Brooks 2a3 push pull (i forgot the model number, could be 12a) which I believe is NOT zero feed back. It probably has some % of nfb in it to make it less volunerable to the impedance roller coaster of PWK's own speakers. So if it has a 8ohm tap it will most likely than not sound decent, but if it has a 4ohm tap it may sound even more decent if lower volume. Klipschorn/LS design was born at a time when low distortion - push pull tube gears (with heavy feedback) and later SS (even heavier feedback) prevailed, so stating the nominal at 8ohm (which is true from a nominal/averaging's perspective) would still be problem free especially they are 104/105db efficient. But when one looks closer it's the Woofer-4ohm's call overall and with my limited knowlege we would get better sonic result if 4ohm tap is employed if there is one. Especially true if one uses high impedance zero feedback single ended amplifier, as DeanG has explained above. Correct me if I am wrong. Too bad My 300B does not have anything els but a 16ohm, so my experience is all just academics.

No I don't. Well sort of, a passive TVC called Django based on S&B transformer, not too disimilar to the Music First TVC.

Tell us more about your 6cb5a amp. This is the first time I saw this mentioned. I was paying more attention to 4p1l before

Speaking of Thomas Mayer, I happened to be sitting next to him at a dinner a couple of Friday ago here in Hong Kong as he visited a friend of mine who is a big customer of TM stuff, and there was a dinner set up. I wasn't expecting the guy who sat by me was TM.. LoL

My 300B has a fixed non changeable 16ohm tap as the output transformers were tailor made for my Bastanis OB when I thought I would not buy another speakers after Bastanis. With 16ohm it definitely sounds wrong. The 300B is a D3a-300B mesh plate run at 60ma/350v/5k as prescribed for me from my friend Thorsten Loesch. Lukily my 6c33c has a configurable 4/8/16 ohm tap though it still needs some soldering underneath.

Last night I even invited a friend who owns a pair of Voltiaudio Vittora to come and listen to my fully stock AL-3 LS. I told him my long and winding journey. I hooked up my Wiener tpa3118 (with switching frequency configured at 1.2mHz) first and he was shocked by the very nice tonal balance of all the music he brought along with him. There was no honkiness, brightness and glare. Just natural sound and a lot of liviless. The second part of the audition I hooked up my zero feedback D3a-300B with my Bastanis OB which has an almost flat 16ohm. This set up sounded pretty decent as expected. Towards the end I hooked up the stock LS with the same 300B. He was floored by how horrible and shouty the LS suddenly became. They sounded like pretty mediocre radio speakers. Shocked. So it's true at least for two guys here. The K401 is that good.

So another question: those of you who use SET (single ended triode) tube amp with your Klipschorn/LS, do you use 4ohm tap or 8ohm?

Thanks Dean. Does your 15ohm parallel resistor work with Type A network?

My conclusion is like yours: there is nothing wrong with the K400/401. They just show problems more readily (gear matching, harmonics distortion etc) and are less forgiving than other offerings. PWK has done a lot of work and he knows what sounded right to his ears.

Now after all these, I tend to form the opinion that much of the honkiness, shouty, harshness that many reported are not the problem of the horn, the drivers nor even the crossover. The popular belief has been that high efficiency speakers, and in particular HORN for that matter, SHOULD be matched with flea power TUBE amps with singled end, zero negative feedback and Directly heated topology, and so a lot of us including myself followed that belief and pair our KH/LS/Belle with high output impedance/low damping factor gear. When use with Klipsch's wild impedance curves (from as low as 4.5ohm to something like 43ohm) serious tonal coloration and abnomalies are to be resulted. Surely you can drive the Klipsch to hearing imparing level with barely 1w to 2w but we also need the high damping part so that we will see as little db variation along the frequency response as possible.

Sharing my roller coaster experience here and may be useful for you guys. In the past I read A LOT about how bad and headache-causing the K400/401 could be even before I acquired a pair of La Scala. With such belief in mind I even went directly ordering a pair of Le Cleac'h horn to use on top of my LS with 1" throat. I tried everything stock originally (AL-3 crossover, k77m tweeter, k401 horn and k55M mid drivers) initially with two of my Single ended tube amp one being 6c33c the other being 300B all stuffed witg good parts and proper driver and operating points etc. Initially I tried with 16ohm tap, and the sound? Horrible the least to speak. Bright, honky, resonance here and there, no image no soundstage to speak of, bass sounds boomy and seriously boxy. Everything you can read about "bad ugly horn sound" you name it. Yeah the La Scala k401 horn and tweeter are as bad as I have read. Immediately I have dismissed the stock components and installed the Le Cleac'h flare and made a Type A crossover using solen coil and Russian K40-9y PIO capacitors. Hooked these to my tube amps again and yeah they sound so much nicer, so much less honkiness, things get much smoother, and now it started to sound more normal. But there is still some brightness and honkiness that I could not completely get rid of. Some weeks later, I converted my tube amps tap to 8ohm, then the sound has taken another major leap forward, its so much more involving. "Yeah it's the impedance matching things again" so I thought. But there was still something there that kept bothering me. The sound was too relax and lost a lot of the charm of the famous Klipsch 3-way horn that I first heard at a friend's home 10 years ago. The sound I get now has nothing too wrong but also lack lustre. I kept questioning myself "Is this what the Klipsch is famous for 60 years? Just this?" Then one day, out of the blue, I hook the LS (still with Le Cleac'h horn, Type A, B&C De120 tweeter) up with a Nuprime Sta-9 class D my friend lent me to try with my open baffle speakers. I did not think class d would work with Klipsch LS but bearing the "no harm to try" attitude we hooked it up anyway. OMG! The treble is so silky and smooth, violin sounds so airy and rich, mid is palpable and warm, bass is tight and dynamic, Nothing stand out to ask for attention, and nothing nasty to distract me from enjoying music. Inspired by this, I removed the Le Cleac'h horn, put back the k401, hooked up the stock Al-3 crossover and k77m tweeter, then I listened to everything stock with Nuprime class D.... God! This is shockingly amazing! I have goosebumps all over my body, violin is as silky as the B&C DE120, perhaps a little bit less extended but only a little bit if any. The biggest improvement is the MID! Human voice is hanging in the middle of the front wall as if musician is here, soundstage is deeper, image is much MORE solid and realistic. Bass, mid and treble all coherently come from the same piece of cloth. I played 50 recordings ranging from chamber baroque, violin concerto, solo, big choral works, jazz big band, wind symphony, saxophone solo, complicated symphoc works, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Sophie Mutter..... Etc etc and there is absolutely ZERO brightness, glare and ZERO honkiness to speak of. Where are all those nasties I read about horn and old Klipsch classic models? They disappear in front of this lowly class D Nuprime, completely. I deliberately turn up the volume to test to see if I was just listening to them too softly. No, even at higher volume that would have invited some complaints from neighbours those brightness, honkiness, harshness are not here, with k401 and stock crossover. Ok, is this all the magic of Nuprime? I try another much cheaper Class D based on a Texas Tpa3118d2 chip called Wiener that was on a grouo buy thread from diyaudio.com. Bingo! The sound of LS is just as delicate, refine, smooth, romantic and silky as when hooked to Nuprime, and perhaps even more refine (due to tpa3118's even higher switching frequency). Puzzled by this unbelievable and unanticipated journey, moving from boutique DHT tube amps, boutique horn flare, all PIO crossover to everything stock and some modern class D amp, I investigated further into the logic behind all these. My conclusion: Klipsch classic horn are amazing design, can sound absolutely MINDBOGGLING head and shoulder above many other speaker design on planet earth, even in stock form which many people have written badly about. All you need is a low distortion amp with very low output impedance that can "drive through" the wild impedance roller coaster inherent in all Klipsch classic models (LS/Belle/Klipschorn/Cornwall etc). You only need a few watts, but you need good few watts, and you need amp with high damping factor. Needn't be class D, can be any topology SS, tube PP, Otl etc. This is my experience. And a big lesson. It's a game more than just the "efficiency" number.

Post again

May be a picture is better. This is how mine looks like

Hi guys, seriously need some help herez recently picked up a pair of old Cornwall and the woofer accordion surround has some whitish stuff on them and they look like mold to me. I have tried to get them off with cotton bugs but fail. I dont want to damage these drivers by wrong method. Can anyone tell me what is the best way? Cheers,

Great tips!! Can't wait to experience. I am curious if such set up do soundstage depth well?

Not sure where is best to ask so I post my question here. Advice needed. Already a LS owner, I recently acquired a pair of 1986 Klipschorn and a pair of Cornwall I from the same year at a no brainer price (greed ;p ). When I was offered these I said to myself there is no way I let it slip through. My listening room however is just 14 feet wide x 20 feet long. Right now I set up my La Scala right at the corner as if they need corner loading. The point about acquiring the Klipschorn and the Cornwall is to try the famous and mysterious 3-channel set up that PWK tried to popularize. Soundstaage width and image depth is as important to me as tonality. I want to experience what such 3-channel rig can bring to the table. The problem is: how to get a mono channel to feed the two Cornwall between the Klipschorn? Or shall I just put two Cornwall tightly together side by side and just feed them stereo from a second amp? I have currently two tube amps of similar topology and gain. Or do I need something more sophisticated such as an 5.1 AV amp or even something like MiniDSP? Any advices welcome. Great forum!!!!

This is also what I did to my LS. Rotate it and you dont need braces, put the horn on top and time align them.

Can a Faital f204 or F200 be used with a Type A crossover (La Scala/Klipschor) for home listening? And will it sound good in a two way? My rig consists of mainly DHT tube amps like 2a3 or 300B

On a slightly different but still related topoc: just on the quality of the bass part, how different is a klipschorn with false corners from a Jubilee?

Yea Dean, I mostly run 300B, single ended 6c33c sort of thing (like Romy the Cat).