BrianJacobs

yeah, I am running Crites CT120 in place of the K-77. ALK is building me an Extreme Slope network now, would love to replace the cast K400 with a wooden one, but no one sells them anymore. My big goal with this part of the project was how much of an improvement could I make for as little money as possible. I had other people judge L to R comparison to remain objective. If I were smarter I would have a controlled environment with sound meters and so on, but I am not, and at the end of the day I am not selling anything and dont really care if anyone takes advantage of my work or not, but it is fun to share with sometimes like minded hobbyist.

As stated in my OP, it certainly reduces efficiency, and efficiency is the one thing Klipsch is very proud of. Unfortunately the K400 horn while very efficient can give you a headache almost as fast as Mike Tyson. Everything I did made my speakers much much less efficient than factory, but I am pushing them with 100watts, I have more head room than I could possibly need, what I do have now is a speaker that sounds beautiful, much more tame than stock and is still more efficient than most anything else around. These speakers are great, they still do not hold a candle to a pair of Wilsons or speakers at $100,000 and up, but for what I have into these speakers I am not sure there is anything that compares.

how dare you rationalize me upgrading my la Scalas by pointing out that PWK did the same thing later by going to a two piece structure and closing the back. These changes certainly reduced the resonance from the bass bin on the upper cabinet, and enclosing the cabinet certainly kept noise in and reduced any "bipolar" affect. Now, if only klipsch had ALK do their crossovers they would sound as good as mine will. HAHA

I used egg crate foam, not spray in foam. Even the dynamat on the interior is removable if someone wanted. That said, I dont plan on ever selling them, unless I can get a pair of Alexandrias.

I did not want to enclose the upper section, one, I am lazy and that is work, two, filling the cabinet with foam should do the job. The bin brace is being considered. My thought on this was how much better could I make them with as little effort as possible. If you are going to go through the trouble to dynamat the horn, the rest of the work is literally an extra 10 minutes and just as transformative as the horn mod.

semantics, with resonance comes distortion/unwanted sound.

while I await my ES crossovers from ALK I have been playing with my series I LaScala's trying to improve the imaging. One well know mod is to wrap the K400 in Dynamat, I did that and listened to it for a few days, it was great with no negative impact and it did clean up the sound a bit. After enjoying the horn mod I decided to dynamat the upper box, the imaging is even better but you do loose some efficiency and some mid range, over all the modded side was a consistent 1dB lower, but the sound was yet again improved, modded the other side and imaging was yet again improved to the point they hardly resemble a stock LaScala, the listening fatigue is nearly gone. After talking to my local hifi shop that carries Klipsch, Vandersteen, Revel,B&W and Wilson we talked about the huge lengths companies like wilson and Vandersteen go to in dampening their cabinets, and with the theory that vibration leads to distortion my last and final mod was to dumpster dive my garage, I found some barbell weights and egg crate foam. A single 10# weight placed under the K400 in each speaker on a piece of egg crate to reduce vibration and additional foam randomly stuffed in the upper cabinet to reduce sound escaping out the back of the upper cabinet now makes for a little less efficient but much more accurate listening experience. Note: I do use a sub so I was not concerned with the loss of bass Power comes from a Rogue Audio Cronus Magnum rolled with KT120s so speaker efficiency are not a top priority with 100watts.

I moved my KG's to my theatre set up, they are fantastic in 2 channel also, will probably keep them forever. only moved them because I bought LaScalas.

Has anyone placed the ports on the back to fire towards a wall?

played with the reflex bin in multiple configurations, no foam, some foam, lots of foam. while I did find the freq. to be a bit lower it seemed to loose its snap. I am convinced PWK is a much better audio engineer than I am and back to standard box (with upgraded components) and if I want more bass I will turn my sub on.

are you guys screwing the bass bin to the La Scalas, or just using the 123 pound weight of the La Scala to seal the boxes?

UPDATE: well the little 1974 pioneer that could no longer can. The right channel is gone, not sure if worth fixing or not. In the mean time I picked up a Rotel RB 1080 200WPC. Dont really notice much of difference in volume but wow did the speakers come to life. The highs scream, the lows drop. This is off my crappy pioneer DJ mixer, looking for a decent pre amp to find its way into my life. We shall see what fate brings my way (and just incase fate does not produce I am watching the internet daily)

the wife and kids have been out of town for a week and I have been playing these non stop with a wide range of music ever since, much much brighter than factory, mids are fantastic, and bass is great for everything except anything that has an 808. A terrific speaker for rock, folk, jazz.....gonna try to hook up my sub and see how it does with electronic stuff, if as good as I suspect I will pick up an 8" sunfire for those times I listen to stuff that goes low.

Factory KG-1001 on the right, to say it is everything the factory speaker is and more is an understatement. only down side I can think of is it does not look factory as shown. Dont care, my screens look good and these sound great. Also added the titanium diaphragms from mid west speaker as well. All in I am at $600 for these speakers with new horns and drivers. While on the pricey side for a nearly 30 year old pair of speakers, these are now essentially brand new and I can not think of anything below $3000 I would rather have.

the internet was correct, Klipsch discontinued the 10" drivers. They said the speaker from Midwest Speaker is a 1:1 clone on the factory Klipsch driver and is an excellent unit. I ordered a matched pair and also got the titanium upgrade for the horns as they were only $24 per. Thanks for all your help thus far, I will report back next week and give you guys a review.