Tom Mobley

Uh-oh. ran up against a serious problem with the WAF, speakers are back in the garage after being in the house for a couple days. I goofed up by bringing them into the living room before thet were finished. Not very pretty, different colors of wood, screw heads visible and stuff. Dumb. But, they sound great. what is supposed to be wrong with using the K-77-M tweeters with the K-55-V mids, anyway? I know it's a mismatch. I'm having a hard time hearing the problem, but maybe it's my damaged hearing. I'm going to use the transformer taps to attenuate some of the mids so the bass and tweeter are better at low volumes. When they are turned down low it's all K-55, not much low or high. Tom

I finally gave up on Netscrape 4.7x and went to Mozilla. Best computer thing I've done in quite a while. It's much faster and works right for just about any site, except of course the ones that are jiggered to work right only with MS Internet Exploder. It's slow to init load, but after that it's great. I'm in the computer support business and I've grown to cordially hate everything MS, even though I'm an MCSE and all that jazz. Shift-reload works well to fix the caching issues that sometimes crop up. If you're accessing through a caching proxy server it can get annoying. Tom

Well sure, I drive a 70 Chevelle. Bought it from the original owner in '87, there were 17 years worth of registrations made out to the same woman at the same address in the glovebox. Added front disc brakes and the front stabilizer bar (1.25") from a 79 T/A WS-6 car. I've rebuilt this whole car at least once , most of it twice. Got a nice engine in it now, 400 small block .030" over, roller cam, aftermarket heads, HEI, Perf RPM Q-jet manifold with an 800CFM Q-jet carb. Waiting in the garage is a 200-4R from an 87 Grand National Regal (best tranny ever made, IMO) and 12-bolt posi rear with 3.73 gears. Just put a new headliner in it, helluva job. Reminded me of why I'm an engine guy. The tranny and rear axle are competing for space in the garage with the DIY LaScalas right now. Had the LS in the house for a couple days, WAF is below zero. Back to the garage for now. Tom Here's the Chevelle site URL: http://www.chevelles.com/cgi-bin/forum/Ultimate.cgi Well over 100 GB/month going across that wire. Try getting that for $19.99. This message has been edited by Tom Mobley on 08-13-2002 at 03:23 AM

I got an email from the Eico seller, he's got another one. He said he'd email me before listing it. Tom

ShapeShifter, saw your comment: "kinda gives meaning now to the old theorem:"With Age Comes Wisdom!". guy on another board I frequent has a sig line something like "Fountain of Youth? Youth we got, how about a Fountain of Smart?" or a bumper sticker I saw last week, "So soon old, so late smart." I just hit 49, I'm starting to identify with this stuff. Tom "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself when I was young"

Rats. sent the guy an email question, went to breakfast, came back, got the email, went to BIN, somebody beat me to it by a minute or so. winners UID is vyno was that you, arfz28? Tom

Ginko Biloba good for tinnitus? Interesting, never heard of that. A Colt .45 was discharged close to my right ear, nasty tinnitus ever since, over 20 years now. That is the first time I've even seen a claim that something could relieve tinnitus. Google and drugstore, here I come. Tom

He'll need the non-800 Klipsch number, US 800 #'s generally can't be dialed internationally. Anybody know it? Klipsch Worldwide Corporate Headquarters 3502 Woodview Trace, Suite 200 Indianapolis, IN 46268 Phone: 317-860-8100 Toll Free: 800-544-1482 Accounting Fax: 317-860-9178 Sales & Marketing Fax: 317-860-9170 Tom This message has been edited by Tom Mobley on 07-27-2002 at 01:02 PM

I'll bet you get a much wider and deeper soundstage if you use those big coffee table art books and a lighter, airy sound with romance novels, but medical textbooks give a sterile, antiseptic presentation. Engineering textbooks give a dry, flat effect similar to modern Solid State technology, while historical novels give rich, highly detailed sound that goes right with a quality vintage tube amp. Amazing the way these things work, isn't it? Tom

Love that bowl mounting system. Reminds me of when I had a 65 Chevy Pickup with tweeters mounted in leather. The local small town stereo dealer was really impressed when I told him I had mounted his big buck tweeters in leather, until he spotted my truck parked on the street with the tweeters neatly esconced in well used leather gloves crammed into the corners of the dash. Completely burst his bubble. Tom

jt, sounds good to me. I used to work in my garage a lot, so I insulated the walls and ceiling and picked up an 18K BTU wall reefer from Home Depot on sale for a little over $300. Gets real nice in there, even when it's hot outside like now. Let me know if when you're interested. Tom

Thanks, guys for the responses. Thunder and rain was pretty wild here, but the rain drug out for awhile instead of the usual useless Az summer cloudburst. jtkinney, I've been looking for a PHX hornhead to come over and help me wring these things out. I've got some different drivers and crossovers on hand to swap out. If you are interested, let me know. I want to beat these things a little before I tear them down to finish. I'll need to get moving on this soon, I promised to loan out my homemade Al K. crossovers to the guy who sold me all the drivers and and the K-400s. HDBR, Thanks for the suggestions. I'm getting real partial to this Doc Pomus Tribute disc, he wrote a bunch of the biggest tunes of the 60's and 70's. It's a bunch of his standards done by different artists, usually in a LOT different arrangement. Shaun Colvin does his Viva Las Vegas, you wouldn't recognize it as from an Elvis movie. Couple are really nice, only one stinker, an ex-Beach Boy doing Sweets for my Sweet, terrible. I'll check out that 10 Years After deal. Always did like Joe Walsh, too. Tom

Jeez. These things rock. Got them buttoned up for a trial run, verify good drivers and crossovers, all that jazz. Got new K-33's, unknown K-55-V's with K-400's and wrong tweeters, K-77-M's. Built my own Al K. AA crossovers. Finally got to fire them up after rebuilding the cabinet tops, much screwing around with a router. Haven't yet pulled the 55s and 77s out of my 1977 Heresy's, just tried the good used stuff I picked here on this board. Drug out my old Yamahammer CR-620 and a mediocre cheapie JVC CD player. Played BB King "Blinded by Love" on the Doc Pomus Tribute CD, turned it up to 5, thought it was going to blow the garage door out. Holy tinnitus, these things get loud, and they don't sound like they're working at it either. On the same CD there's a Los Lobos tune with some really pushy baritone sax, whatta killer, bet they could hear it on the next block. I have never heard speakers that would go loud like that without losing clarity. These are not like my Heresy's at all. Played that Pomp and Pipes deal, scared my 4-yr old boy. Cranked up Loggins with Messina, House at Pooh Corner, never heard an oboe sound that good in real life. Nice to have something I've got this much money and time in turn out so good. And there's lots of room for improvement, tighten up the leaky woofer boxen, dampen the top and bottom of the 400, put in my good drivers, fix up the wiring, refinish the cabs, going to be nice. What fun, Tom

Thx, Justin, and sorry about the name confusion. Whatever happens on the plans works for me. Valvoline, I worked at having a nice appearance on those crossovers. But, I used Al K's economy option with the paralleled 2.0 and .2 Solen caps instead of the $25 apiece Hovland 2.2's. That was a mistake, more work, amateurish looking deal soldering the two together, less room, PITA. If I had to do again I'd use the Hovlands. If you look at his pics you'll see the diff, the Hovlands are the big yellow caps that aren't on mine. HDBR, I thought about doing that when I realized the panels wouldn't work the way the guy built them. I saw what you said, that the reliefs would have to be notched for the mounting pads on the 400's or make the whole thing deeper, then the plywood would be getting a little thin. I wanted it to look right from the front, too, even though I'm using grilles for the WAF. Hoping to get back on this deal, I worked four 12's and now have four days off. I want to hear these things. Tom

Chris R, Sorry to take so long to get back to you on this engine/car Q. The engine in your Yukon is something I know about and can do anything I want with with but "Piech's new "W" engine?" I know nothing of, have never before heard of Piech's. I'm quite ignorant of foreign cars and their details. I swore off those things after I once stupidly said something like "Why sure I can put your DOHC Maserati basket case back together. Bring the boxes over." One of the worst mistakes of my life. Isn't a Passat some sort of VW? I've done a couple vintage VW's but that's about all I know about them. Sorry, I'd like to be helpful but am just not qualified in overseas cars. If I were buying a foreign car it would be a Honda, I've known several people who have had excellent results with them. I definitely like your philosphy of car ownership though. I do the same only drag it out longer. Think of the thousands saved on car payments. Tom

Hmpf. This HF-81 deal gets more interesting all the time. Seems like it was only the other day I felt so good about scoring a new in box Nakamichi AV-400 for about half price, needed something to replace my '77 Yamaha CR-640 I bought at the same time I got my Heresies. Now after hanging around here for a few months I'm looking askance at it. Those HF-81's are cruising through ebay regularly. What do you guys think of the Eico ST-40/70 integrated amps? Or the pre/power combos from Eico? I think I know where there is a Eico ST-70 I could get cheap. Would it ever be like an HF-81? Supposedly there is a fix for the loudness switch deal that helps the sound a lot. Tom

I wasn't. Campland-by-the-Bay, Mission Bay that is. And sure, you can have the last word if it means something to you, but I'm sure you'll be able to figure out how much these platitudes mean to me. Tom

Well, I'm back from vacation. Really enjoyed camping up at the Grand Canyon. I discovered that a person can make reservations at a National Park campground over the net. Cool. There was nothing up there that resembled my bad experiences during the San Diego trip. Thanks Dean for sticking up for me while I was gone. I sort of figured I'd get flamed for posting my real live experiences, but what the heck. However, I didn't expect to be labeled a racist because I noticed that race-based threats were being used to intimidate me and mine. whassup widdat? So it's OK for them to scream death threats against "gringos" but not OK for me to observe that they were Hispanic? Dumber than a box of rocks, that. Hard not to notice too that none of the critics here had much to say about the paralyzing fear my wife and son lived through. I guess that part doesn't count for much among them. What kills me is that my wife still wants to continue my son's Spanish lessons. Tom

I don't know about all the politics in this, but I felt real good about having my old Belgian Browning Hi-Power with me the other day. We (my family, wife and 4-yr old) were tent camping in sunny SoCal, in the site next to us were a bunch (six or so) of Hispanic males who got drinking too much late one night. Next thing I know they're screaming about killing fu**ing gringos and whatnot like that. My wife and son were paralyzed with fear in their sleeping bags but I was thinking that I had a lot more rounds than they had guys to absorb them. Call 911? Go ahead, they'll come and take a report, shake their heads over what happened to that family. I have now officially moved into the "pry it from my cold dead fingers camp." Tom (who is also a Christian, but not so forgiving that he would let his family be slaughtered for somebodies entertainment.)

you've got mail. I sent you what I had, which is an AL-3 network, I don't know for sure if it's the same. Tom

here's another couple, gotta get the car loaded for a camping trip like NOW. I don't know why my camera is turning some of these pictures blue. Tom

Here's a few pics, I think. I'll do a couple more in another msg. Tom Well, try again. no pics. This message has been edited by Tom Mobley on 07-06-2002 at 11:27 PM

Thanks for the assist guys. Mine is coming out just about like mungkimans'. Ahhhh, woodworking, the horror, the horror. Actually it's coming out pretty good, it's just so slow and I keep overrunning the corners. I could have built two 350's and a 454 in this amount of time. I'm using a B&D Workmate to hold the piece, a new Ryobi router with a 1" long x 1/4" straight bit, an old Stanley tape, a machinists straightedge and two C-clamps. I've now discovered that my tape measure gives almost 1/8" different measure inside and outside even though it has the loose hook that's supposed to compensate. I'll see what I can do about a few pics. Tom

Thanks mpgwagon, that's exactly what I needed. Great pic. Chris, I bought the empty boxes froma cabinet maker in Chicago, he had built several pair in the late eighties. He was "unable to get the horns from Klipsch" at the time so he built them with some round drivers mounted in round cutouts in the front panel. Before I bid on them I asked him if he would be willing to change out the panel, he was willing so I sent him the dimensions from the German plans. No good. Now I've yanked his and am attempting to build my own. I got a piece of 3/4 oak plywood and started. Now, I've been a car guy all my life, am a professional level racing engine builder, Certified Master Auto and Truck Tech, all that jazz. But I can tell you everything I know about working with wood in about 10 seconds. So it's kinda like America's Funniest Home Woodworking Videos while I try to teach myself to use this new router to cleanly make the new panels. Didn't help any that the first new router was defective. Also doesn't help have that disease called "perfectionism." Whattaloser. Jason, Sure I'd be glad to have anything you've got. I'm thinking about building a set from scratch after I get done with these. I'm a glutton for punishment. Let me know if I can send along some bucks for expenses. Here is my info: Tom Mobley 5534 W. Yucca St. Glendale, Az 85304 Tom This message has been edited by Tom Mobley on 07-06-2002 at 01:44 PM

1) If you are DIYing a pair of LS's to save money, do yourself a favor and just go buy some. Trust me on this. 2)The set of LS plans that were passed around here (the ones in German) have a severe flaw. If you build the upper front panel with the dimensions they give, you can't mount the midrange horn. They show the K-400 opening being just about 3/4" above the bottom edge of the panel. OK great. Looks good until you start trying to mount the horn. That 3/4" is all occupied by the panel that forms the roof of the bass bin, leaving no place for the 3/4" wide flange on the K-400 at all. The front panel sits in front of, not above, that roof panel. Tear it out, start over. The space between the bottom edge of the panel and the bottom of the cutout needs to be at least 1.5". With the tweeter horn needing to move down to get clearance for the magnet it gets really tight. The horns will touch or real close to it. Did you know you can buy a decent router for about $70 at Home Depot? What fun. Can somebody who owns a pair of LS's look in the back and see how much room there is between the horns? Also, if that somebody has the decorator models with no grilles, could you please measure the height of that front panel? Hopefully it's about 10.75". I won't go into how much I spent building a set of Al K. crossovers. Of course I started from scratch on that, didn't even own a soldering iron or know how to solder. My wife helped me with that, she's certified for surface mount construct/repair on guidance systems for nuclear ICBM's. Tom