MechEngVic

My dad had a pair of big JBL's when I was a kid that I would've wanted handed down to me, but our house was broken into while we were on vacation and they were gone. (not sure what model they were).

Guess you won't be needing those puny La Scalas no more...

My late production KLF-10's don't have glue issues. They took the melamine off of the internal surfaces and OVER-glued them with a different type of glue.

Would love to see pic of those amps...

Interesting. I see many Klipsch speakers have a "2k " hump in their frequency response curves. In doing Klipsch mods, I found that reducing the hump too much and trying to flatten the FRC lessens the Klipsch sound; that midrange tone that I've become addicted to and find lacking in other brands.

What amp do you have?

Yes I remember, thank you for that. You're not the first to want to tame a Klipsch horn. I've done similar mods to every Klipsch I've owned, and to those of friends. I recently replaced the original driver of the horn in my KLF-10's with a FaitalPro driver that is 107dB's loud. I really had to do some taming to the crossover, but it sounds amazing. A real improvement. The real trick to taming a Klipsch horn is to make sure you keep the 2000Hz "hump" in the frequency response curve. That's what give Klipsch horns their signature sound.

I have heard an improvement in sound by using thicker wires, I've never been able to hear a difference in sound when comparing connectors vs. bare wire. Use pure copper. Those Mediabridge look fine. The shorter the better.

I don't think output transformers were designed to use both the 4 and 8 ohm taps at the same time. I think the current draw from one winding set would affect the other winding and visa-versa. If that's what you're talking about. It could cause damage to the amp depending on the design. You're better off running two sets of wire from a single tap. Don't worry too much about the ohm rating of the individual drivers as they were already designed to work together in that specific speaker. Bi-wiring from a single amp may have some audible benefits, some say yes, others say no. But the main reason to do it is so you can run two amps. If you have one good set of wires use them with the jumpers on the speakers instead of buying a second set of wires that you'll have to splice together at the amp. Unless you know specifically that your amp can run two taps at the same time, I wouldn't try it.

The good thing is, you still have the original crossovers and your new crossovers look like they have enough room in them to make adjustments.

Taking this chart into consideration: Think about how close the coils were on the original crossover and how they were arraigned, no doubt they were close enough to cause shared induction. This shared induction is measured and factored into the original design. When building an upgraded crossover, the originals should be measured for shared induction by applying signals of various voltages and frequencies. Then when building the new ones, you can place the coils close enough to have the same shared induction.

Dollar for dollar, you'll be hard pressed to beat an ST-70. I have an original Series II and it sounds awesome with horns. The original ST-70's can get a bit mushy, that's what most of the changes made by the series II and Bob Latino's designs address. The big difference is the larger power transformer and increased capacitance of the power delivery circuit. I've replaced preamps, wires, speakers (always Klipsch), and source components, but I've never felt the ST-70 needed replacing.

You wouldn't happen to have the FR and Z graphs also, would you?

If I was looking for a replacement driver for The KLF-10 or 20, I'd have a hard look at these: https://www.usspeaker.com/ciare-hw250-1.htm Size-wise they are a drop in replacement, I wish they had a nicer trim, so I'd be seriously tempted to take off the gasket and put the KLF trim over it. Or these: https://www.usspeaker.com/ciare-hw251n-1.htm They certainly look better, the numbers are in the ballpark, but they are 2.5mm too big in diameter, and they are backordered. Other forum members have reported good results with the 12" version of this brand for the KLF-30's.

The idea to use a resistor in parallel with the driver was first proposed to me by Maz4bz as a way to tame a hot tweeter, and boy was it a life-saver! With the original driver/titanium diaphragms, I used a 20 ohm resistor which had a significant effect on impedance but it maintained the shape of the frequency response curve and phase. This translated to a nicely toned down tweeter that sounded great at moderate levels but had high frequency break-up at higher volumes, I think due to the big impedance change (maybe also a quality of the titanium diaphragms). I tried L-pad arraignments of several value combos and not a single one sounded better to me than the single parallel resistor. Even though the L-pad setups maintained impedance in its place and toned down the tweeter, they changed the frequency response curve and made the speakers sound less "Klipsch-ish" (they were losing that midrange "honk") Changes to impedance curves can shift crossover points, so it's important to pay attention to the frequency response curve and it's phase. If you keep the frequency response curve and its related phase where is should be you have some flexibility in fluctuating impedance values of the speaker. The problem comes in when you are trying to tone down the tweeter without a crossover re-design. The problem gets even bigger when you use a new driver! For now, I'm gonna use the existing crossover C and L values and am only changing resistors (as you saw in the previous diagrams). Changing the primary resistor and lowering the value on the parallel resistor has made the new driver sound pretty good. Impedance is up but mainly past 10kHz, plus this new driver can handle way more than the originals with titanium diaphragms. I'm still trying to get .zma and .frd files for the Faital's, that'll help a lot. Probably try a new crossover design. Does anyone know a good way to convert a graph images into these files? I've been trying but so far no luck. I have also communicated with Faital-Pro, we'll see if they get back to me.

I made another adjustment to the crossover: I toned down the driver a bit more with a 15 ohm resister instead of the 10 ohm in the first mod, plus I added 3.3 uf of capacitance to the 2nd order of the woofers for a total of 11.3 uf. I continue to be be incredibly impressed with these drivers. They produce the high frequencies so well they remind me of a pair of RF-7 II's I heard a while back. I'm sure this HF-111 is of the same caliber as the RF-7 II and III's high frequency drivers. Their sibilance stands out, they can produce these sounds well even at high volumes. The titanium drivers break down when trying to produce these sounds at higher volumes. (Don't get me wrong though, the titanium diaphragms did well at normal listening levels).

Gorgeous set-up! I love those crossover boxes. I love what you've done. I love listening to music, I really do; I am a fiend for accurate sound reproduction. But I am also a gizmo-gadget loving guy. I don't just want a Timex, I want a hand-built, hand-polished, Swiss-made timepiece that is as beautiful as it is functional. You, my friend, do it good. I get you.

UPDATE: In the first pic, you can see I had to modify the mounting flange to accept the wider diameter mounting screw pattern. It was a simple and effective mod. The driver compression chamber lined up perfectly with the horn throat. The last pic shows how I used a big o-ring to stabilize the washers so they wouldn't tilt away as I tightened them down, pseudo-extending the diameter of the flange and maintaining even pressure while keeping the flange from flexing. Again, it was simple and effective. The horn is plenty robust to handle the extra weight of the new drivers. Many 2-way speakers have similar impedance curves so I deduced that maintaining the original impedance curve as best I could with the new driver would be a safe course of action. Also the Faital's response curve was similar what XSim plotted out for the KLF-10 stock, so I figured using the same driver data would give me ballpark results which listening tests seem to have born out. What I didn't expect was how much louder these Faital drivers would be. My goal was then to tone them down without changing the shape of the frequency response curve, which meant no capacitor or inductor changes, and resistor changes that would not blow the impedance curve. The previous two images show the original crossover layout and associated curves versus the modified crossover layout and its associated frequency response and impedance curves, all calculated by XSim, not measured. While the XSim graphs in this case are not a totally accurate representation, I know I'm close based on the many similar mods and more accurate measurements I've done in years past which have shown me similar results. The basics in cases like these do the job, plus listening tests have turned out pretty good. I tried several variations, but none brought me as close to my two goals of maintaining the impedance curve and not changing, just lowering, the high frequency response curve. The two issues I was trying to improve with the modification were: Improve high end sparkle, and eliminate breakup of titanium diaphragm at higher volumes. I can happily report that those two issues have been resolved, while keeping the midrange power we all love Klipsch for. Other improvements: The stock/titanium drivers provided a beautifully focused center image, the Faital's made the center image more broad but just as focused, if not more so. Also, there is increased detail throughout, and what seems like a better hand-off of crossover between woofer and horn, the stock driver seemed a bit anemic at the 2300Hz trade-off, the Faital's are anything-but. This seems to result in an upper midrange punch less tinny than with stock drivers; making sounds like a snare hit sound like they are coming from both the woofer and horn more equally. My only issue so far after about 10 hours of listening is that the Faital drivers are so strong that my near-field listening position exposes me to much higher sound levels now because these thing can really crank. I had to turn up my sub a bit also. I'll have to rein in my itchy volume-finger. We all mostly know by now that audiophilia is nothing more than an increasingly expensive series of ever-narrowing compromises and I think I can safely say that this mod was more narrowing than widening.

JUST TELL ME HOW TO DO IT!!!🤣 No, seriously, I have a shelf in the garage with many of the amps, drivers, caps, boards, and cabinets I've fried, over-and-under chopped, burned, put a screwdriver through, or otherwise destroyed in my 30 years of "learning" how to DIY. I even blew up a few meters, mics, and scopes. The guy who really knows how to do it is the guy who knows all the countless ways it can go wrong.

Hold on, almost every comment in this thread agrees that sticking to an exact value isn't critical, but when Jeff says so, all of a sudden we're all off to the dark ages? I mean, yeah some hyperbole, but his comment mostly makes sense. Look at the frequency response graph of any crossover; it is not perfect, nor are the "exact" values really exact. They are a combination of "close enough", available, and cost effective, and in the end it is the listening test that determines a successful design. Improving that design could definitely involve mixing type and variations in value. Response graphs will always come second to my ears.

If your amp is good and the wire/connector path from amp to speaker is correct, then your problem has to be the crossover. If you previously bypassed the crossover and wired directly to the woofer, I have to ask: Was the crossover still connected? If it was and you still got low sound, you might have a short in the crossover. With the new woofers, I'm assuming the wires are no longer soldered: Disconnect the crossover from the woofer and wire directly to the woofer, amp directly to woofer with nothing else connected and try the sound.

This is what I keep saying about Chorus II's!!! Everyone says they need tons of watts: NO THEY DON'T. My Dynaco ST-70 II tube amp (35 WPC) made the chorus II's so loud you couldn't feel the seat you were sitting in. I also DEEPLY regret selling mine when I moved into a smaller place.

Deang is the resident crossover builder. I'm not sure if he does KLF's, I would message him. There are two tricky aspects: One, designing a crossover that has the same measurements as the original but with better parts, and two, installing it. Some try to build onto the existing crossover, while others build entirely new units (which require extra modification) . I've been designing, testing and building my own crossovers for many years, and have found that measuring the mutual inductance of coils, and ESR (equivalent series resistance) of capacitors to within 10% of original values yields excellent results. I'm including an images of the crossovers I built for my KLF-10's using paper-in-oil and the best metalized film caps available, Dale wirewound resistors, wound air-core inductors, and mil-spec silver clad pure copper wire. This gives an idea of what's involved even after the crossover is designed and built.

I agree with the MAHL's, wouldn't doubt the Crites mid will yield improvement, but if you're serious about keeping them, I'd look into a crossover made with PIO, film and foil, and/or high end metalized film capacitors, and Mills resistors. Properly designed, they will yield an improvement in definition, soundstage, and warmth.

Let's see your system!