esker

The 1829 fires out both ends. You wouldn't want it for hi fi. What kind of horn and driver to use depends on your objectives and your room. As long as you're going custom, why not fit it to your situation. What's your room like, and what kind of listening do you want to do? What kind of music?

The 1829 is a dual-exit driver typically used in a paging horn. What horn did you have in mind to use it with? While Klipsch, EV and JBL all make use of the 1 3/8 -18tpi horn mount, they don't have the same internal throat diameter. Klipsch squawker horns have a 3/4" throat, while 1823M is 7/8" (I just measured them both) and JBL ought to be 1" (I don't have one handy - you can measure it yourself). You can screw driver A on horn B, but there will be discontinuities at the throat if you mix these brands.

I'm sure some of today's exotic cables can sound different, depending on the rest of the equipment. But make sure you are really hearing what you think you hear. You may hear differences in cables. I did. Couple years back I participated in a study on the audibility of changes in speaker cable. I went in with an open mind. During the test I was sure I could hear the difference. Then I saw my results: indistinguishable from random chance. Over twenty years ago, PWK had a chance to hook up with a fancy cable manufacturer (was it Monster?) to do the internal wiring on his speakers. After experimenting, he decided against it. He said: "I defy anyone to hear a tenth of a dB difference!"

For false corners, I've used a bookcase and a record (LP) cabinet backed up to the horns. It worked quite well, as the cabinets were packed tight.

Sure, Herc. Didn't mean to get touchy. Just want to convey that it ain't as easy as it looks. There are lots of things you can do when you're building for yourself and don't have to worry about shipping and such. Filling in those voids is a great idea. Edgar followers often use expanding aerosol foam in that sort of space. Others use sand, which is removable. Concrete would probably do the job. You'd have to consider the effect of the weight, and that it might make the structure sag over time. I've heard of foam expanding so strongly as to blow the sides off the box, so pay attention. The space outside the X behind the front panel usually needs be open to the compression chamber. The production unit has been that way for many years, but some plans may not show that. This is because the K-33-E woofer requires the extra volume. It's possible your driver might not, but that's not easy to determine until you get the box built and check the resonance frequency with the woofer sealed in the chamber. Bruce Edgar has suggested making the 45-degree reflectors larger at the throat and at the first turn at the top and bottom of the front panel. This us supposed to extend the upper frequency limit, which would be a big help with your compression driver. I can't remember his exact words, but if you visualize the reflectors as mirrors rather than waveguides you'll have the idea. I think it's in his 1990 "Speaker Builder" article called "The Show Horn." Bruce will send you a copy for a very reasonable price, or you can get the entire year of the magazine from www.audioxpress.com It's hard to say how much these mods will affect your work. Haven't tried them - just pointing you in a direction for research. You never know how significant a change will be till you try it. Lots of members here will suggest damping the squawker horn to reduce any metallic ringing. It might work for them, but when I rap on my squawker, all I can hear is the reverberation from the wood of the woofer horn. I find the woofer horn is not as acoustically dead as I would like. The sound is pleasing, but an entirely non-resonant cabinet would be theoretically preferable. You might experiment with concrete to see if you can come up with an acoustically inert recipe. This will be extremely heavy, of course, but might not be a problem for you as you will not be shipping worldwide. But since you are a cabinet maker, that might go against the grain... This message has been edited by esker on 06-15-2002 at 07:18 PM

PWK said his first unit "sounded like hell." The Klipschorn was developed over time, and that development was guided by testing and measurement. PWK believed in testing and measurement, and used a lot of test equipment over the years. He was fond of quoting Dr Irving Gardner: "You can't make what you can't measure because you don't know when you've got it made." What you say is true. Many of those things I mentioned that he did in the pursuit of excellence did not occur before the initial release. The point I was trying to make is that you can't just walk in off the street and do better than the man who devoted his life to the effort. If we wish to stand on the shoulders of giants, we must first make the climb.

Pardon my misunderstanding on the CD. You'll need to find out more about that horn, since a lot of JBL's recent stuff is constant directivity (bi-radial). Or else you can make a tractrix. One of the first things you'll need to decide is whether you want a whole room full of decent stereo (PWK's goal with corners-plus-center three-channel stereo) or a sweet spot with intense stereo imaging. In other words, is the system to be for company, or for yourself alone? The constant directivity horn would tend to cover the whole room evenly, but require equalization. A straight tractrix would give you flatter frequency response without EQ, but only in the sweet spot. This is just an example of the choices you'll have to make. No one can decide for you. If you want to entertain, use the Klipsch approach and keep it in the corners. If you're looking for a personal sweet spot, go with the Bruce Edgar type of system with main speakers out in the room, plus subwoofers (possibly corner horns, in your case). It's up to you. By filling the voids, do you mean stuffing the compression chamber? Some have tried it, and liked the results they got with less-than-ideal drivers. PWK didn't, and that wasn't because he didn't think of it. He told me it was because he wanted a pure capacitance to match the reactance of the horn. He didn't really believe in resistive damping. He preferred radiation resistance. If you mean stuffing the horn, forget about it. If you mean that prism-shaped space in the corner behind the speaker, sealing that off isn't a bad idea.

So you want to make improvements on the Klipschorn? First you'll need about fifty years of education and experience. Build an anechoic chamber with a revolving corner. Spend maybe half a million on test equipment. Get samples of scores of drivers from dozens of manufacturers. Test them all for frequency response, polar response, transient response, distortion, power handling, reliability, etc. The second week you can start building prototypes. Pardon my sarcasm, but I've been there. My DIY corner horns, over the years, had drivers from JBL, Electro-Voice, Stephens, and Western Electric. The top horns have been Ben Drisko wood, cast aluminum exponential, radial, cast non-resonant tractrix. They all sounded good. The Klipschorns blew them away every time. So did the Heresies, for that matter. I tinker with the things because I enjoy it. If that's your cup of tea, more power to you and welcome to the club! Why are horns better than cones? That's a long story, but basically, properly built horns are more efficient and have less distortion. The sound is lightning fast - imagine the 2416 driver with the mass of a 2" dome but with a 15" X 5 1/4" surface area. Now imagine the 15" woofer with a 2000-odd square inch surface area. That's what the horns do. Now that's punch! Horn speakers move a lot of air while the drivers are hardly moving at all. That's why they sound so effortless. By the way, CD horns - in this case CD probably stands for constant directivity. That means they're designed to have a constant polar response, but with falling treble. You'll need an equalizer to get flat frequency response. The explanation for this is in the JBL Professional Sound System Design Manual at www.jblpro.com/pages/tech_lib.htm Have fun with this project. I promise it will keep you occupied. Check out the archives at the High Efficiency Speaker Asylum. Bruce Edgar really knows his stuff, so look for his posts. Enjoy!

First, get cracking on those $600 horns. That's a great price if they're real Klipsch in working condition. Don't know about any 2416H JBL driver. Could you mean the 2426H? With most 1" JBL compression drivers, you'd have to cross over at 800Hz or above. Same frequency as the Heppner, but with oh so different results! If you don't use more than a watt or two, you might reduce the crossover a little, but you'd probably need a bigger horn. Which horn do you have? Even with the 800Hz crossover you might make a go of a 2-way LaScala. The K-horn woofer really should be crossed over below 500Hz. The 2225 might work nicely for you in either of those bass horns. With different bass drivers, you might even make a stab at a Jubilee! You could use the 2123H to fill between the corner horn and the compression driver. But PLEASE put it in a horn! JBL professional drivers are wonderful - especially the stuff they made before they had to make them bulletproof against kilowatt amplifiers. Integrating them into a whole will be the hard part. In the end, with lots of work and good test equipment, you may end up with something nice, but they won't be Klipschorns. Good luck. Mark P.S. Haven't you picked up those Klipschorns yet?

Welcome! I don't know about your particular horns, but no Heppner horn I ever saw was anywhere near the quality you want if you're going to the trouble to make Klipschorn clones. At 4" X 10.5", they won't play at a low enough frequency to get down to your crossover point with the woofer, either. Keep looking - there's some really fine stuff out there that will do a better job for you. The place to find out about parts other than Klipsch is www.audioasylum.com/forums/HUG/bbs.html - you can't believe everything you read there, but it'll show you where to look to find things out. Hope you have access to real Klipsch (Heritage) for regular reality checks as you go. Good luck with your project.

Seems like you were gearing up on pro stuff in a big way then, too. I remember while I was in the building Gary Gillum needed to deal with an MF woofer where the two drivers wouldn't fit in the compression chamber side by side. Must have been a nightmare when that happened. The Russians weren't giving away birch plywood.

Thanks, HDBR - Now it's all clear -- ? Yeah, the new logo was already on the building in July, '77. It looked brand new. It was still there last month, though not looking so new anymore. I liked the pie-slice logo, too, but what can you do? I didn't know to ask for a pair of pie-slice insignias - didn't find out about the change till I got back home, but Gary Gillum gave a nice "Stolen from Paul Klipsch" mug and I picked up a Klipschirt. One of the employees (an old-timer) was wearing a PWK belt buckle that looked great (something tells me it was silver, but I'm not sure). After I got back home, I ordered a buckle through Bill Bell. It had the new logo and the goofy expression, "Strap it on with Klipsch." After a year or so I got tired of trying to explain it (I couldn't!) so it's been in a drawer somewhere ever since. Can you tell us about the PWK neckties? My HDBR's are a pair with consecutive serial numbers, but only one of them has the "A" on it. Thanks for the tunes! Seems funny that as the builder, you only got a code stamp, but Deronda Beavers and Terry Willis got their signatures on the back just for looking at them. Is there an explanation for that policy?

My sister bought her Heresies new from Bill Bell in July, 1977. I remember the day well - I was visiting the plant in Hope. Hers came with the rectangular plate - just the name Klipsch with underlying horizontal stripes. My T code KDBR's (also purchased new from Bill Bell, in February 1979) and U code HDBR's (purchased used in 1983) have the rectangular plate with both the pie wedge and the name stamped on it and no stripes. The stripes logo appears on LSI literature dated 7-77 and on the price sheet marked "Prices Effective 15 Jan. 1977." How's that for confusing?

Has anybody here ever heard one of Stan White's Powrtron amplifiers?

Boychu - Welcome to the forum! I have used the Krell KAV300I with Klipsch speakers and I can only say - DON'T! That combination sounds extremely bright and sets my teeth on edge. All the salesmen in the store agreed on this. The Krell isn't a bad amp - it's just something about the combination. But feel free to try it, if you can return the Krell. Our favorite amp to go with Klipsch was anything from Conrad-Johnson (they do have one integrated). Not only for the quality of the sound, which was superb. Folks who thought Klipsch speakers couldn't image had to change their tune after they heard them on a C-J. But we sold Klipsch with Yamaha all day every day - not such a bad combination. So take your time, try different things and believe your own ears Enjoy! Mark