Ben Toby

So I guess what I'm saying is, a lot of fun can be had refurbing with the Crites components, it really brought my KG4s back to life way better than original. Another point is that what you feed to them matters too... the smooth delicious sounds have a lot to do with the Yamaha A-S701 (accessories 4 less @ ~ $599) and the clean upstream components as well. Now I've got the bug and I'm looking online at Forte II's... just cuz it's fun.

Great conversation here! My input: About a year ago I got on a kick to refurb and upgrade my home audio as much as I could within my budget. I wired the house with Cat6a ethernet and now have three zones connected with high rez lossless digital audio via Sonore Microrendu's accessed via Roon. On the hardware side of things, for my basement system I replaced the crappy old receiver I had with a factory-refurbed Yamaha A-S701, and then dusted off my KG4's from college (30 years ago!), opened up the backs and installed new tweeters and new crossovers, both from Bob Crites. I set them all up in a nice rack I built for the man cave. Well I got this system cranking, and all that was missing was satisfying bass. It may have less to do with the KG4's as it does with the unique placement due to my basement rack as shown in the picture, but it needed some help down low. So I added a Klipsch R-12SW on the floor beneath the rack, and now all is well. Really really nice sound, I am very happy. This past weekend just for fun I grouped my upstairs living room system and my basement system in Roon, so that I could jog up and downstairs and do a kind of "A/B" test. I'll be darned if the spaciousness, clarity and live-concert feeling of the basement didn't have me preferring the refurbed KG4 system even better than what I've got upstairs, which is all new and cost 4X more.