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HDBRbuilder

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Everything posted by HDBRbuilder

  1. Just google "poplar lumber-core plywood" pics...and you will know what you have...too easy, right?
  2. Deronda did the final assembly on those....meaning she was the one who installed all the components inside of them, then sealed the double=chjecked her work before installing the rear cabinet panel. Mr. Bradford tested them in the testing booth using frequency sweeps! which he compared with what they were supposed to be, using a saved record of the correct frequency response in those sweeps. Mr. Bradford also was listening for any air leaks from the cabinet when he did that!
  3. The Klipsch K77 tweeter was actually basiically just the Electrovoice T-35 tweeter, but the spec requirements for Klipsch use were more stringent than those of for the Electrovoice T35 itself. IOW, Klpisch wanted to get a slightly better version of the T-35 for its own use. For a very long time of its history, Klipsch out-sourced its tweeters, its mid-range compression drivers and its woofers...only using its own Klipsch mid-range horn lenses...the crossover networks were built by Klipsch, though. Part of the genius of PWK was that the cfompanmyh coouild use the same tweeter and mid-range compression driver in all of its offerings at the time, and the same woofer in everything but the Heresy, which used the smaller 12-inch woofer. This allowed for potentially lower per-unit costs for these items, through higher volume purchases of the same items because the Klipsch models shared the same electrical components in most cases. It is really a testament to a genius in the purchasing side of the business equation....even though PWK would never say that himself! PWK would often say, he wasn't much of a businessman, just a hobbyist tinkering around, designing and building speakers to sell so that he could afford to pursue his hobby full-time. The truth doesn't actually line-up with PWK's own purported opinion of himself, IMHO! For your statemement of this: "Initially with the LPs it seemed to me that I seemed to have abigger noise but then I realized that it is due to the greater sound pressure that makes the rustling sound emerge and therefore it is enough to recalibrate the volume knob." I assume you are referring to the apparent GAIN in background "hiss" sometimes found on records prior to, or between songs If that is the case, then you are actually experiencing an amplifier-induced signal gain, simply because the amp cannot find any sound to amplify...so it "tries to amplify harder"...which is common with high efficiency speakers being used, but more pronounced due to the horn-loading of the Klipsch speakers in the mid-to-high frequency ranges. But you should also have noticed that once the next soundtrack begins, that affect just disappears....until the song ends.
  4. THe initials won't just jump out at you...you actually have to look for them. facing the rear of the speaker cabinet, look at the rear edge of the side panel to your left...about one inch beloow the top of that panel. You should see two individual sets of two-letters one set above the other. IOne set may have filled wuith wood puty prior to ethe sanduing of the rear edges in the sanding room...then that set of letters may be filled with wood putty or be much fainter to make out due to its having been sanded. That set or single letter will be the builder code The other set will normally have no putty in it, and will normally be more prominent in its depth. since it was stamped-into the edge after the sander was finished. If you see the letter "A" at all, then I built them! I was the only builder who had ever had "A" for a code up through about the 4th quarter of 1983, when I left Klipsch. If you can take pics of the letters there, I can probably also tell you who the sander was for those speakers! I was the primary builder of the birch plywood Heresy speakers AND all of the Cornwalls from late 1976 thru the time I left the company...so it is very highly likely that you will find the letter "A" on your speakers. If you do not, then they were built on a day I took off from work or was on vacation, most likely. For birch plywood Heresys, I often built solo...which means I had no helper...so you very well may find just a single letter "A" in stead of a pair of letters for the builder code. When working solo, I could often build 100 or more Heresy's in a day solo, but normally averaged upwards of 80 to around 100. With a helper, the daily tally would be between 100 and up to 140+ Heresys a day. Which kinda should tell you that having a helper wasn't really having much help for the time it took to build birch Heresys. The primary builder was always doing most of the work, if not all of it, since the helper tended to fall behind, and the primary builder had to help him(or her) get caught-up! When the Cornwall worktable wasn't in use, many more Heresys COULD HAVE BEEN BUILT in a day with two solo workers both building...but my suggestion for that was pretty much ignored by the cabinet-shop foreman! It is what it...was!
  5. Tweeter is also Alnico from the pics. Builders just build the cabinets...final assembly installs the electricals. There is always a chance that tweeters and other drivers or woofers have been replaced over the years, also...some with parts from previous years than when the speaker was shipped.
  6. HMMMM...11/12/76....that is around the time...or just after the time, that I started build Cornwalls. So I MAY have built these...if they had 1977 serial numbers...I MOSTLY LIKELY would have been the builder, though! When these were built, I was building half of all the Cornwalls that went to the sanding room...by the time January 1977 came around I was building MOST of the Cornwalls except for a very few. I was hired in early July 1976...and assigned in the cabinet shop of the plant, but for my first four or so weeks was getting the new building ready to move into...the building was completed, but it took those few weeks to finish the steps necessary to spray down concrete sealer and then to actually spray the areas which had been readied, . WITH the sealer After that brsin-cell-murder experience, I was working in the cabinet shop, itself...by October I was already building completed cabinets...first Heresys, then Cornwalls were added to my rapidly growing list of things which I was assigned to do.
  7. In 1980, I was the primary builder of all the Cornwall cabinets...unless I was on vacation or took a day off, I was likely the lead builder of these, along with having a helper. Your tweeters should be the K77M (NOT alnico magnet!)!)...your mid-range compression driver should be the K55V (IS alnico magnet)) and your woofers should be K33 (NOT alnico magnets) The crossover network should be a "B" network. If I remember correctly we were still using the K55V mid-range driver for all of 1980 builds. The "not alnico" magnets (your tweeter and woofer magnets) would have been made from a ferrous mud slurry, compressed and baked to become a square ferrite magnet. Early on we had a few quality control issues with these ferrous-magneted drivers...but that was quickly turned around! So your drivers should be good to go. Whomever replaced the voice-coil dust cover did a really ugly job of it, and it appears it was not even the correct dustcover for that particular woofer. Having really "white-appearance" on those woofer cones MOST LIKELY means that those cones were heavily exposed to direct sunlight for a number of years....meaning they spent lots of time with their grille-cloth panels removed. From what I can tell, the cabinets look pretty good for their age, though! They are CB-R models, I guess, unless the birch plywood was stained walnut at the factory.
  8. Not really...I prefer bare wire connections, myself...just remove them, clean them up good and get any crud off of them and clean up the machine screw threads and threaded inserts... on them! Replace the connectors, Hook up all the wires, tighten all the screws snugly, and it's rock'n'roll time! I don'lt get hung up on all the cable and terminal yakkety-yak very much, mostly because I know that each and every additional connection (can you say SPLICE???) causes more loss of signal energy getting from point A to point B, due to resistance created from "splicing". It is what it is! Each additional transition along the line also acts as a splice, resistance-wise! Any electrician can tell ya that! GOLD-PLATED fancy connectors at wired ends or not! The addition of them equals at least one additional "splice" in the line! Since they are so old, I would suggest cleaning up all the wired connections everywhere...at crossovers, and also at drivers if not soldered! Get rid of all of that electrical resistance that has accumulated over the years! It DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE! Check your network can-style capacitors for leakage before firing them up! If any are leaking they all need to be replaced first FOR SURE!
  9. Sorry, Wrong on both accounts. The finely-veneered panels on YOURS are ACTUALLY poplar-lumber-core-plywood, finely-veneered on one side, and birch veneered on the other...which was also delivered with fine-veneer edge-banding already attached where edges are visible from the front of the speakers when properly installed into room corners.so are the top-hat side panels and the bass bin front panel. The bottom panel of the bass bin will be approximately 1/2" thick Baltic Birch plywood, because it was assembled separately as a bass bin "wing assembly", originally! IIRC, Your K-horns will also ONLY have three SOLID wood pieces in each bass bin! One will be the "splitter" which is mounted to the inside of the front panel of the bass bin, opposite from the compression slot of the woofer motor-board...the other two will be reinforcing blocks for POSITIVE-LONG-TERM-construction assembly for the upper and lower "wing assemblies" which make up portions of the two rearward-bends of the bifurcated Bass horn lens....you can see all of these three solid wood pieces if you open the woofer access door...and look upwards , then downwards to find the pair of reinforcement blocks...then remove the woofer and look thru the compression slot of its motor-board and you will see the "splitter" in front of it...mounted to the bass bin front panel's back side. . Trust me, they will al be there, as mentioned, I outta know! I fabricated all of them during that time era method of K-horn production! Other than those three items, everything else "wooden" in your K-horns is either poplar-lumber-core plywood, Baltic birch plywood, OR cabinet-grade custom-ordered 3/4 inch birch plywood. Anything else is one of two types oi glue, or a mixture of the metal stuff: screws, finishing-nails, staples, and T-nuts. EDIT: Sorry, I forgot!....I left out two more solid wood pine or fir pieces of 2/4 lumber per K-horn...they are at each end of the top-hat H/F motor-board...just look into the rear of the top-hat and you can see them...one on your left, the other to your right...with grill cloth wrapped around them and then stapled to them.
  10. OR, just wipe off the dust so that you can find the one marked in RED for POSITIVE...which APPEARS to be the right one!
  11. Well...I kinda figure that I had it...but I had absolutely no idea what it was at the time because not enough info was available about the symptoms specific to having it! Such is the way of life! I still can't taste what I eat worth a damn! And my olfactory senses are still a bit screwed up....but my lungs seem to be OK...except for all the cigarettes I have been smoking (about twice as many as NORMAL for me!) while sittin' on my arse hiding from something I probably am already immune to! The GOOD thing is that the Doc I saw there in the Philippines for TWO things, one a staff infection in my leg and the other the pneumonia symptoms...prescribed the Z-pack for the pneumonia symptoms...which probably saved my life! Here is my risk category info, in case any of you wanna know: 67 year old smoker, on DEFINITELY-needed CPAP machine at night...taking two blood pressure meds, along with Metformin for pre-diabetes issues...and additionally taking a baby aspirin for a blood thinner to keep my heart working, and I guess my taking Potassium citrate (Urocit-K) to help rid my body of excessive uric acid (for uric-acid-kidney-stone preventative and gout preventative) might figure into the equation...so I kinda THINK that my "risk category" is pretty damned high...LOL! BTW the "pneumonia" I had was the worst case I ever had...gelatinous crap, too! I took the pneumonia vaccine a few years back and it didn't help me much (if any!) this time around! I was clearing up pretty good before I left to return stateside, though, and hadn't been feverish in a half a month at the time...I took the last of the Z-pac a few days before I returned! But even after I got home...it was over two months before my lungs seemed to be "normal" again (for a 2+ pack a day cigarette smoker!). The crazy thing about this FOR ME, is the guilt trip I have had about most likely exposing my wife and every member of her extended family to the virus...because we were ALL THERE together every damned day...the entire clan! Her youngest brother was having his church wedding, so EVERYBODY WAS AROUND ME...for between 5 and 30 days! (depending on how many days they could stay there!), when I was the sickest they were ALL: being exposed! But...so far...none of them have been sick from that it seems! NONE OF THEM!! And they SHOULD HAVE BEEN, in my mind, anyway!! Thank God for THAT!
  12. Since I am just too lazy to read every damned post in this super-long thread, where I MIGHT just find this answer, my Question IS: Has anybody on the forum actually HAD the COVID-19 virus, yet? Because I think I had it!...way back in December! And if what I had WAS IT, then my case almost killed my arse! I dunno about the rest of you, but, for myself, when I get to the point of praying "OK, Lord, either kill me or cure me, but I need some relief from this crap, one way or another!"...my arse is in a world of hurt! I will be getting the anti-body blood serum test next week! Then I will know for sure! EDIT: Just for a little context and to keep everybody from thinking I'm nutso...I was in the Philippines at the time (arrived there 13 Dec, departed on Jan 12!), and surrounded by hundreds of Chinese and Korean tourists every day there!...many of those tourists were wearing masks. too! A couple of days after I left some sick Chinese tourists went to the hospital there, and got tested for it, but returned to China before the test results came in...both positive! So...if you have doubts about my possible exposure...now you know!
  13. That means he installed the drivers, horns and networks...prior to them being tested and then boxed up for shipment.
  14. Actually, PWK was just "released from active duty" shortly after WWII ended....he remained an Army Reserve officer in an "active drilling status" for a number of years after his release from active duty at the end of WWII...eventually retiring from the Army Reserve with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel....although I have no idea when his actual retirement date was...probably at age 60, but he most likely applied for the retired reserves prior to that age, once he had accumulated the requisite number of "good years towards his twenty" which made him eligible for retirement pay and benefits at age 60. By having himself transferred to the retired reserves until he reached age 60, his retirement pay would have been more for him because it would have been based upon the pay rate for his pay-grade at age 60 instead of what that pay would have been if he had chosen to fully retire out of the reserves prior to his 60th birthday.
  15. When I told PWK that I had a quad system, he told me that the three speaker stereo array is really all one needs, but if somebody really wants to buy four of his speakers for quad he would be happy to sell them four! He DID recommend to me to add a front center speaker for use, though...especially for whenever playing back stereo source material. As for how it would be set up with a center channel front and rear....it depends on what equipment you are using to amplify the signal to the speakers! Center channels are basically just both left and right channel signals going into one center speaker...unless the SOURCE was originally recorded in three channels! When they set up that TASCAM tape deck in the company listeining room, that is how they did it on the R2R....three separate channels, IIRC! There was a special demo tape made that way...it had lots of stuff on it...including parts of Michael Jackson's "Thriller"! JRH was involved in setting that up...so he should be able to tell you more about it! It was a specific three-channel recording...being played back thru only three of the four channels on that Tascam deck!...also that recording was DBX encoded.
  16. PWK had a Lascala as a center channel speaker between his K-horns for awhile, until he designed the Belle to replace it. Belle's Low WAF of the LaScala in her living room is WHAT got PWK to design the Belle in the first place!
  17. Those sirens were the emergency response vehicles running to where the damage started and such. The ONLY reported injuries (no deaths!!) wee 6 minor ones...all day Sunday people were out as volunteers cleaning things up...many were out today, too! Once that initial rope funnel touched down, in under a minute the entire thing started to join it...within another minute or so it was HUGE! Without the current "stay at home" COVID-19 rules in effect, it would have been a total disaster in most places the tornado hit...5PM on Saturdays NORMALLY has massive amounts of traffic on the main roads and all the restaurants are getting filled to capacity. Luckily the restaurants it destroyed were unoccupied...as was almost all of the mall! This is the first case I know of where the virus epidemic likely actually SAVED LIVES!. Almost no traffic, restaurants closed...mall all but empty, college had shut down and no college kids in town to speak of, etc.! Something kinda interesting is this sign which was damaged as the tornado blew past the Goodwill store about a block or so off of the funnel route. Pic was taken just after dark on Saturday. Read into it what you want, but it sure got MY attention! And thee was something else that got my attention, too! Both of these were on the same street within three blocks of where the tornado originally touched down...Caraway Road! Second pic was taken Sunday morning! Both could easily be seen while driving along Caraway Road, too! Actually...they were just too hard NOT to see!
  18. Well. it has been overcast all day today here, with a few sprinkles and such...yesterday was sunny and clear most of the day...but SATURDAY AFTERNOON, was pretty wild here in Jonesboro, Arkansas beginning around 5 PM! I was not at home at that time since I had to leave to get a filled prescription about a half-hour earlier, which actually ended up being MUCH MORE dangerous than staying home! Here is the gist of what happened right after I picked up my prescription: No chit, there I was: This afternoon, I had just walked outta the Walmart on Highland Avenue in Jonesboro, AR with a prescription re-fill in my hand, when the dang sirens went off all over town, and everybody went running into the store...Since I was already at my car, I looked up into the sky and saw no reason not to get the hell outta that parking lot and go down to the defunct Sears store empty parking lot about a block away so that I had a better view of the sky off in the distance. I needed to see what was coming and find a way to avoid it, SO...So I parked where I had the best view, and lo and behold there was this huge funnel cloud not yet touching the ground but kinda heading towards me...so I thought for a half second..."which way do I have to go to keep from being hit by this monstrosity?" Well, the way it was travelling as it got closer indicated that it would BARELY miss me, but I could always drive around to the other side of the abandoned Sears store and hunker down, if need be. So, I took a sip of my coffee, pulled out my cell phone and thought to myself: "How the hell can I take a video with this thing?" So, LUCKILY I figured that out pretty quickly and took a video just long enough to know that I had better get over to the other side of the building pretty damned fast...which I did. Once I figure out how to get that video outta my cell phone, I will add it to this post. But here is the gist of it all: There was this really big swirling funnel, but it had still not reached the ground, BUT it spawned two smaller funnels relatively close together, one of which DID touch down and created lots of damage about three blocks away from me as the crow flies. I also got to the other side of the building in time to catch the main funnel as it went by ON THE GROUIND in a second video which I will ALSO put heret....along with another video of just SOME of the damage done by it which I saw as I headed home! The tornado, as it wound through far eastern side of Jonesboro caused lots of damage, to include hitting the mall, the airport and many other places including some residential areas on this side of town, Once the tornado went thru the area I was at, I decided not to attempt to go home for awhile so that all the needed emergency vehicles would NOT have me in their way...so I pulled into the Texas Roadhouse steak joint (a stone's throw from where I rode out the storm) and just calmed down for awhile before finally heading home to the apartment, which I figured had not been hit, and it wasn't hit! Praise God for that, and Lord, please do what you can for whomever is injured by this weather during an already trying time for us! If you live in Arkansas, it is likely that you will at least see a tornado at one time or another! It is what it is!😔 Happy to be alive right now, but worried about all of those adversely affected! I have the videos I took of it on my low-tech flip phone, but have not yet figured out how to get them onto my laptop...still working on that...both video files are too large to Bluetooth and will need to be edited while on the phone. The best way to really understand Saturday's e3xcitement in town here is in the video below, which is from a local TV affiliate here in town:
  19. I never said it was the rolling Stones mobile studio, but it WAS two trailers which had to be tied together beside the plant for the installation of those Belles.
  20. There have been lots of changes to Heresy speakers over the years, some of which most people don''t even realize happened because the changes were just announced in the DOPE FROM HOPE papers, if announced at all!
  21. OK, Chief, is that your equivalent of a blank stare into space until a fish takes your bait?...or did you just forget to write: "It sounds OK"?😁
  22. Lots of things don't make sense in this world.
  23. I left Klipsch in October of 1983. Our professional stuff was called our "Industrial line"..."PRO" came along years after I left. The Industrial models were all built outta the same Georgia-Pacific "void-free" birch plywood we used for the decoratotrs and later the birch raw units while3 I worked there from 76-83. Of course this also applies to all of the industrial line while I was there, INCLUDING the MCM 1900 system components: MTM, MSM, MSSM, and MWM. We used quite a bit of approximately 1/2" thick baltic birch on the K-horn bass bin construction, though...with the finely-veneered panels for the K-horn being poplar-lumber-core plywood. I can only speak about what was used while I was there. We had lots of the approximately 3/4" Baltic birch, and constantly tried to find uses for it in cabinets, but it seems that nothing we came up with while I was there was conducive to use in regular construction, mostly due to the types of construction fasteners we used: finish nails and staples would either fold or not drive up completely so those ideas got scrapped ! That's what happens when you buy a huge amount of something like Baltic birch, in various thicknesses and sheet sizes because you are "getting a great deal" on it, but nobody can figure out how to utilize the thick sheets of it while using the standard product-construction methods at the time!. It is what it was! Klipsch tende3d to be at odds with Georgia-Pacific due to the constant price-raising of their void-free plywoods we used, and the problems the seemed to be having with quality control during those years. They were looking for something else so that they didn't have to constantly haggle with GP over quality control and rising costs!
  24. I was working there when that happened, but not sure JRH was working there, yet ,at that time. A pair of Belles were installed as studio monitors, mounted up high and upside-down, angled downwards to some extent, and toed-in to some extent. The mobile studio arrived as two separate units, they were aligned and put together, and the installation took about one entire work day. The mobile studio units were already temporarily at the plant, in the loading areas in front of the plant itself, waiting for us when we arrived for work that day, whereupon they were told where to park them and put them together. I'm sure that a number of pics were taken, but have no idea who has them, if none were archived...maybe Gary Gillum? As far as I know that was the only time that any mobile recording studio ever had Belles mounted inside at the plant, itself. from July 1976 thru October 1983, while I was an employee, anyway. There were a few weeks that I was on temporary voluntary lay-off one year, though!
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