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Maxwell_E

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Posts posted by Maxwell_E

  1. 1 hour ago, avguytx said:

    @Maxwell_E  So I guess from the expired postings, they are both sold?  If so, might edit that in the header line.

    Thanks for the heads up. Truth be told, I was getting pretty medium responses so I let the craigslist ad lapse, but I'm meeting a buyer tonight for the CF4's and will possibly post the KV4 under it's own thread after the holidays.

    • Like 3
  2. Hi All. Selling a pair of CF-4's in Cherry, serial numbers from October 1994. Have owned these for about 3 years now. Since owning them I've replaced the woofer circuit electrolytics with big Solen caps, changed the tweeter padding resistors for Mundorf MResist Classics, and added store-brand Dynamat to the back of the horns. They sound and look fantastic, but my new house can only handle so many different pairs of speakers, so I've got to thin out the herd. I'll link photos here later, but for now I can post my local Craigslist link.

     

    https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/ele/d/seattle-klipsch-epic-cf4-cherry/7404842625.html

     

    I'm asking $1800, but if you also buy my KV4 center channel you can have the set for $2000. Here's the ad for the KV4:

     

    https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/ele/d/seattle-klipsch-kv-center-channel/7411951046.html

     

    Speakers are in Seattle, WA. I'm not willing to ship at this time due to size and handling risk, but I may be convinced to drive a fair distance (<100 miles) to meet serious buyers. Any delivery arrangement will include a substantial deposit up front, as I have been burned too many times.

     

    *edit: price drop*

     

    *edit 2: CF4 Pending, will make new post for KV4*

    • Like 2
  3. I recently did a partial rebuild of my CF-4 crossovers. I ran into the same budget constraints that you talked about. All I ended up doing was the two large caps in the woofer circuit with cheapish Solen film caps, and replacing the resistor in series with the tweeter with a mundorf classic. That added up to about $175 if I remember correctly. I also used some low-value Auricaps to get the capacitance back to spec since I couldn't get the Solens in the exact values I needed. I would definitely replace that resistor, and leave some air-gap between it and the board.

  4. Selling a pair of Epic CF-2 speakers with the cherry veneer. I bought these to build a 5.1 home theater with my CF4's as fronts and a KV4 as the center. My new apartment doesn't really allow for surround speakers, so I'm selling these and I'll be proceeding with a 3.1 HT setup instead. These are not sequentially numbered, but were built within 30 units of each other. This has led, in part, to a slight difference in color between the two units. Asking for $300 OBO, located in Seattle.

    PXL_20210819_190432913_resize.jpg

    PXL_20210819_190515417_resize.jpg

    PXL_20210819_190538741_resized.jpg

    PXL_20210819_190546845_resized.jpg

    PXL_20210819_190614164_resized.jpg

    • Like 4
  5. Nice homemade stands. I ran into the same problem. All the commercially available speaker stands were either 1) too tall; 2) too small platform area; or 3) too dang expensive, or any combination of all three options. So I went to my local architectural salvage looking for some sturdy wood and ended up leaving with a large slab of 2" thick plywood. I cut them into what resemble small end tables and put some thick hairpin legs on them. I kind of like the way it looks with the layers of the plywood exposed, and I could always go back and trim them out for aesthetics.

     

     

    CF-4 Stands.jpg

    • Like 3
  6. I think you were comparing different caps from the different boards. The purple one in the foreground is 20uF, but you can see the purple cap in the background ends in a 3. They look like the exact same crossover, except they used a higher voltage rating on the KV4. Tons of reasons to do this, like maybe the supplier ran out of 100V caps and they went up to the next rating, or there's common parts that use 150V caps so it makes sense from a stockroom standpoint to only keep inventory for 150V caps and use them everywhere.

    • Like 1
  7. On 2/15/2021 at 7:53 AM, EpicKlipschFan said:

    yeah i confused they were original chorus as well but, being in the corner reinforces the bass much more than pulled out away from the walls.

     

    also keep in mind, dual 12's move a LOT more air than a single 15 & are equal to a 24" woofer... the epics 2- 12" woofers should have a fatter low end, lower freq response & more bass output than a single 15"... when placed properly or equally to the chorus.

     

    I don't think that's how it works. Area of a circle is pi times the radius squared. Two 12 inch woofers have a combined area of 226 square inches, which is equivalent to a single 17 inch woofer. A single 18 inch woofer has 254 square inches. Every time a speaker doubles in diameter, the area quadruples.

    • Like 1
  8. The black/yellow film caps in the HF section are film, and almost definitely made by Bennic. Film capacitors last longer than electrolytic, and some PIO like what came on the heritage speakers. I'd be surprised if they were out of spec after 25 years, but weirder things have happened.

     

    $50 per speaker can upgrade you to ClarityCap CSA, and about $150 per speaker to get Auricaps. That's when I priced it for the CF-4, which should have roughly the same HF section. This is when I decided to leave the stock black/yellow film caps in the HF section. For me, it would be more rewarding to get a MiniDSP, remove the crossovers, and biamp the speakers, possibly with a little SET amp on the horns and a beefy solid state for the woofers. Then I can mess with all kinds of crossover configurations, frequencies, time delay, and room-mode testing.

    • Like 1
  9. I just replaced the capacitors in the LF section of my CF-4 Series 1's. Went from tiny electrolytics to Solen film caps about the size of red bull can. I also bypassed them with 1uF Auricaps to get the exact spec capacitance. Lastly, I replaced the 1 ohm attenuator resistor that's in series with the compression driver. I had my roommate listen blind to each speaker playing mono, back and forth. He immediately picked out the one with new caps as having better clarity and "whoomp". Bob Crites is right, I had to shoe-horn that stuff in there, but I got it done. It'd be hard to go further with the stock boards.

     

    I have a vague idea what the value for the inductors are, but I'm not 100% sure to be buying hundreds of dollars in new parts to rebuild these and then screw it up. My advice is to keep the stock inductors, replace the electrolytics, and a couple resistors with good Mundorf or similar MOX resistors. You could probably put the longer ports on there and be fine, too. Beyond that, you'd have to spend so much money on new crossovers that it makes more sense to go full active biamp with a Mini DSP, or a First Watt B5 active crossover. Then you can go full speaker tweaker.

    • Like 1
  10. Nice amp! I'm half debating getting a Primare A30.5 that's on Craigslist near me. It's a 5 channel, which will let me do the 3.1 home theater idea I've been cooking up. Not sure I've heard Primare before, but the price seems pretty good for a 5 channel amp with individual power transformers for each channel.

     

    And no specific listening notes, it just puts the musicians at the right height. And I can vacuum under the speakers, which is a plus.

    • Like 2
  11. 12 minutes ago, Zack R said:

     

    Do the open stands affect the bass response? I've thought about making some stands but would make them out of solid wood.

     

    Not that I can tell, no. My room has some weird wall alcoves and a vaulted ceiling, so bass response isn't the best anyway. I feel that the woofers are very low excursion and make it up with surface area, so I describe the bass as "controlled" or "polite". Maybe if I sat further away, or attenuated the horn a little I could crank them further, but it is what it is for the moment.

    • Like 2
  12. I made some homebrew stands for my CF-4 to pick them up about 13", which gets the center of the horn at my ear level. Before I had tried tilting them back in every position I have at my disposal, but nothing sounds as good as just getting them off the ground. Even with them tilted, I felt that the sound was still shooting up at me, like I was Gulliver listening to a tiny band of musicians on the floor.

     

    My stands are more like low end-tables, because speaker stands only 13" high and sturdy enough for these speakers would have to be custom made. I found some 1.75" thick plywood at an architectural material recycler in town, and bought 8 hairpin legs to make up the rest of the height. I could paint them or get some nice trim pieces to hide the plies, but I kind of like the look now. Maybe cherry veneer to match the speakers? All in I think I spent about $110 for the set, but I had a circular saw and a straight edge to cut the plywood to the right size.

     

     

    CF-4 Stands.jpg

    • Like 3
  13. 3 hours ago, LORDROOTMAN said:

    Still hunting for CF4 V1 

    what year  will be this serial number ?

    3957682 

    thanks 

    E3FB4323-F3FA-4957-B745-5D4AD89C7A32.jpeg

     

    I saw those on Seattle craigslist. His serial number is only 7 digits, but should be 9. And it looks like a sticker he's made himself. Based on the use of hyphens between "epic CF4 CHERRY" and the darker black horn lens, I'd say that these are probably not version 1.

     

    I thought about contacting him about the goofy serial number, but I have no room for another pair of CF4's right now. No reason to ask questions if I'm not buying.

    • Thanks 2
  14. These are great responses.

     

    I have owned them for about 4 months now, so I'm pretty familiar with the sound. I've read a lot of the forum posts and other thoughts on these speakers, and I'm thinking I'd also be willing to start small with some damping on the horns and woofer baskets.

     

    I realized that the pdf I posted was the V3, but it was the closest approximation I had to the network. I plan on taking the crossovers out of my speakers and fully documenting them sometime in the near future. One thing that I've found is that my old 30wpc Sansui has a hard time driving the woofers to match the horns. I started going off on a tangent of "fixing" that by having separate amps to tune the speakers to my room. the first step will be to try some larger amps, specifically a 50wpc NAD that I've got out for repair right now.

     

    Generally speaking, is it kosher to create a low-level/active crossover as a clone of the speaker level design, albeit with the ability to use lower power rated components?

  15. I recently purchased some V1 CF-4's from another forum member and I've been having the best time so far. These are the best speakers I've owned, but like most of you, the urge to modify has fallen upon me. I'm specifically interested in bi-amping these with a 3-8 watt SE tube amp on the compression drivers, and a 100-200 watt SS amp for the woofers. In that vein I started investigating the possibility of building an active crossover in a separate chassis.

     

    Looking at schematics online I found (linked below), as well as my existing crossovers, I noticed there's a little more going on here than I'd expect. The LF section looks like a pretty standard 4th order, while the HF has an extra LCR leg running across the speaker terminals when compared to a standard 4th order. Also there is an autotransformer, T4A, in series between the first cap and LR leg on the HF side. On the Crites website he has these listed as padding the signal by 4db. I have to assume that these "extra" components are there from real-world speaker tuning, time alignment, and driver matching, or some combination of those three.

     

    I'm not interested in re-engineering the entire speaker, so my first instinct is to just replicate these exact networks with my own components. Ideally, I would like to omit the T4A autotransformer to get the most out of whatever low-power amp I have driving the HF side. Do you think this would alter the behavior of the crossover besides just making the HF louder? The HF amp would have a level control (if needed) for matching the CD's and the woofers.

     

    Am I crazy for wanting to mess with an already great speaker? I think building some nice crossovers in a custom box would be a fun project, and I've always wanted to try active crossovers and true bi-amping.

    Klipsch CF-4 Schematic.pdf

    • Like 1
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