krustyoldsarge

Paint Iraqi insignia on them and place them as silhouettes on Viecques range. Paint US insignia on them and lob them at Iraq as frag munitions from the USS Wisconsin.

Set up a few hundred of 'em in Guantanamo for the detainees. Give the Marines ear protection. Play Bin Laden speeches through them 24/7 and ask "How does your a***ole leader sound nOW!?"....

Gift wrap a pair or two for your ex-_____

My neighbor spent the weekend assisting me in the repair of my Marantz receiver. We subsequently rocked the neighborhood with about six hours of music through my "lowly" Klipsch kg4's. He's now trying to figure out a way to gracefully retire his Bose 701's. What does that tell you? Want sound for your computer? Run a line from your computer's sound card to a receiver's input jack. If it's driving almost any set of "audio" Klipsches, you're mind will probably be made up!

Hey, I?m just an old hacker who had a couple years of electric shop in high school. Never stopped enjoying tinkering with electronics, though. Used to drive my parents crazy, but they had a kid who could replace the tubes in their Admiral electric clock radio. But I?ve never been a great woodworker. Man, do I wish I could master dovetailing, joints, finishing and all that good stuff! Now, you?re really on to something with that ?Audio Depot? idea! There?s a void in America that needs to be filled! I can see myself now with an apron, workbench and solder sucker showing soccer moms and the kids how not to test a power electrolytic. A Tim Allen kind of life indeed! Waggling my knowledge and diode bypass caps! There?s some good stuff for free out on the web if you want to seriously hack around with electronics, though. Check out: http://www.repairfaq.org

Those aren?t big. These are: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=800443360 Heard a pair of these in Seoul a couple years back hooked up to what I thought was an SET. They were playing korean sanjo string airs. Pure, clean, airy, detailed music. Pure music. They were phenomenal! These collossal Tannoy beauties also left me with the impression they weren?t working hard at all, just loafing filling a room. Kind of like a Chrysler 413 engine at idle. Sounds nice, but ready to rumble... The Autograph is senior to the GRF in size, complexity and efficiency. Build a set, your neighbors will hate you forever.....

I bought my kg4's (not .2's) on ebay and had a good experience. As with anything on Ebay, check the seller's feedback! You want to know who you're dealing with! Optimally, you want to find a set that's located close to you, Klipsches are heavy and the shipping can eat you up! The further they have to travel, the bigger the chance they can get damaged. However, careful packing can mitigate this problem, mine travelled from Kansas to Korea without a scratch. If this is the first thing you have ever bought on Ebay, I advise getting practise on some less costly, heavy and complex transactions, though. Good luck!

Great post! There must be some middle ground here somewhere, though! My first wife sure didn't seem right for anymore, potholder or no! SET's might remind me of my ex. Horrors! All my girlfriends accuse me of being a playboy, why do they get upset over a little bit of lipstick, whazzup widdat!?! I'm shopping, okay!... Do they suspect me of "upgrade fever". Told'em I love them all! Does this lock me into a solid state existence, hopping from SS receiver to receiver?! Could get expensive.... Maybe short term the fix for me is pentodes.... Sexy, shapely little EL34's, 7868's and 7591's (triodes DO look like matronly lightbulbs) that'll do the dishes once in a while and won't mind too much when I go out with the boys and light up a transistor once in a while...... Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket.....

My Marantz 2220b was sounding a bit tired and restrained. Worse yet, passages with a lot of bass were producing clipping in my Klipsch Kg4s. Distinct lack of soundstage, too. You might ask "what was I expecting from 20wpc, anyway". Better than this, these are Klipsches, after all! So I open the receiver up, look at the power supply card and notice r805 (330ohms) is discolored, and ask myself "what else is going bad here?" Probably some caps and tired diodes, too. I replace r805, and decide to do some other upgrades while I'm in there. Out with about half of the filter electrolytics on the power board, back with double the value and voltage rating whenever physically possible. Caps in general are significantly smaller than when our beloved Marantz's were made, seems you can usually double your capacitance and voltage rating for the same case size. Now for some controversy, out with c003 and c004 (6800uf @ 35v) and in with 2 each SamHwas at 10000 uf @63v. If you use SamHwas, you could probably go to even bigger values since the SamHwa's case at this value is too small for the clamp. My neighbor helped me rig something out of an old racket ball to stabilize them in the clamp. Good thing he's an old farm boy! Beware of polarity, mark the orientation of the original cans on the chassis with a Sharpie pen. I mention this because the schematic seemed to mislead me here. Unless you enjoy fireworks! Heard a lot about fast recovery diodes on the web, so out with h801 and h802 and back we go with four FR607 diodes. The board's inside track lead holes had to be drilled out (carefully!) a smidge to allow the FR607's fat leads through. After all, they're rated pretty hefty: 7amps at 1000 v. To duplicate the original diodes bridge I soldered about a 2" jumper of 7strand teflon insulated silver audio wire to each outer lead. Bypassing each individual diode with a .1uf @600v film cap gives them the humorous appearance of possessing te****les! My neighbor (and test audience) got a good snicker out of that mod! We're not done yet. A look at the main amp board and horrors! Electrolytic couplers in the signal path (c701 and 702, 3.3uf @ 25v)! I could tell this was gonna be a tricky mod because the original caps are tiny and the board is crowded. With much effort i swap the teeny-tiny (aarrrgh) electrolytics out for yellow tootsie roll style polys, 3.3uf @ 100v. I mounted these on the back (bottom) of the amp board, leads shrink tubed and bent away from the power transistor's heat sink. Don't try this if you're in a hurry! That's quite enough modding for now. We reckoned if we tried changing anything else, we'd have a h**l of a time isolating a problem to a particular mod. However, we weren't going to just power the unit up and wait for sparks, so we put together a "dim-bulb tester" out of junk lying around my place. Ever watch the movie "Joe's Apartment" That's enough, off to bed! We hook the 2220b up to the dim-bulb tester and test it early the next morning. No bright bulbs, great! "Enough of your screwin' around, let's hear some tunes!" says my buddy. The moment of truth! Sounds great! No smoke (always a good thing)! While playing Aerosmith's "Walk this Way" my buddy gets his ear right next to the tweeter and reports back "Damn, I can hear the drummer cutting in with the brushes, I know this tune by heart and ya can't catch that brush on every system!" Detail checks good. Check for soundstage with Aqua's "Dr. Jones". My hair nearly stands on end! Dynamic response with Van Halen's "Dreams" is noticeably improved. Vocals and harmony checked with Level 42's "Leaving me now". Really smooth and open. So far so good. Can it work hard? Pulled up a club mix of "Better off alone" (forgot the artist). Jaw-dropping, and the Marantz ain't even clipping or heating up! I've been running the Marantz for six hours straight with no problems. This is also a testimony to the Klipsch kg4's ability to reproduce music without inducing fatigue. Next, I intend to upgrade the parts in the kg4's crossover. For the Marantz, the next downtime will probably see h803 and h804 swapped out for UF5408 ultrafast diodes. Also read on the web where it isn't a bad idea to upgrade the small transistors with tophat types from Motorola. In the meanwhile, I'll continue cannibalizing caps from tossed computer power supplies..... Some of you will doubtless say, switch to tubes. See below! My buddy's thinking of retiring his Blahse 701's now....

You might try KG4's out front.

Good point, tubes and college dorms/military barracks might not be such a great mix. The senior Marantz 22XX, 23XX receivers can generally be had for well under $400 and are SS. Check the pawn shops. See if there's a way to "test drive" the prospective gear before you buy it. Also probably easier to pull off with SS.... Maybe ya gotta wait till you're out of the dorm for tubes. Give ya something to look forward to after graduation.....

Thanks to a federal law that gives the lion's share of my military retirement to my ex-wife, I understand budget limitations. Here's krusty's two cents: Tubes is best. See if you can score a good Fisher 400, 500 or 800. Hard to upgrade from one of these. A receiver with Al Pugliese's update mods (fisherdoc) is a good find. Scott also has its fans. These are sweet units that should make your Heresies sing. They might put you over budget, though. Got mine at a yard sale for $35 years ago. Marantz 2270 or above. Be advised some early senior Marantz receiver models had an underbuilt tone section. The fixes are simple and out on the web. The 2220b I retired drove my kg4s well enough for the neighbors to complain, the 2385 I'm using now is magic! You may not have enough jacks for your gear, so you might want to consider a stand-alone switchbox for the low-fi stuff. But hey, we're on a budget, so we can't have everything!

Have noticed the following refrains in the sites and bb's I've visited over the years: "Sounds like a Mullard..." "Sounds almost as good as a Mullard..." "As close to a Mullard as I've heard..." "Engineered like a Mullard...." "Almost as quiet/smooth/tough/full as a Mullard..." And on and on.... Mind you, I don't have all Mullards in my systems (most are broke right now) but nobody out there seems to compare a tube with anything else (unless they're sticking it in a Marshall Guitar Amp)! Must be something to it

In fairness to Sony, my 6 year old Trinitron is TV is GREAT! However, my GI buddies tell me that inside Japan, you don't want to buy domestic Sony because they sell second rate goods to the Japanese market. They export the good stuff. Replace that Sony with a 70 Watt or bigger Marantz receiver from the 1970s (don't take my word for it, check out audioreview.com). Ever see so many perfect "5's"? My Marantz is a small 2220B, but can still fill a room, IMHO, only tube trumps old Marantz for the bucks. I doubt that you'll look back

Trey and all, Just got done shopping in Seoul. Got most of what I was looking for. Ran into a very helpful guy who rebuilds speaker drivers and seems to like us Americans. He hooked me up with some Solens 22uf + 12uf = 34uf X2 from another shop for the woofer side. Also sold me some nice, big used air inductors and complete networks pulled from some "wrecked"JBLs. Saved a chunk of Won there! I'm on my way (Hopefully not down the Highway to Hell)! Will most likely buy the tweeter caps from the States (next payday)! How does inductor value work on the tweeter side? Can/should the .5mH be doubled? DO two inductors in series = double value vs. two in parallel = half value (my guess, been many years since electric shop in high school)? I'll check on the web. Looks like I'll definitely need a new board for this hefty stuff. Mount on the bottom of the box on wooden risers? Outside the box? What do you guys think? Also picked up enough of some impressive looking German flat silver wire to rewire the guts. Two meters of the stuff wasn't that expensive, and I'm going in there anyway. Here goes another controversial thread!

He left out the hydroelectric dam....

Go for it! I don't have a Grado, but my Thorens turntable has a beautiful walnut tonearm. While I had vinyl it was the best sounding tonearn I ever owned! Lost my LP's in the divorce (she sold it all at garage sales!). So now I only look at that beautiful Thorens, but it's worth it because I don't have to look at HER!

Thanks for taking the measurements! Actually that's good info for me right now since I am going to try to hit the electronics district in Seoul this weekend to try and snare this (and some other) stuff. Might be able to get something custom wound. Electronics parts are one of the few bargains left here in Koreas. Of course, when you try to buy some of the high end goodies, you pay and a fair bit of the premium stuff is imported from the States! Also appreciate Trey's reminder to watch the capacitor voltage values on the caps. Always do, and I try to double the voltage rating if I can, in order to bulletproof/derate the project when physically possible. Also, on my shopping list are electrolytics (they're cheap here) to recap my Marantz' power supply section. Interesting that cap technology has gotten to the point where you can double the capacitance and voltage rating of a 1970's era cap in the same physical case. Also want to trade some electrolytics out of the signal path. My neighbor's are probably gonna start calling me "Uncle Dielectric" soon.

Got it! Thanks Trey! Looks like the values are .5mh and 1mh, caps are 3uf, 8uf and 33uf. Steve

Howdy, Anyone out there got a schematic for the kg4 crossover? Anyone know the mh values for the inductors? KG4 00 RV, Speaker Serial number is 8854836, 8854837 Love my KG's! Steve (in S. Korea)