HDBRbuilder

Your Heresy speakers were likely bought while the Soldier was stationed in Europe. There was a company called the EUSAREUR Audio/Photo Agency which had stores on American military bases in Europe. They sold lots of Klipsch Heresy speakers and La Scala speakers to American military members back in those days. This company heavily discounted what they sold...often selling things at or slightly above around 50% off what we now call MSRP!! So they did a brisk business! I would imagine that those two Heresy speakers sold thru that agency for around 275-350 USD a pair in 1972...think about that for a few minutes. For the average ENLISTED Soldier, that would STILL have been between 1.5 and 2 month's take-home pay in 1972 in the Private thru Specialist pay grades (E-2 thru E-4) range!! Soldiers back then would go to the credit union, take out a loan for their stereo equipment, and make monthly payments on that loan. I know, I was one of them...stationed in Europe from 1972-1976....I bought my stereo equipment at the same stores...my cameras, too! I also spent over a month in Belgium working with the 3rd Para-commando Battalion in 1974....here is a video of that operation: I was a young American paratrooper then, in the 1st BN, 509th Airborne Battalion Combat Team. My Company, B Co, participated in the operation which was a joint operation with the BE 3rd Para. We participated in an amphibious assault on the beaches at Ostende, then made parachute drops, linked up, and eventually crossed the Meuse River, and finished up in the Ardennes...then went to Schaffen and made balloon jumps to get our Belgian para wings awarded. Some of the still photos in the video were taken by me. One of my old 3rd Para friends made up this video of that operation a few years ago! THis is the original shortened version...but there is an extended version also on YouTube....lots more pics taken by myself are included in that version. Working with the Belgian Para-Commando guys was always a treat! Great Soldiers, tough as nails...and party-animals when off-duty...we had lots of fun together in Diest clubs!

1980?? They should have been made of birch plywood, but somebody "new" in final assembly might have mis-labeled them, thinking that FLAT black paint was "FB"...it happened more than once...the proper labelling would have just been "HBB" for 1980 time-frame. Look at the rear of the speakers....the edge of the left side panels about an inch from the top as you are facing the rear of them...for letters stamped into the panel edge there....if you see an "A", then I built them. The "A" may be by itself or have an additional letter right beside it. And there should be one or a pair of letters above it....for who did the sanding on the cabinets before they went to be painted.

Kind of hard to get comments on a speaker that is not even being shipped, yet, as far as I know...know what I mean? "Comparisons" tend to have a speaker to compare with...give it a little time...you'll get comments!

"Klipsch 15-inch sub" needs to be quite a bit more specific...since there have been over a half dozen of those made in different models and styles over the years. What does its label have written on it, and a picture is the best thing for us to be able to help YOU!

They are front-ported, Cornwall decorators made around 1973 time-frame. Not exactly sure when the change-over trom Marine grade fir plywood to Birch cabinet-grade plywood happened, but these are in that era. Keep in mind that the back panels remained being made out of fir plywood for a few years (1-4) after the box panels changed to Birch plywood.

Congratulations on your beautiful rosewood-oiled K-horns!! Now, let's make them SOUND beautiful! PRIOR TO stuffing those K-horns into the corners, you NEED TO CLEAN ALL OF THE CONTACTS on the speakers...ESPECIALLY the crossover networks. ONE AT A TIME, remove a wire from its contact, clean the contact and the wire end connecter, then replace and move onto the next one. EVERY CONNECTION, to include where the wire meets the drivers, if not soldered! Be sure not to ignore the connectors in the bass bin!...and where the connector on the bass bin hatch is...remove it, clean it good, and screw it back on, tight! While you have things open in the bass bin check the screws securing the woofer to the motor-board and ensure they are tight. NEXT, ensure your Midrange compression driver is unscrewed from its K400 horn lens, and REPLACE the red rubber gasket , and screw the driver into place again HAND TIGHT!...NOT just FINGER TIGHT! If the bass bin hatch panel needs a new gasket, then clean it up and install one! More people than you can count tend to find that on older speakers they have purchased, when they have actually CLEANED all the connections, many of their complaints about performance just seem to have disappeared! Trust me on this. The midrange driver-to-horn lens rubber gasket is probably hard as a rock and needs to be replaced with a new pliable one so that it can seal properly. I will bet that a good part of your Midrange issue is ALSO due to the old gasket under your mid-range driver in the horn lens....if it isn't sealing properly! Trust me on this! NO NEED TO REPLACE a good AA network with a different network on any speaker shipped with an AA, IMHO! At worst, the AA's just need connectors cleaned and maybe caps changed out. Do all of this PRIOR to stuffing into a corner, unless you actually ENJOY lugging all that weight around! Just use high percentage rubbing alcohol for cleaning your electrical contacts...and lots of q-tips! TOO EASY! BTW...there is a thing called "dielectric grease", which CONDUCTS electricity, and also keeps connections from corroding and such...thereby eliminating the need to clean contacts more often...you can find it in auto parts stores in small tubes...use this after cleaning the contacts, but prior to re-connecting things on all of your screw-down connecting surfaces...apply with q-tips! No need to replace the network caps NOW, just clean things up and listen to them before you let UPGRADE-ITIS take over! The AA network is the best network for what your speakers are, IOW....it is what they came with and were tested with! All the later networks also tended to come with changes in the drivers or horn lenses....or both!

Decorator models were originally built using marine-grade fir plywood.

The speakers were shipped black and then re-finished at one time...with being possibly re-veneered. The moulding used on the face of the speakers are not factory original, neither are they done the same way as was done for a factory moulding application. The pics provided do not tell us whether they were re-veneered prior to refinishing. But if the speakers were veneered-over prior to refinishing, then whomever did it seems to have done a good job. If they just refinished the existing veneer from the factory, and the wood grain of the underlaying veneer has wood grain running 90 degrees from the unchipped areas, then they were probably NOT re-veneered...since plywood is laid-up with plys wood grain patterns running opposite 90 degree directions from each other...this is what gives plywood its strength and tendency to not warp or bow easily. LaScalas from that time were built using overlapping butt joints, so if there are any plies showing they were NOT re-veneered.

Those are the stock woofers used in 1979 era, and they all had black cones...they have been exposed to direct sunlight for too many years is all that is wrong with them. I probably built these....there should be an "A" stamped in on the left side panel rear edge about an inch or so down from the top...when looking at the rear of the speaker. These have seen some severe cabinet abuse!

Some Heresy II speakers were shipped with black paint...which was done at the factory. So that finish might actually be original. Look at the labels on them and the model designation on the label will tell you if they left the factory with black paint. It should show something like HBB or HWB...the "B" means they were shipped from the factory with black paint.

What does the label on your Heresys say they are, HBB? If so, then they were probably built by me. The mid-horn lens and the tweeter and woofer in your speakers were intended to be mounted on the rear of the motor-board. The design of the face of the woofer frame with its gasket would pose a problem for front mounting. As for the tweeter, there was a "Z-mount kit" available years ago for mounting the K-77 tweeter from the front, but it will likely be unobtainium nowadays. The mid-horn lens shouldn't pose much problem mounting from the front, though. You would still need to access everything from the rear, anyway, so just re-use the speaker back panels for that. Keep in mind that you will need to be able to get that K77 tweeter magnet through the hole for the tweeter horn lens, and the magnet will be your main issue for front mounting it. As for the wood used, I would advise against using solid wood panels for the box, and suggest using finely-veneered plywood instead, mitered at the corner edges.

As far as I know, there were never any LaScala speakers shipped from the factory with horizontal bracing in the bass bin. I DO KNOW, that PWK tested the horizontal bracing out, but it never went into production...likely due to the extreme cost of hand-fitting each brace. Lots of owners have added the bracing of one form or another to their own, though.

Old-school designers of speakers for use in a home environment generally had ONE MAIN GOAL, which was to work towards having a single point emission of the sound which also met or exceeded a performance with a flat frequency response throughout the frequency-range of human hearing. This has still not been achieved. The closest any speaker designer has come is with a two-way design. That is why PWK wanted to come out with a two-way that could perform as well as his three-way Klipschorn….and the Jubilee was born out of that desire and his final speaker design actually outperforms the Klipschorn...AS A TWO-WAY design! The simple importance of a speaker unit which is a one-way design rests on it's not relying on a listening distance past the point of separate drivers of multi-way designs finally "blending together" to JUST APPEAR as if it is a single source. It is a goal which has not been achieved for an in-home speaker design...YET! There is a downside to this single-point goal to some extent. What "soundstage" which people with good stereo hearing "hear" from multiple points of origin in multi-way speaker designs, tends to be more open in many cases...but that is really just a perception, and not a reality. Here is why: The ONLY way to REALLY achieve hearing RECORDED music in its REAL SOUNDSTAGE would be to have each instrument involved recorded on a separate track, to be played by a separate speaker for each track, WITH those speakers in an array identical to how all those instruments were actually laid out when they played together...provided they DID actually play together! This is simply impossible to do for all music, without having to constantly add or subtract speakers and rearrange them for each thing played. So, the very best you can do is to have some kind of compromise going on...and the SIMPLEST compromise is the three-speaker stereo array...for stereo listening, to provide a perception of a soundstage. UNFORTUNATELY, the recording engineers who are mixing-down and blending tracks have a lot to do with the perceptions of a "soundstage" a listener "hears". Here is an analogy for ya...everybody has somebody they know in their family who has a one or more secret ingredients or special techniques to make their version of a recipe which they have prepared taste different (BETTER!?!) than somebody else's version...so goes it with studio recording engineers. And therefore, so goes it with recordings.

The best of the Russian watches (normally the top military-issued ones) generally had Swiss-made movements in them.

I think I'll have one or more Konig Ludwig Weissbiers before calling it a night...even DTEL likes this bier!

Just a little historical note on the Empire Troubadour 598 turntable: When I first started working at Klipsch in 1976, the turntable used in the listening/demo room over in the office building was the 598, even though, the 698 had already started being marketed where I had been overseas a month or so earlier. I'll never forget PWK walking into that room with a number of us "new employees" there to listen, as he turned on the system, letting everything "warm-up" for the demo...and jokester guy that he was, rolled the volume control up with nobody noticing. He leaned over, lifted the Empire 598 dust cover and swiped his finger across the stylus to remove the "dust bunny" from it, as the EXTREMELY LOUD sound of that coming outta the K-horns shocked everyone in the room! Then, PWK slyly said with a large grin "The first thing to do is clean your needle and get any dust knocked off of the woofer cones!"😉

Since Chief Bonehead actually has a "Van Dyke" beard, and NOT a "goatee"...was it really Him? Either way, I can just see Roy's mind working and him thinking: "Now I have yet another option for another clandestine forum moniker: Guy with glasses and goatee...lemme see if the forum will take that for a moniker...hmmmm...maybe goatee and glasses guy?....or maybe...."

Pics, man, pics!

He's even older that I am....so I can just read his books, since the memory of most people over 70 years old requires keeping the books they write close at hand to check on what they are saying...just reading the book would probably be EASIER....and much quicker! IMHO! 😉

Keep in mind that if the hotel conference/listening room is directly UNDER or ADJACENT to adjoining sleeping rooms, we will be severely limited to the volume speakers are played at and how late we can be doing it. That should be a major decision-point.

BTW, exactly WHICH HOTEL is "the hotel", anyway? We all need to make reservations pretty soon...I can only do a drunken low-crawl to my room for certain short distances, ya'know??

ABSOLUTELY NOBODY IN HISTORY can beat the Brit cal .303 Lee-Enfield rifles model designations in confusing anybody...I think they INVENTED confusing designations, even to the point of RE-DESIGNATING specific models more than once!! The Brits even have Harley-Davidson's "alphabet soup" model designations beat hands-down!!

An auditorium would be an "OVERKILL environment" for a comparison for speakers NOT designed as stage speakers, IMHO....but the interior size of the Education Center might be much more suited...even though the ceiling is extremely high and the brick walls will most likely be overkill in reflections during the comparisons...I'll be down there at least a day early, though and we can see if that will work better or worse. I'll just bring an old H/K 430 and some speaker wire with me to play around with while checking things out for that....using my laptop for music downloads for testing out the environment comparison.

Bring your measurement stuff and the crossover network specs for my old crossovers with you to the class, and you can measure all you want on my old Heresy I networks for me. Sweeping generalizations aside, If your measurements on my networks denote requirement of new caps, or even a complete network re-build, I'll "get-er-done" after I return home with the "flame twins". You can even do your measurements on my late 1990's "almost un-used, seldom out of the boxes (for now)" Heresy II's....same thing for them...if they are needing something, then I can get it fixed. I'll even donate a "taste or two" of some very old Glenfiddich to your efforts...sound like a DEAL??

I look forward to hearing both the new Cornwall IV along with the Heresy IV, myself! But for some others, it seems they have already decided upon things without ever even hearing them, yet. As usual, the modifications freaks are already planning their mods, it seems. So far, though, nobody has mentioned liberal application of dynamat to all of the box panel interior surfaces...but I'm sure that is coming soon! 😉