HDBRbuilder

Bob, Give Klipsch a call, have em ship a set of shipping boxes and interior styrofoam, etc. to whoever ships em to you...and then have the shipper build a small crate around the boxes after the speakers are in em....Klipsch still has shipping stuff for sale to customers.

Edster, As for your question about the builder of your heresys...I am not sure we were stamping our code in the back of the cabinet when yours were built...but if we did, then look at the back EDGE of the cabinet...on the upper left side...may be on another place, tho...like lower right side...there will be at least one initial...and possibly there will be another initial below that...the top initial or pair of initials will be the builder code, the bottom will be the sander code...some just have the builder code...some have no code at all. As for your rosewood k-horns, they are very nice examples, but...hey...dont be too upset about the match on em....some looked alot worse...here is how we matched up pairs for fronts: This applies to wood panels other than walnut, ok? You have to understand the these panels arrived supposedly matched with the edge veneers already installed...they were pre-cut to size for the k-horns at the mill...and a fair match was made at that point, then they were shipped face-to-face and back to back with maybe 20 pieces to a pallet...banded together with of course some protection for em. Once they arrived at the plant they were lightly sanded, and then checked for a match for the veneers. Remember the top panels were also matched up to the front panels at the mill. Then they were lightly sanded on a panel sander, and were re-checked for a match...then the employees would look thru them on their breaks to pick out pairs for the ones they wanted to have built for themselves...IF they were intending to build some... The most highly prized were panels with beautiful color and grain, perfectly matched, with a book match down the centerline, and as FEW as possible veneer strips used on the panels...NOTE: yours had SIX STRIPS...and most of the employees wanted just two or four strips on theirs. Then next came folks who had custom ordered rosewood k-horns and either came to the plant themselves or had a representative come and hand select the wood for them. Then, whatever wood wasnt picked over was built up into pairs for general sale as rosewood ones. Alot of dealers wanted a pair of rosewood horns in their listening rooms...and alot of those were hand-selected by whoever their dealer rep was at the time...he would just come over and set aside a pair of tops and fronts for em...and label them for who they were to go to. Then you had honchos at the company who meandered around all the time...they would see a pair of really nice speaker cabinets in the paint room or final assembly and say..."I am gonna buy those...hold em back for me" Hell, my heresys were sittin in final assembly waitin to be boxed up after being tested, and the then-president of the company saw em and said to Gwin Cox "Damn, those are the most beautiful laquered heresys I have ever seen...I want em"...Gwin said to him "those are already taken"...he said "by whom?"...she told him and he said "well, if they are his, I better not try to get em or else I will never get another pretty pair of decorator heresys or any kind of nice cornwalls as long as he is building them up"....LOL! He even came over to my workbench and remarked about em to me...LOL!...He REALLY wanted em bad, but I held my ground!!! SO....you can see why a pair of regular rosewood k-horns had less and less of a chance to have great beauty as the manufacturing process went along... Another thing to remember is the process of laminating the veneers to the substrate...in the case of yours, it definitely appears that the veneer panels came from the same original board, but it also appears that one set was laminated face down on on one panel and the other set laminated face up on the other panel...if you understand anything about laminating matching veneers, you will understand that a correct method would be to take the board, saw it down its center, then take a veneer strip off each resulting piece...the sides that faced the ORIGINAL saw cut will go face up and be designated for ONE panel's center...the next slices of veneers from each piece of wood will be likewise matched up for the veneers for the next panel's center...then the next two slices for the first panel, but to the outside of the two center veneer strips....then the next two likewise for the second panel..etc..etc..etc....BUT....SOMETIMES...the strips for one panel are flipped over accidentally before they are applied...and that is what it looks like happened on yours. Custom quality veneering is becoming a lost art...and big companies dont pay their employees enough to make em give a damn when they are doing this. When I worked there we were always going round and round with Georgia Pacific over this quality control issue for our veneered panels...we even went to other suppliers, but same crap... Most folks believe that the biggest reason for Klipsch stopping its offering of rainforest exotic woods is the conservation of rainforests issue, ie., tree-hugging...and that may be a big part of it, since it is so politically correct these days....BUT the difficulty in getting WIDE strips of fine veneers so that fewer strips are used in panels like K-horn fronts...AND the quality control hassles of dealing with vendors who make these panels up had to be a big part of that decision by the powers that be...even in managed rainforests, the diameter of these rainforest trees is constantly dwindling, which makes the boards from them narrower, and thus the veneers from those boards narrower....this in turn jacks up the price of wide veneer strips to astronomical costs...and when a speaker company is already charging a fortune to its customers for a k-horn, they have alot of difficulty explaining why it costs 50% or more over the cost of walnut to get rosewood!!!! This is NOT just a recent problem!!!! Therefore, be glad you have those rosewood k-horns and try to overlook the your veneer issue, because they havent been offered for some time now, and (unless some bigtime honcho in the company or one of his best friends wants some) they will likely NEVER be offered again.

Jeff, I was there from 76 to 83...here is what i remember about exotic woods from that time: Walnut...the vast majority of the NON decorator models of cornwalls were built out of walnut...probably about 80% of them. Most of them were oiled or clear laquered....probably more were laquered. Oak..of the remaining 20% of the NON decorator models, most 17-18%? were oak...some of these were stained dark but most were natural...and most were laquered, but some were oiled Other veneers...the most commonly built were of rosewood, next was a toss-up between ebony, mahoghany, and teak...for the teak, it was highly recommended that the finish be oil, since teak is such an oily wood and the laquer wanted to peel off over time as the wood wept its oil and lifted the laquer from the surface...the same went for rosewood and ebony, but these woods tended to hold the laquer much better. There were a few sets built up from a werid looking wood at one time...we called it rambling rose...there were two types...one was basically white/cream/pink and red alternating color...the other was white/cream/light purple and purple color...the colors swirled around all over the panels...looking like grain patterns, but not following the natural grain of the wood. We were told it was some kind of African wood that had been dyed...I never looked into it...and I personally thought they were butt-ugly...but we built a few pairs up anyway. I know for a fact we built a few K-horns in zebrawood...maybe a few Belles too...but am not sure if any heresys or cornwalls were built...hard to remember... I hope this helps some....you cant go wrong with rosewood cornwalls...not many were built and they were gorgeous...same for ebony...but the ebony was VERY dark. A number of employees bought rosewood K-horns and heresys...and a very few employees bought rosewood cornwalls. Matter of fact, few cornwalls were bought by the employees...they tended to upgrade from heresy to lascala, then to K-horn or belles....BUT a very few really nice rosewood and walnut cornwalls are out there...each built up with some custom touches such as no grille cloth on front and the fronts faced with the same veneer as the sides and top/bottom...they really looked nice that way in walnut or rosewood...i know of at least one pair that was made with "industrial metal grills" protecting the woofer cone...My own heresys have those too...same ones as on the stage monitor slant heresys...but the ones for the cornwalls were custom made for them because we didnt have anything being made that used them. I will take some pics of my heresys sometime and post em on this forum so you can see what a nice custom pair looks like....just birch decorator models...but very nice. If one can grab a pair of speakers built for former employees, then the pair is one of a kind. Most of these pairs had the owner's name stamped into the back edge just like the serial number...and the serial numbers were consecutive ending in either 00 and 01, or 99 and 00...employee's choice. Also, some of the backs were grain matched birch veneered and clear laquered...mine are...but i had all the plant employees sign mine with colored flair pens prior to the clear laquer being put on em...some of the employees liked this idea and did it too. STOP THINKING THAT!!!...YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL I AIN'T GONNA SELL EM!!!!!...LOL!

Re: my last posting... The plywood used the the tops and sides of the decorator models of cornwalls(CDBR or CDBL or CDBB) were standard Georgia Pacific cabinet grade birch plywood....the plys were 5 inner birch plys with two more outer veneer plys for a total of 7 plys. This plywood is still available today...about 50 bucks a 4'x 8' sheet give or take a few bucks. The fronts for these speakers (IF THE DROP-IN TYPE OF FRONTS) were made from a number of different woods...let me explain. 1. Since they were painted black, and were to be hidden by a grill cloth, sometimes panels of the lumber core were sawn up to make the fronts...these panels had defects in the veneers on them(such as bad color or stains on the walnut, oak, etc...)....although this seldom happened. 2. Some of the fronts were baltic birch in a thickness of near 3/4" (this is made in russia, and is metrically sized, and is also not necessarily consistent in thickness from pallet load to pallet load)...it has plys of equal thickness throughout and if i remember correctly it had 9 or 11 plys. It was heavier than standard american cabinet grade birch plywood, also stiffer...it was also very hard on sawblades and router bits...dulling them rapidly...BUT IT SURE MADE FOR SOME VERY CLEAN EDGED HOLES!!!! AND...at that time...it was less expensive that the cabinet grade birch...IT SURE ISN'T NOW!!!!! 3. Sometimes the fronts were made from the same 3/4" plywood as the sides, tops and bottoms.... 4. An interesting aside is that a VERY FEW drop-in front cornwalls made with walnut or another fine veneer had the fronts made from the same material as the sides...UNPAINTED...and with no provision for grill cloth to be mounted...so that the fronts remained bare with just the wood showing...these were generally CUSTOM BUILT for employees...and are by far the rarest of the bunch!!! The fronts for these were also custom cut to exact dimensions so that the fronts had a nice snug fit at the edges...really quite beautiful that way. Some of these Cornwalls ended up having a 3/8" motorboard with aluminum grating attached to it....installed inside the cabinet between the woofer and the front...this was to protect the woofer since no grill cloth was used...these are even rarer!!!! In 7 years there, I maybe built two pairs with the motorboards, and 5 pairs with the fine veneered fronts for employees...nuff said! Most employees never bought any cornwalls, but opted for heresy, lascala, Belle klipsch or K-horns instead...starting out with heresy, then after a year selling those and buying lascala, then after a year selling those and buying K-horns. This was a logical way to upgrade one's system, since employees were allowed to buy one pair of speakers per year, and paid 40% of MSRP for them...they could sell the heresys for about what it cost to buy lascalas....and then sell the lascalas for about what it cost to buy the K-horns. SELDOM DID AN EMPLOY NOT HAVE HIS OR HER SPEAKER CABINETS BUILT WITHOUT SOMETHING SPECIAL DONE TO THEM...keep that in mind. Also the serial numbers of these pairs were purposely consecutive ending in either 99 and 00 or in 00 and 01...in most instances...and most of the employees had their names stamped into the back edge of the speakers in the same manner as the serial numbers were stamped...so that if they ever got ripped off they would be easily identified.

Hey all... Ever get tired of lookiin the back of the lascala top end and seeing all that built-up filth sittin in there? Well...I have a solution to cut down on that build-up. It isnt expensive and it is fairly easy to do. 1. Measure your inside dimensions of the back opening for each speaker. 2. Cut out a piece of 1/4"--3/8" thick baltic birch or masonite to those dimensions MINUS about 1/8". 3. Take a jigsaw, router, or whatever and cut out the middle of this piece so that you end up with a frame about 3/4" wide all around. 4. Notch this frame near the middle along one of the LONG outside edges, making the notch big enough for your speaker wire to slip through....WITH it being just about 1/16" oversize in the notch to allow for the cloth thickness. 5. Now take some sandpaper and smooth off all the sharp edges, splinters, and corners. 6. Take some BREATHABLE cloth..preferably something like nylon stockings but alot thicker...and cut it so that it will cover the frame completely and wrap over the edges to the other side....then staple it onto the other side. 7. Take some velcro hook tape and attach it all around the perimeter of the frame on the side which you stapled the grill cloth. 8. take a few blocks of wood that are dimensioned 3/4" by 3/4" and attach them around the perimeter of the rear opening...insetting them in from the back edge of the opening to the thickness of the frame WITH its cloth AND velcro mounted...BE SURE to leave a space where the speaker wire exits the back. I would recommend predrilling the blocks and glueing them and screwing them into the inside of the cabinet....NOTE: the upper cross piece of the rear opening will require the block there to be attached either INTO the plys, or to lap from the INSIDE side of this piece...you will see what i mean. 9. Attach some self stick velcro loop to these blocks so that the loop faces to the rear...might be a good idea to staple them so they dont peel off at a later date. 10. Now...attach your "rear grill cloth" to the back of the cabinet. NOTE: It is imperative that the cloth breathes well, but that its porosity is very fine so that moisture can escape thru it but dust cant get thru it to the inside. That way the components stay nice and dry and relatively dust free. The velcro allows easy removal of the cloth panel so that you can easily access your components...or vacuum off the accumulated dust and cobwebs from the grillcloth...TRY IT, YOU'LL LIKE IT....BTW, a similar thing can be done to the BelleKlipsch and the K-Horn. Feel free to modify this as you see fit. REMEMBER...part of easy listening is ease of maintenance....ENJOY!! This message has been edited by HDBRbuilder on 04-17-2002 at 12:54 PM

Gil, The doghouse is set up on a BK the same as on a LaScala, but it is, as Al says, not as deep. It is also more difficult to build, because corner blocks are used inside of it, instead of it just being nailed together. This means clamping and then installing PRE-DRILLED corner blockes to the section at the front of the doghouse...pretty tricky compared to the lascala. The doghouse sections are the most difficult assemblies on these speakers, because the cabinet is built around them...if they arent built square, then the cabinet wont go together right. The front panel of the BK doghouse has no visible nail holes to the front, so that in itself necessitates the reinforcing interior corner blocks. When i was there, the reinforcing corner blocks in the doghouse were made of fir...ripped out of 2x4's...knot free. THe same for the interior corner blocks on the K-horn at the top and bottom of the front panel where the trapezoids mounted up to the front panel. Generally a builder of lascalas would complete his cabinets for the day and then begin building up the doghouses he needed to have for the next day with any time he had left over, but BK's were built up in pairs...the two doghouses first, then the first outer cabinet was built up using the first doghouse completed. Often the doghouse sections for one pair of BK's was built up while waiting for glue to dry on sections of the previous pair...it is important that the glue has set up completely on doghouses before using them to build the cabinet around...i am sure you understand. One of the reasons for the much higher cost of the BK over the lascala is assembly time...the main reason!!!!!...the other is the cost of materials...those veneered panels aint cheap!!! K&A no longer provides an option for customers to get rosewood or ebony, etc...in their K-horns, LaScalas, or heresys...tree-hugging entered the management, ie., rainforest woods dont get used anymore. That is sad, because there ARE managed forests that these woods come from, now...and BKs are gorgeous in rosewood!!!...so are k-horns!!!!

Capt'n Bob, I can imagine what a bear it is to remove the woofer from the top of a lascala...geez....and i intend to agree with you about that change to a bottom entry coming about due to the disco days...back then alot of these clowns at these clubs believed that if the speaker was big, then it absolutely HAD to have 1000 watts pushed thru it...and there were alot of fried woofers, etc. resulting from this insanity...which of course would require more user friendly opening into the doghouse to change out a woofer...by the way, am i just crazy or does it still seem that today's purported audiophiles(they call themselves speakerfreaks) havent realized that ya dont need a kazillion watts to blow the windows out of a room?...it seems that they dont understand effficiency in speakers any more than they understand that equalizers are to shape the speakers to the listening environment, NOT just a separate VOLUME CONTROL!!!some things never change...LOL! As for inverting a speaker on top of another one(in your case you talked about lascala), i mentioned in this forum on another thread that a pair of heresys inverted on top of cornwalls is pretty darned impressive too...LOL!...or even heresys on top of each other inverted...that is how i worked parties while in college...two heresys on each side, one inverted on the other....pushed by 90 watts rms...can sure "pump ya up" for rock'n'roll....LOL!

as for the running two speakers off the same line, i would assume that it would do nothing more than running two sets of speakers off a single amp section...ie, change the impedence...8-4...beat me with monster cable if i am wrong...LOL!

As for performance of the LaScala vs. the Belle Klipsch, they are almost identical...as for looks, I believe the BK to be absolutely gorgeous compared to the LaScala....as for cost difference, that is obvious, since the Belle is finely veneered, had lots of grille cloth, etc...leading to its higher price....as for the reason for popularity of the LaScala over the BK...it is obvious that cost is a major factor, but a LaScala also just looks meaner, and is more utilitarian...can you imagine setting up a pair of BKs outside for a patio party if you could use LaScalas instead?....BKs are more "fine furniture, and not as utilitarian...that and their cost gives the LaScalas the thumbs-up among many purchasers

Tom, While I was there I must have trained up 30 or so employees to build Heresys and/or Cornwalls. I can't remember the names of all of em, as you can imagine. We tended to have alot of turnover with our new employees during that time frame. When building HDBRs, I was most often doing it solo, but at times I had a helper installing the glue blocks in the back and the fronts to the glue blocks i had installed in the front edges (on drop-in front models). Later I would put them doing my part so that they had experience building them in case i took off for a day or so. This helper was also my partner in building cornwalls, normally a two-man operation, although it COULD be done by one person. As for the MS, it was probably one of our "transient" employees...most of whom i cant remember the names of...for obvious reasons. I will say one thing though, if the stamped in initials on Heresy D models or cornwalls are my "A" or "AB", Ronnie Barham's "RB", or Charlie Horn's "C" or "CH", then they were well-built cabinets. As for LaScalas, Ronnie and Charlie built alot of em, but the best ones were built by Jay Wheeling "J" or "JW". Lynn Stevenson built some of everything, including Belle Klipsch models until he became foreman over the cabinet shop...for awhile before him, Charlie Horn was foreman, then Ronnie, then Lynn. Their predecessor as foreman had been there for years and stepped down to become the BK builder...and he was a damned good builder...his name escapes me now, but i will remember it in a day or two...sorry. As for Inspectors on the label, if it says Gwin Cox, then they were well-inspected while she did the final assembly. She later began to test them in the testing booth, then moved up to become first assistant in final assembly/shipping dept. Judy also did a helluva job in final assembly and inspection. Bradford tested the finished speakers for most of the time i was there...but he wasnt the only one. As for the plywood used, we used Georgia Pacific cabinet grade 3/4" birch plywood(5 interior plys of BIRCH, with outer plys being thinner birch veneer...for a total of 7 plys) for the cabinet bodies...not 5/8". The drop in fronts started out as 3/4" birch, but soon became Baltic birch...a bit thinner than 3/4", but thicker than 5/8" due to its being a metric measurement(i think it had 11 equal thickness plys), and even then it was inconsistent from pallet to pallet load in its thickness...it was hell on the saw blades and router bits due to all the glue in it for each ply...dulled the hell outta the cutting edges real fast...LOL!...BUT made really smooth routed openings!!! The speaker backs were sometimes Georgia Pacific Birch "half-inch" and sometimes baltic birch "approximately half-inch". NOTE: We tried using poplar core plywood for awhile in the cabinet bodies, since it was somewhat cheaper than the birch core, but ran into problems with it "holding the glue" as well on the edges...also...there was a problem in the sanding department with it, since the poplar plys were more "pithy" than the outer birch veneers, it made getting a good clean FLAT edge on the open edges very difficult with the humidity of southwest arkansas involved in swelling up the inner plys of it. It also sucked up paint like a sponge, causing the painted ones to look funny...I am sure with your woodworking experience you know what I am talking about...LOL! Go with the birch core 3/4" plywood for the Lascalas, since that is what the originals used. You may have to go to a specialty lumber shop to get good stuff tho... from what i have seen most of our new-fangled home depot and lowe's type places either offer only the poplar core, or a lower grade of birch core than what i like to use. Consider this though...for just a few more bucks a sheet, you can get some mighty fine oak veneered birch core plywood from these specialty suppliers...in either a rotary cut veneer or a strip veneer with book-matched strips in it...if you go with this instead of the birch and can pick through the sheets to get some "consecutively veneered" ones that match each other...it would look really fine. just run a perimeter of oak "screen molding" around the front perimeter and tops to hide the visible open plys of it...OR you can holler at me sometime and i will tell you how some VERY custom versions were built utilizing alot more labor time, but totally eliminating any visible joinery and edge plys showing anywhered on the lascalas except the back of them. And consider cutting the side panels with the grain running vertically instead of horizontally...it looks alot better that way...have the top grain run left to right instead of front to rear...same for the folded woofer bottom....and leave the upper front (tweeter/Squawker motorboard) with left to right grain. As for your question about the front edge molding...you havent made it clear whether your heresys are "drop-in front" models or flush front models...anyway, here is the deal from what i can remember: the old style flush front models only had edge veneers showing on the front vertical edges, whereas the drop-in front models had edge veneers showing all around them at the front. Whenever we built flush front models that were requested with grill cloth, it was installed in final assembly using the raw grill cloth stapled to the front edges, and 3/4" wide "screen door" molding bradded over it along the front edges...this meant the grill cloth was permanently attached. I have seen some of the drop-in front models built at customers' requests with this same screen door molding mitered and installed on the front edges to hide the plys...and of course it would be no real hassle for a customer to do this mod himself, but that would still leave the veneer edges showing on top of the speaker cabinet...by the way...this molding over grill cloth was also installed on some lascalas at customer requests....i personally thought it was ugly as hell tho...LOL! I hope this answered yer questions...like i said...if you are a pretty accomplished woodworker, holler at me and we can discuss how to make a pair of "to die for" cabinets that have blind joinery with no edge plys showing anywhere except the rear of the lascala cabinets.

Big "D", I was there for 7 years and a few months, 76-83. In that time I saw maybe 10 pairs of HDBW(white) and a pair or two of white lascalas, but i never saw any KDBW's, although I had heard of them. As you probably can glean from a 7 year stretch and having seen NO white k-horns, they are likely EXTREMELY rare, but I doubt that adds very much actual value to them over any other Decorator model k-horn. The difficulty of coming up with a really good white paint job is obvious, especially since it required a special set-up in the paint department to shoot them white. In late 1976 the plant size was doubled, with the cabinet and sanding shops on one side and the paint and final assembly(and warehouse), and testing booth on the other side. A waterfall type of paint booth was installed at that time. Prior to that, it would have been necessary to shoot white speakers very early in the day so that overspray from all the sealer, clear laquer, and black laquer didnt have a chance of affecting the finish while wet. I am not sure if the white ones cost any more to the consumer, but i can guarantee one thing...they definitely SHOULD HAVE, since it created such a hassle to paint them that color. Remember, they had to be sealed with a white sealer, then shot with white laquer...with a significant drying time and a light sanding needed between the two coats. I would imagine the sealer was shot after hours in an overtime situation, and the light sanding and final coat was shot the next morning BEFORE regular work hours in another overtime situation...or maybe on a saturday when other painting wasnt being done...in order to cut down on the hassle involved. Either way, even though KDBW's would likely be a bit more valuable than KDBB's, they could never approach the value of some nice rosewood or ebony k-horns...my opinion.

Wes, When I was building heresys, I had saved back a few really nice sets of parts for cabinets...for employees who may want some built up. I was intending to build up a pair for myself after we got our 4th quarter bonus due in late january (in those days there was a quarterly bonus paid out to employees, often exceeding the wages earned in that particular quarter). I had narrowed down the cabinet parts to two sets and I was having difficulty deciding whether to go with a flame-looking set in various shades blonde to light brown color...or to go with a set of parts with almost every imaginable color swirling around all over...green, red, blonde, purple, red, you name it...absolutely gorgeous wood...BUT it was also something that just wouldnt necessarily go with any other fruniture in a room...LOL! Anyway, one of the gals in final assembly was wanting to get a pair built up for a Christmas present to herself...I told her to come over and pick out her parts from what i saved up...of course, she picked the multicolored ones, which left me with the flame looking set for my own. after they were built up for her and finished, she found out she had a problem...she had no place to pu8t them in her apartment where they could be on the floor without being blocked by furniture. So, i built up some shelves for them...these shelves were basically shaped like a baseball home plate so that they would fit into a corner, and were angled downward about 20 degrees off vertical(so that they would fire directly toward the center of the listening environment) with a lip at the front to keep the speakers from sliding off. We also had to use something to keep them from toppling off these shelves, so we screwed eye-screws into predrilled holes in the center of the back edge of each speaker BOTTOM, the speakers sittin on the shelves UPSIDE DOWN, with eye-screws in the corner of the ceiling behind them...and a section of chain connecting the eyescrews. I hope you are picturing this...LOL! the shelves were lined with green felt so as not to scratch the laquer finish of the tops when they were placed upside down on them. Needless to say, this placement created awesome sound, utilizing the CEILING as a conductor of the resonance, instead of the floor. The house was an old one with high ceilings...10-11 feet high...and was perfect for this application. the small holes this necessitated in the rear edge of the speakers was no big deal and didnt lessen the appearance at all. She loved it!!!! I have often wondered what a listening environment with a couple of, for instance, k-horns down below supported by some INVERTED AND DOWNWARDLY ANGLED heresys high above would sound like...or....maybe some cornwalls below with inverted heresys above? What do you think? You never know til ya try it...LOL! By the way...PWK often recommended inverted ceiling mounting K-horns as an alternative to floor mounting them if the ceiling was of similar acoustic quality and the floor space wasnt available...I have seen this set up in high ceilinged night clubs and it is not only great sounding, but it keeps the patrons from messing with the k-horns. There used to be a club many years ago in Little Rock that had a set-up like this and it was great!!! The key is to have the downward angle and the vertical angle right for non k-horn speakers...with the K-horns it wont make any difference since they would be inverted up tight into the corners.

Wes, As for the placement of the pie slice logos, the company always put them on the upper right hand corner as your cornwalls show. Some dont realize that for heresy and cornwall speakers not decorator models, the veneered panels were not matched up for pairs at the building stage of the cabinet, but rather at final assembly stage, after the cabinets were finished and components were being installed, therefore...since there was no guarantee of speakers being matched until that point, IF EVEN THEN!!!, all the grill cloth panels received the same logo positioning treatment. Mine were custom built by me at the plant and the panels were book-matched, so i decided to place the logos on opposite sides up top to follow the bookmatch format. An interesting aside is that the logos you have on your heresys are SOMETIMES actually between the tweeter and squawker instead of above the tweeter as in yours...the format was standardized shortly after the changeover of logos. By the way...try this sometime...put a soft towel or something on top of your cornwalls and turn your heresys upside down on top of the cornwalls...this is how i often saw pairs of heresys or cornwalls set up in homes of employees in those days...just give it a try...it will look funny with those slant risers up in the air, but that is the price one pays for having the risers screwed to the bottom of the cabinet...LOL! For risers for heresys, we used to just take a pair of cut-outs from cornwall woofer holes and make the equivalent of a small framework between them so that they could sit on top and not have to have factory risers screwed into the cabinet bottoms...that way we could use them upright or upside down for out set-ups. we never paid for risers for our speakers since we could make these for free...LOL!

Gil, Yep, those drawings are of the LB-76...some of those built were textured black finish, and some were fiberglass with metal edge and corner trim...I am sure that we were testing them prior to 78, but not quite sure when they first became available to the employees for loan on weekends...likely around 79...they sounded great too....a mere 10 watt car tape deck would punch out some serious dbs from em. If I recollect correctly, none of those we had available to us had the wings attached, but I DO remember seeing a pair or two with the wings. Also...I think they were punched by heresy parts...not sure on the crossover. One pair was even a split design like the split lascalas...with separate high end and woofer sections for ease of transport. As for Gillum designing the lascala with heavy input from PWK...that was what i was always told when i worked there...but that could be wrong...(between you and me, i believe it is right tho...gillum was still just a "wet behind the ears ex-science teacher at the time working as an 'engineer's apprentice' under PWK...and with all the input PWK had into the design, I am sure he got the credit for it). John, The LB-76 was narrower and not as deep a cabinet as the lascala...depth was close to BK depth...height was maybe a couple or so inches shorter than lascala. Again...not sure on which midrange horn was utilized, could be either heresy, cornwall, or BK...but i dont think it was a specially built horn. As for patent date...I am sure we were testing these a year or so before the patent date. And they would make a great rear speaker for k-horns or whatever. Tom, Why not just build the "scalawags" using parts from sale online or the company, and save the "hearsays" for rear channel speakers? Another point is those little midrange horn suports are pretty easy to make from a common angled shelf bracket found at home supply stores...a helluva lot easier to make than scalawag cabinets..HA HA! One more point here...ACOUSTICALLY speaking, MDF would be a better medium for scalawag construction due to its consistent density(ie, no voids in interior plys, etc)...BUT standard BIRCH CORE (NOT poplar core) 3/4" cabinet plywood is alot easier to build with...and alot more resistent to moisture...not to mention that it isnt as loaded with volatile chemicals that could weep out in gaseous form and separate the veneer skin from the substrate mdf...go with the plywood!!!!

I stand corected...more or less...the BK and the LaScala utilized the K33E woofer for most of the time i was there. In perusing through some old photographs, I saw that and the spec sheets for that era stated that also. I may have been confusing the K33E with the experimental models we built up. In those the Heresy woofer was ustilzed and in a few we used a large aluminum alloy framed 12" woofer, but that was not long before i left the company, and I can not be sure that design was ever adopted. One thing I am sure of though, is that the crossover networks were slightly changed or adjusted sometime around 1979-81, partly due to one of the engineers being a horn pllayer...he felt there needed to be more presence in the midrange...whereas my personal opinion was that they should have left the crossover alone because it sounded worse to my ears...anyway...i dont know whetehre they changed back to the earlier adjustments or not...i have it on good authority that the current lascalas are leaning more heavily toward the bass bottom end nowadays due to the current popularity of rap...but that can easily be adjusted out. One question i DO have is why take the guts out of good lascalas to install in K-horn cabinets when the guts can be bought for the k-horn cabinets?...just wondered...plus...if i was gonna go to the effort to build a pair of lascalas for the home, and i didnt intend to finish them so that they could be hauled outside for patio parties, then I would go with building Belles instead...they are much more beautiful...but i have to admit...they are a BEAR to build!!!!

Fini, I started working at K&A in July 1976...left in september of 1983. For the first 6 months or so, i was relegated to parts...finally settling into the overhead router as a more or less permanent position...routing out the "holes" in heresy, cornwall, BelleKlipsch, LaScala, and K-horn parts...for the drivers/horns in the fronts and also for the motorboards for the folded horns. In addition to these duties, I began to build Heresy HD models (birch cabinets) and then Cornwalls of both the CD and fine veneered series' (CDBR, CDBL, CWO/CWL, COO/COL, etc.) At first the decorator series of both of these speakers used an overlapping butt joint construction system...the fronts were nailed(5 nails each for heresy) to the tops and bottoms, and then the sides were attached, lapping both the front and the tops and bottoms(4 or 5 nails at each joint)...blocks were stapled into the back edges of the speaker for the back to be screwed to...the corners of these blocks were sealed with caulk. Similarly the CD cornwalls were built, except they had to have a block on each side added on the blootm of the sides inside to support the "shelf" port, which was stapled to them. White glue was utilized throughout this construction on these models. Fasteners were duofast 1-1/8th staples, and senco 1-1/2" finishing nails. Safeties were removed from these guns and the tips buffed on a wire wheel so that there would be no scratches when dragging the senco nail gun across the surface while nailing...made for some interesting times when the foreman wasnt around...since the nailguns could be fired full automatic if they were set up right...LOL!...nothing like a bunch of kids with automatic nail guns and safety glasses donned having a war...LOL!...oh...my misspent youth!!!! Sometime around winter 1977-78, the HD Heresy and CD cornwall cabinets were redesigned so that "drop-in" fronts were utilized, as on the mitered cabinet types of the fine veneered heresy and cornwall models. This was due to a number of reasons, but probably mostly to consistency of parts, allowing one set of fronts to be used on both decorator and mitered cabinets...thereby allowing parts interchangeability between the different models and cutting down on saw set-up times. Now the CD and HD models were assembled with butt joints overlapping the sides to the tops and bottoms, BUT the addition of a set of inset glue blocks to the inside front edges of the cabinets to have something to attach the "drop-in" fronts to. These fronts were pre-painted black prior to installation. After the front blocks were caulked at their corners, the fronts were dropped in onto the glued blocks, and (normally) pulled to the top, the gap on either side "eyeballed" even, and the top/front edge stapled in, then ditto the bottom, then each side..this was in order to produce a not-out-of-square cabinet...then of course the back blocks were installed...and the cabinet was off to the sanding room. As for the mitered fine veneered models, both the heresy and cornwall sides, top, and bottom were originally assembled using two sets of chains with sliding cast iron corner clamps on the chains and a screw-type binder. the chains were laid out one outside of the other, the mitered edges were glued up with brown glue, and the sides, top and bottom were set up back edge down while the first clamp set was attached, then completely flipped over so that the other chain clamp could be attached to the front edge while it sat on the table, but this clamp wasnt tightened as much...the entire thing was again flipped over and a mallet used to line up the front edges at the corners, before tightening up the front clamp assembly...the cabinet in its clamps was then set upright, and a mallet used to "knock the bow" of the panels out so that a nice clean mitered edge was accomplished...next came the interior reinforcing corner glue blocks...stapled in with duofast 1-1/8th staples then the front and rear glue blocks (and in the case of the cornwall, the shelf supports. The fronts were attached as above mentioned, and the cabinet was sent to sanding dept. Again...in the case of the cornwall, front was stapled to the shelf (sometimes nailed, but usually stapled. With the exception of the mitered edges using brown glue, the rest of the parts were glued up with white glue. Around 1979 new equipment was installed where the mitered heresy was assembled, negating the chain clamps and vastly increasing output...a pneumatic box clamp machine that rotated allowing ease of glue block installation...but the cornwalls remained being assembled using the chains. Generally, anytime a mitered fine veneered speaker was being assembled, if there were any minor loose chips in the veneer, they were glued back into place using a very strong glue...much stronger than the original veneer glue. Often a fine veneered cabinet would get a scratch into its veneer or had some pith wood showing in the veneer(like that cream color wood sometimes seen on walnut veneer)...and the speaker cabinets would be laquered black and sold as a decorator model...ie., CDBL or HDBL...when in reality it was not originally intended to be a decorator model...there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with these cabinets...but it can create confusion among owners now over whether the speakers were later painted black by some idiot owner...LOL! My own Heresy models are the earlier decorator cabinet design...HDBL...but i have industrial motorboards(like those found in the heresy stage monitors) mounted inside for the woofers(flat black metal grating in front of the woofer) to protect it, and no grill cloth...I built these after the changeover to the newer type cabinet from perfectly matched grain parts i had saved back for this purpose...really some awesome cabinets. when you worked there, the builders would start saving back parts for whatever model you intended to buy so that you would have some really beautiful cabinets...such is the way of life...HA HA!! When the company changed over to drop in fronts on all models they also changed the logo mounted onto the speakers...mine have the older "pie slice" logo....and since mine are built as exact book matches of each other, the logos are on opposite sides of the speaker. Even the backs are exact matches and i had them clear laquered also, but after having everybody in the plant sign them with different colored flair pens...a trend I started and may others emulated. The main point here is that if one is able to get his or her hands on a pair of speakers built for an employee of the company at the time, they will be custom items...most likely one of a kind pair..with beautiful cabinets and possibly a touch of flair in them in one way or the other. As for some of these wierdnesses that occassionally crop up as Klipsch speakers...I may have a possible explanation... I personally know of three sets of miniature K-horns built by employees while they worked there...klipsch logos and all...and numerous miniature lascalas, cornwalls, and heresys were built also...I even built a few pair...before the management put a stop to it. Most of these speakers were used in automobiles or as bookshelf models by their builders...but here is the catch...in most cases the drivers used in these were more or less an acoustical match for the larger drivers found in the full sized speakers...let me explain: In those days, almost every driver manufacturer in the world was sending examples to Klipsch to be tested in their anechoic chamber...and these were freebies...normally all you had to do was ask to get em or pay a very small fee. Whenever somebody would talk about building a downsized version of a Klipsch speaker they would ask about smaller drivers that were close acoustical matches for the larger versions and this was determined by the testing in the anechoic chamber of the raw drivers...therefore, these smaller scale speakers, although generally not as effecient, gave similar acoustical performance at lower decibel yield, and in the case of miniature folded horn versions, the drop off of bottom end directly corresponded to the respective diminished size of the folded horn...this was very interesting to me...a half-scale K-horn i know of (actually about 1/4 size) performed very nearly like a heresy...cool, huh? I will take some pics of my heresys sometime and put it on here...most of my equipment is old but good stuff, with the exception of my cd player. My heresys have never been pushed over 90 watts rms...and generally are pushed at 32 watts rms. I have a HarmonKardon 900+ 4-channel receiver, Technics RS-676AUS cassette deck, Technics SL1300 turntable, Teac A2340-R 4 channel reel to reel going into a DBX II model 124 4 channel noise reduction unit and two soundcraftsmen 20-12A equalizers. The Harmon Kardon has a setting called enhanced stereo that produces 4-channel surround sound to die for!!!! Pretty good to be using 1975 equipment to listen to DVDs on today!!!!LOL!

I have read with amusement some of the things posted after my reply...fact is...that the LaScala has flip-flopped between being driven by a 15" or 12" woofer over the years...my statement that it wsas driven by a 12" woofer at the time i worked there stands...one of my friends currently works there and told me that they went back to a 15" woofer in it...what will be will be...LOL!...anyway, the actual driver that pushes the K-horn, LaScala, Cornwall, and Heresy horns was the same one when i worked there...the difference was in the horn sizes, NOT in the driver powering them...and of course the crossover networks utilized. Of course, another thing to ponder is that the LaScala was never designed by PWK, but designed by Gary Gillum with input from PWK in response to a need by Winthrop Rockefeller for a Klipsch speaker that could be used on a flatbed trailer when he stumped the state of Arkansas while running for governor...thus was born the LaScala...and later PWK took the LaScala and redesigned it himself to come up with the Belle Klipsch..named after his late first wife. Nuff said on that subject, except that Gary Gillum got his inspiration for this speaker design from an old RCA theater speaker behind the screen at the old Hope movie theater...this design also resulted in the later inspiration for the MCM1900 folded horn woofer. Although the inspiration came from this old RCA speaker...the design was clearly a new one that resulted in both of these speakers. An interesting aside was the development of the LB-76 model...which basically was half of the LaScala horn turned up on its side, with the heresy midrange horn unit horizontally mounted over it and the tweeter vertically mounted at the end of the side of the midrange horn. This development came about in an attempt to produce a speaker with similar response of the LaScala, but with a smaller size and weight allowing roadies to more easily maneuver it around for stage applications. The LB-76 was also intended to be produced at less cost, since it required fewer materials...but...alas...the complicity of its design actually required it to use many more man-hours in construction, and negated any possibility of its being profitable so the design was scarpped...about 6 pairs were built...and we employees of that era delighted in borrowing them for weekends to the local swimming holes for parties and such....bye the way...the LB stood for "little bastard" because it was so difficult to build...LOL!

Cornwall cabinets with fine veneers were glued up with 45 degree miter joints using lumber core(poplar), whereas those of the decorator series used 9 ply birch core cabinet grade birch butt jointed at the corners, and nailed. Both of these cabinet types had glued and stapled in corner blocks as reinforcement. the "shelf" for porting was supported by blocks and glued and stapled to them. It is true that the grain of the motorboard can either be horizontal or vertical...although most are vertically grained...this was an economy measure to get the most usage from each sheet of plywood cut up for parts. Although the most commonly used FINE veneers on cornwalls were black walnut, many were made in oak...and some were made in rosewood, ebony, and some other exotic veneers. the letters found stamped into (normally) the upper left rear edge were the code for the builder...this was for quality control purposes in order to track the cabinet baqck to the builder...which was normally me from 1977-1983...look for either an "A" or an "AB". the fasteners used were duofast 1-1/8th" staples and the nails used on the decorater series were senco 1-1/2" finishing nails. The interior corner glue blocks were 3/4"x3/4" sawn up from scrap and may be either lumber core or birch plywood...i always preferred the plywood myself.

the "RB" you found stamped in the upper rear side edge of your cornwalls is the builder code used in quality control of that era...your builder was Ronnie Barhams...he was the one who trained me to build them...my code was originally "A", but later became "AB"....if the cornwalls were built between 77 and late 83...i probably built them(along with almost every birch heresy...and quite a few veneered heresys). Your cornwalls are either CWO or CWL models...cornwall, walnut, oiled or laquered...you need to clean up the side and top veneer, and replace the front walnut veneer and you should have some very fine speakers...use some of that iron-on veneer found at home depot or lowe's. It works just fine. Remember not to push the speakers over 100 watts RMS...they dont need that much power anyway unless you need new window glass in your home...HA HA!!!

As a former employee of K&A from 1976 to 1983...I feel some clarification for this project is in order. First, the bottom of La Scala loudspeakers (at least when i worked there) was two thicknesses of birch core 3/4" plywood thick...the bottom piece being attached with SCREWS to the upper piece. This was done so that the bottom piece could be removed easily in order to access the 12 inch woofer installed in the folded horn section...when it is removed it will be obvious to you. Second, the Klipshorn was fired by a 15 inch woofer, NOT by the 12 inch woofer the LaScala utilized, although the same 15" woofer used in the Cornwalls of that time were used in the Klipshorns, and the same 12 inch woofer used in the LaScala, was used in the BelleKlipsch(of course), and in the Heresy. These woofers were manufactured by Eminence Speaker Company to Klipsch specs. Third, the midrange HORNS of the Klipshorn are considerably larger than those of the La Scala, even though the DRIVERS used were the same on either horn. These midrange DRIVERS were manufactured by CETEC to Klipsch specs. Fourth, the access door to the Klipwshorn for the woofer is on the side of the folded horn and is a screwed-on weather-stripped "door" panel...removing this panel allows access to the 15 inch woofer inside the folded horn enclosure. Fifth, the same tweeter was utilized for the Heresy, Cornwall, LaScala, BelleKlipsch, and Klipschorn, and was a cobalt magnet driven Electrovoice model. Sixth, the Klipschorn woofer FRONTS were made of lumber cored veneered 3/4" furniture plywood for all but the birch models, which used birch core 3/4" cabinet grade plywood. Wherever 3/4" plywood was found in the Klipschorn, it was birch core cabinet grade plywood....but any 1/2" plywood used was baltic birch(which isn't actually 1/2", but sized close to it) Now we come to the crossover network....and for that you will have to find out on your own...many changes were made over the years. Hope this was some help...by the way...for almost 7 years I built virtually all the birch heresy's, the vast majority of ALL the cornwalls, and quite a few of the MCM1900 theater/concert systems.