filmofreddy

The bars were standard for at least the 1st. Forty years of the K-Horns life. Made changing woofers a breeze.

From the supplied pictures I'm betting on a homebrew. Zoom up on the tailboard & you'll see it's not the way Klipsch does it. The K5j is early 60's vintage together with the early K55V. Would like to see the woofer.

VITAVOX CN 191 was the British version of the K-Horn.

The Grill wrap around was necessary when the midrange horn was the K5 as it radiated through the side wrap. While unnecessary with the K400 I'm certain the wrap was kept for cosmetic uniformity year to year.

Up to 1956 the top hat used 1/2 inch. 3/4 was used after that.

It's a 1956 style "C" (unfinished) with an Electro Voice P15wk woofer. What is a bit confusing is the K5j midrange horn is stamped "1960" which, by the shown early K55 mid driver & crossover is of "60" vintage. If you remove the front grill you should see an Electro Voice T 35 (K77) 16 ohms. The whole top section could have been upgraded to the 1960 standard but..The Mid horn was the same in 56 as 1960. So no idea why that part would have been replaced.

These Are the SpeakerLab clones, the Original fiberglass ones. The "ribbed" version was cast aluminum.

David Grabner, one of Speakerlabs founders, told Me that they had a surprise Visit from Mr.Klipsch in the Flesh! He said the meeting was cordial but, you could have cut the tension with a knife!-LoL

The Wolverine is a TW35...with half the magnet weight of a T35 & lower sensitivity. 101db vs. 104 of a T35. Not suitable for your LaScala.

Hi Greg, The K33"J" is a renamed Jensen P15LL. Jensen introduced the P15LL in the very early 50's. It was used in the Jensen Imperial Folded Horn. The only Difference in the Version they made for Klipsch was a 4 ohm Voice coil vs. the standard 16 ohm. The 16 ohm version was also used for years as the bass driver for the leslie organ cabinet. A very good woofer but, it's achilles Heel is it's lack of power handling. I like those throat deflectors in SpeakerFriz's picture. Lots of experimentation in the early 60's when a dealer discovered (through measurement) the nosedive the K-Horn took above 250 cycles. Klipsch scrambled for a cure when He hit upon the idea of a constricted throat (from an original of 78 square inches down to 39 square inches) that gave the K-Horn an artificial boost in response to compensate. That was another impetus for the developement of the K400 Horn.

Old Grand Dad 114 proof Bourbon & sparkling water. Oh Yeah!! []

Cubans when My smuggler connects.Otherwise Partagas, Macs,I seem to like most of the General Cigar brands. JR "Ultimates" as well. Love dem Stoggies.

The EV T-350 is also 1 DB more efficeint.

It took almost the entire report before the reporter Finally stopped calling the speakers "CLIPS".

The original 1959 "Cornwall" had its reflex port on the rear of the enclosure. In the early sixties PWK revamped the enclosure & put the port on the front & changed the K-1000 mid horn to the New K-600. Thats when He changed the designation to "Cornwall II". In the 70's He changed the box again to allow horizontal only orientation of the Mid & tweeter with the enclosure vertical & the "II" designation was dropped & it became just the "Cornwall" again. In the eightys' when the crossovers & drivers where changed (& the sensitivity upped) it was, once again designated "Cornwall II" Should have been "III" but it was their call. Cheers & Happy New Year to all.[]

Hi, 1st off, Your speaker is NOT a "Georgian". It's an EV "Centurian". An entirely different animal. The 15 BWK was EV's "Economy" woofer that made its 1st apperance in the Centurian.. This is NOT a K-Horn enclosure but a simple single folding path corner horn. Bass is good to about 50 cps & Dies quickly below that.

The Paper padding inside Cornwalls is an ancient Kimberly-Clark product called "Kimsul". It was used as an inulation before the introduction of fiberglass. The stiching is integral to the product. I gutted My 1948 Cape Cod & removed a ton of it. Contact Kimberly-Clark to see if they can steer you to a source for purchase. Here's a URL to a clip from WWII on its manufacture. It's the 13th clip down. Good luck. http://www.dvarchive.com/stock-video-footage/1/world%20war%20two

Dear lammers, The "eliptic" filter portion of your AL 3 x-over consists of the 500uH inductor in series with the 2uF capacitor and "shunting" the + and - before the tweeter.

Dear john, The washer may have been distorted by excess pressure for too many years. The ID should match up within a few thousands of the throat hole for the horn. The screen on the K55V is a "fooler" as I remember it rests on a hidden step beneath the screen. So the actual working throat of the Atlas driver is smaller than it appears from looking at the protective screen. I critically measured all of this long ago when cutting up K400s' to use bolt on drivers but unfortunatly I don't have immediate access to those notes(15 yrs. ago) but once everything was taken into consideration I don't believe we discovered anything that mis-matched. Plus, just about got my scanner issue sorted out so the Klipsch "packet" should be ready to fly by 28/Jan.

Dear Bill, The "actual" throat opening on the removable mounting flange of the K-5 series of horns that utilized 1 3/8 in "screw on" drivers is .870 in. which is the actual "working area" of the throats on the drivers used. You are dead on when you say the k400 was "smoother". What Klipsch achieved with the K-400 series of horns was tighter pattern control or dispersion if you will, especially in the vertical dimension where the k-5 series of horns started to get weird above 3000cps. In my collection of "ancient" Klipschorns I have examples of these dating back to 1948 and I have done extensive side by side (corner to corner) comparisons between the two and the differance in dispersion is immediate and startling. The k-5 is great from an experimenters point of view because of the removable throat and the ability(if you have the adapters) to try all manner of drivers on them.I enjoyed excellent results for years using this configuration with an Altec 802 High Frequency driver & no additional tweeter. A compression driver is measured(sans horn) through a "plane wave tube" a long pipe with the driver on one end ,mic on the other. What determines (minus driver limitations) the response is the geometry of the horn. I love the way the K-5 sounds strictly from a retro point of view and it's not a bad horn. So many manufacturers copied it's design that it must have had a lot going for it. The K400 had as its' impitus a Jensen design(Mr.Klipsch lists some of the engineers at Jensen as "his" personal heros)and was developed as a response to stereo(again,pattern control) and to lower that first x-over point from 500 to 400 cps.But, even though on paper and through the measurment microphone the K400 is markedly superior many people regard it as a marginal upgrade over the K-5. The early K-5 series of horns are beautiful with laquered birch plywood sides and the top & bottom flares made out of an early form of glass laminate. Also, due to that nice wide mouth it allowed the mounting of the T35A with the long axis vertical which gave it the widest horizontal dispersion. Hope that shed some light on it.

Dear Phil, working backwards from the tweeter terminal on type AK-B-L networks you have a "state variable" resistor in series with + on the tweeter. This resistor increases its value as excess power is applied going to a maximum of, I believe, 100ohms. This works in concert with the "eliptical filter" in shunt with + - of the tweeter leads. This was Klipschs' answer to the complaints of the filthy mcnasty things those zeners in the tweeter circuit of the type AA networks could do to some solid state amplifiers. Plus, under drive (well within the safe capabilities of the tweeter) they sounded bad. So what happens when you "over drive" the tweeter with AK-B-L type networks? The resistance increases in the variable resistor, that increased resistance in conjunction with the "eliptical filter"(500uh & 2uF in shunt) acting in concert with the pre-ceading tweeter x-over components( 2uF in series 125uH in shunt followed by another 2uF in series)to RADICALLY increase the rate of slope( Klipsch said 50db, Believe it!) to stave off the destruction of the tweeters voice coil from excess midrange energy. I think thats a fairly accurate description. My advice still stands, That network is there to protect the speakers from abuse, NOT neccessarily the best from a sonic standpoint. Go back to a simple single capacitor about 3.5 to 4 uF in series with the + on the tweeter and live happily ever after(Until we can "upgrade" to a single horn top end). Until then thats my half-baked explanation and advice. Peace(and thanks to AL K. for the correction of my phrasology and the plot of the "eliptic filter" in action. Now I'm convinced more then ever GET RID OF IT!

Gentlemen,I feel since I was the first to suffer the slings and arrows for my support of the K400 horn that I use this missive as a peace offering to all concerned. The Klipschorn has had as many detractors as it has had fans over the years and most of the nay-sayers have pointed to the midrange. The first time I heard a K-horn 30 years ago I LOVED the bass, HATED the midrange but rather then just dismiss it I figured a speaker with that fine a reputation could not possibly sound that bad in the mids. I came to quickly realize that setup was everything to those speakers and my reaction to the mids was actually a "reaction" to the horrible early solid state electronics the dealer was using. Most dealers that I know here in the midwest NEVER showed the speakers to their best advantage. Now that we are in the "new millenium" I'm sure it wont be long before we all retire our existing K400s' and T35As'. The advancement in compression driver technology, New materials, and yes even more "room friendly" horn types (tractrix) will alow us to economically upgrade to a single horn top end. Jubilee be damned I would rather upgrade what I currently have. Here's looking to a bright future. Klipschs' involvement with "tractrix" horns I believe was due to Dr.Bruce Edgars series of articles in Speaker Builder. What a Paul Voight "Tractrix" horn allows because of its' sharper flare rate is a reduction in horn length. A great thing if you manufacture a lot of box speakers and more importantly from a listeners point of view is a "Tractrix" launches "spherical" wavefronts which are definitly more "room friendly" so those are the 2 primary advantages I see of Tractrix over exponential horns. Richard,(look at the bottom of this tome you'll see three edits. Why ? Because every time I typed in your name **** the web page bleeped me! Well anyway I enjoyed your missive about Bill Hartsfield. When I met Paul Klipsch in 1991 I handed him a sales sheet for the "Hartsfield" manufactured by Classic audio Reproductions. He looked at it studiously and then bellowed "JBLs' makin t those things again??" I told him no, that it was a second party. And he then proceded to relate to me the story you told. I asked him his "opinion" of the Hartsfield, He studied the sales sheet for a good 30 seconds and pronounced his damnation of the "acoustic lense" used on the mid-high horn. I further queried as to other loudspeakers he admires. Without a seconds hesitation he said "The Altec A-7 Voice of the Theatre" He said he admired the engineering behind it AND that it was the impitus for him to design the LaScala. Thanks everybody for letting me ramble and c'mon back antelope I luv ya.

Dear Antelope, I value Klipsh Designs highly, But with your hate of said designs and your low opinion of them I thought you'd take the fifty bucks and run like a thief. Then your loss would have been my gain!

Dear antelope, my "silly" throat explanation was used as an over simplification for our audience who may or may not know what the heck we are talking about. Just for academic purposes you may want to re-measure your K400s' throat/gasket/and "actual" working area off the K55s' phasing plug behind the protective screen, I think you'll find no mis-match. I used a micrometer long ago on these units when modifiying the K 400 to take Altec & JBL 1" drivers. And again your update approach is certainly a viable(albeit)expensive approach to the problem. My only problem is again that rather flippant attack on Klipschs' engineering choices. You hate them,cool. I think they can improve in their present state, cool. But their are others who have much grander credentials then ours who consider them outstanding examples of the horn makers art. Regarding the jubilee. The only thing it shares in common with the Klipschorn is that its a corner horn and it suppossidly can be used against a wall ala JBL Hartsfield. Its' bass horn contains 2 12" drivers crossed over at 800cps to a Tractrix horn with I believe a 1.5 in. throat. The original K-horns were 2 ways back in the 40s'and Paul Klipsch has worked to eventually wind back up with a 2 way at $15000.00 a pair. One parting shot regarding correctly designed horns. The proper damping from a horn is imparted by its correctly designed flare rate and geometry not by the particular materials used in construction. I've heard dreadful as well as sublime JBL horns in wood,cast aluminum,and fiberglass and the same from other manufacturers. Most are now made from plastic(ugh) for cost reasons alone. If you plan on keeping your K-horn bottoms and hate the tops so much sell me those KKK(Kasual,Kareless,Klipsch)400 midrange horns and drivers, tweeters and xovers too. I'll give you $50.00!

Dear Antelope, While I have no Quarrel with your Mod( We know JBL horns also as sound system designers and dealers)My critic if you will is in your assesment of Klipschs' engineering choices. You have 1977 horns with AA xover & K55V mid. In late 1979 Klipsch himself re-designed the phase plug architecture to address this "roughness" in response. This smoothed them considerably,unfortunatly Atlas the oem manufacturer of this driver redesigned the driver to use a crappy ceramic magnet and they lost their quality hence a change to an EV driver which was not as good as the Klipsch modified atlas driver. ALL 1 3/8 inch screw on drivers use a gasket to get a tight seal between horn throat and driver. Your JBLs' have a larger throat because they have a larger internal diaphram and are designed for a much higher maximum output than one inch drivers. Remember the Klipschorn is a home speaker and should not be held to the standards of sound reinforcement loudspeakers. As to your JBLs' being better I think they are pretty Damn fine also but, you paid $3000.00 for your top end and I believe using the Klipsch top end with some judicious mods you could have accomplished your goals in a much more economical fashion. I have Heysers' article also and his only complaint was the roughness in upper midrange response at the xover to the tweeter(which can easily be fixed electronicaly)Paul Klipsch spent MANY more years on the development of the top end than on the woofer. You obviously don't think he got it right, I think it needs help also, But Klipsch made excellent design choices 40 years ago when he designed the K400 mid horn and, with some electronic help, I'll put the Klipsch top end up against ANY JBL in the home(and have)and come out a winner.