zeagan

Yep there's an angle, the idea was that the outer edges of the HF cabinet are the exact width of the doghouse in the lascala bass bin so if you're looking at them dead on the lines line up. The angle on the back side was mostly to keep them from being too "box on a box" looking.

K-691's arrived this morning and are currently set up waiting for some more dialed in settings but already noticing less harshness on the above 12kHz material. Little softer, but with a little more detail up top. Already loving the change. Also amused at the difference in sheer mass.

Well they have a rough EQ/delay/crossover setup in them now and going to send off the raw measurement files to ChrisA for some feedback. In the meantime it’s time to listen to a few tunes. Definitely no issue with volume.

Anyone wondering how differently they measure, here are the 1/48th smoothed frequency responses of the K691 vs the 2446h, both on the same horn, all variables normalized between the two with the same measurement setup. JBL is clearly a bit more efficient running about 3dB hotter between 450 and 1200Hz with a bit more wildness happening above 13kHz. Curious how this will translate to subjective listening tests.

First impression now that I’ve got the drivers off. The Klipsch ones would definitely be easier to steal if you had to run off with them. ~10lbs vs 32lbs for the big JBL’s. God help whoever ends up paying to ship these when I sell them.

So this the culmination of about two years of incremental increases in my main setup. First started with some black ‘78 LaScalas, fell in love with the horn sound but while they looked cool they didn’t really look “living room appropriate”. So I got to reading about “jubescalas” (are we calling them that? Is the jube part the bass bin? Frankenstein speakers are confusing) and fell down the rabbit hole. So I sold the LaScalas and used the money to buy a bunch of wood and some drivers. Built clone LaScala bass bins using 1” Baltic birch for the outside panels and 3/4” for the doghouse. Woofers are Eminence Kappa 15C’s, finished those up about a year ago. Now for the top half, anyone that has looked for k402’s or k510’s (especially in Canada) knows you’re basically SOL barring a miracle, so I picked up the K510 clones from eBay. I was then going to get b&c de75’s as they’re very very close to what comes on the KPT-904-HF (that being the k510 with driver). Some JBL 2446h’s came up for sale locally for less than a new pair of de75’s so I gave them a try for the last year, tried my hand at DSP and got them dialed in enough that they’ve been a great set of speakers for the last year. Then I got a pair of K-691’s on here, and after being artfully bent over by UPS they arrived today and the process of getting the DSP settings just right has begun. In this thread I’ll post some response graphs, waterfalls, spectrograms, stuff like that and document getting them where they need to be in room using my Ashly Protea 3.24cl processor and umik 1. Also huge thanks I’m advance to ChrisA who graciously offered to help out with the settings.

Canuck Audio Mart has been great for me for the past few years, only recently started looking on here and have been delighted by some of the finds. If you're ever out east shoot me a message, but take your time, all of my fun stereo stuff is currently living at my folks and the house building plans with the girlfriend are about 18 months out, going to have a nice big 350sq ft listening room for the jubescalas (they really need a better name imo) to live in. Now I'm just taking a look around for a DX38 or Xilica, thought I had an xp3060 sorted out but it was already sold, either that or I'll start picking some brains in here about making my Ashly Protea work a little better despite its shelving filter limitations.

I'm just waiting on a reply from LTusler and hopefully I'll have a pair of K-691's soon enough, the forums being down for a few days the day after I decided to go for it was rather annoying. As for Gentec, turns out they're no longer the Canadian supplier and referred me to Microland, also out of Markham? Rebrand maybe? And thanks, I'm in PEI, so also an Islander, just the other side.

Didn't stretch, honestly the cloth doesn't have a lot of stretch to it. basically laid it down and made sure the pattern in the cloth was parallel with the board. I did sort of stretch the edges around though.

Thanks, and yeah did both the front and the outer edge on the back of the boards.

Yep it's KnuKonceptz, kind of a dorky name but the only reasonably priced actual copper speaker cable I could find in fairly thick gauge. Originally got it to replace some cables in an old Akai power amp that used 10awg internally. Great stuff, super easy to work with.

Shot you a quick message, entirely possible if we can make it work at a price point that makes sense compared to new de75's. There is some extra value in knowing they're "real" 691's with the slightly modified diaphragms.

And they're done! They sound great and I'm just giving them a good listen, thanks for coming along for the thread.

Drivers in, everything wired up, time to give them a little look all tidy before plugging them in.

Parts all done, all finished and time to put the drivers back inside. I had some 10awg OFC speaker cable that was obnoxious overkill for this application but why not. Crimped and soldered with heat shrink to tidy up the spades and soldered to the tweeter and woofer (push pins on the mid). Also applied a barrier of weather stripping to each the box and the rear panel to help even out the surfaces when tightened and keep them sealed (for now? ports?)

Another goal of this project was to open the possibility of making "super heresy" mods to these at some point and even though I've done tons to the original enclosures already it felt weird to potentially cut a whole in the original back panel. So I made a pair quickly out of 3/4" ply and applied the same veneer to it. I ripped off the idea for brass countersunk washers from some old Harbeths that I restored last year and made a terminal plate out of a piece of vinyl flooring I spray painted black (necessity is the mother of invention)

Risers on, light at the end of the tunnel, I tend applied three coats of poly to the rest of the bodies, with light sanding with 400 grit between coats just to keep things nice and smooth.

Risers painted I then did three coats of water based polyurethane on the bottoms. Water based as I wanted to keep the white colour of the white oak and didn't want the finish to cause or accelerate any yellowing. With the finish on I then screwed on the risers which made the rest of the finish work a lot nicer to deal with.

Part of this project was also to throw some risers on. I had some off cuts of maple laying around so after a quick google about approximate sizes and angles of Heresy risers I sketched out some dimensions and made a few sketchy cuts on the table saw to put these together. Felt weird spray painting maple black but when you've got scrap you use scrap.

Edge banding is a nightmare and I'm not great at it and I should have just cut strips of the veneer and used the contact cement instead of the matching iron-on white oak I got from Lee Valley. That said, I eventually got it done, the miter joints look relatively good and then I spent a ton of time with wood fill and sanding to get them as square as possible.

Now for the stressful part, I have never applied a veneer to anything and like to fling myself into new projects. So I used lepage gel based contact cement as I had read it spreads more evenly with less likelihood of causing orange peel. Managed to only misplace one sheet on one side and it was just off enough it was fixed with a tiny sliver of off cut. Overall the process went well and like bondo, would happily never smell contact cement again, god bless a big open garage door. Next up, edge banding (was not a fan of this step)

With the crossovers and the grilles done it was time to actually do some work, the first few days were just lots of sanding, lots of bondo, and lots more sanding to create as close to "square" as possible for the veneer to attach to. In the meantime the original Type E's sold which made for enough dollars to buy the sheets of veneer, two 24" x 96" rolls of white oak paper backed veneer were ordered from Lee Valley and came in a few days (I'm in Canada, our veneer options are limited)

Next up, grilles. The originals were tired and one had a sizeable rip in it. Also one of the original badges was missing. Luckily I had just enough fabric I had picked up from Crites a few years ago to cover the original frames and ordered a pair of reproduction badges. They're not period correct but I just like the laser logo the most so went with those. Used spray adhesive from gorilla glue and a lighter on the corners to keep everything nice and tight with no fraying. Very happy with how they turned out.

First step was to get a few funds flowing, since I had all of the parts laying around to make a pair of Type E crossovers I spent an afternoon doing that and sold the originals to recoup some costs that were going to come in the form of veneer and finish. I had a 14awg 2.4mH air core inductor with similar DCR to the original iron core unit (0.36 ohms if I'm not mistaken), some film caps and a crites autoformer. Also had some magnet wire kicking around so it has jumpers you can pick the crossover up by just as a fun thing.

So I picked up a pair of H1's a few weeks ago that were in "well loved" condition. I assume they were in a garage or a workshop of some kind. Pretty banged up, corners were all dinged, missing some chunks of veneer and a few screw holes from where it looks like they were mounted to a rafter or something. That said, drivers were all intact and original and when I cracked them open they looked as if no one had ever unscrewed the back (except for when one of the K-22s was replaced with an "R" equivalent). Caps tested within spec and the crossovers were immaculate.