artto

$60 just for an emblem eh? Thanks for mentioning that Jim! While looking for those Telefunken tubes for Dean today, I came across a mint, totally unused Klipsch emblem from the early 70's in the back of a drawer! Not sure where I even got that from. Possibly its an extra one that Klipsch sent me along with a Cornwall cabinet they replaced for me way back in college.

Make me an offer.

I realize you're going for more of a home theater thing but you might want to take a look my posts "artto's klipschorn room" (select 180 days) in the architectural topic thread. You'll want to put up a vapor barrier (plastic visqueen)over the concrete before putting up any walls. I would still insulate the exterior walls. Concrete can hold a temp for a long time & if the AC or heating is running much (such as in spring or fall) the room can feel cold. Another thing to consider is building settlement. New construction always settles & you can be almost guaranteed that the foundation is going to get a few cracks. Whether they leak or not will remain to be seen.

Dean, so far, I can only find 2 Telefunkens in my stash (I could have sworn I have more, probably buried somewhere they're not supposed to be). They are diamond bottom smooth plates, but they're 12AU7 & the lettering is nearly worn off. I can part with these if anyone is interested. They weren't used much. Correction on previous post: The other tube I mentioned I was looking for, the IEC or International is actually International Servicemaster. Also looking for RCA (with the the big heavy red RCA letters) 7025 British smooth plates.

Dean....I can't click on the link. Could you type in the the address? The International 12AX7 I remember had sort of a "skwooshed globe" (eliptical) on them. I believe the name "International" & "IEC" was on them, in yellow printing (possibly white if my memory is failing me). It was a somewhat "dirty" sounding tube but very sweet. The ARC has never sang again like it did with those tubes.

Dean, I'll take a look at what I have buried in storage. I know I have some Telefunkin 12AX7. Whether they are smooth plates or not, I don't recall. All I can remember is way back when I was still tube rolling, they didn't make much difference to me in my equipment, so I'm definately not married to them. If anything, I liked the red label RCA's or the cheap Japanese International's (IEC)in my ARC SP6. If anybody knows where I can get the 12AX7 IEC's please let me know.

WEBMASTER: "If you are going to discuss anything, then bring up your points and leave it at that. What you don't do is call someone a "moron" or a "fool" within those posts. First of all, it does nothing to support your side of the debate anyway and secondly, it's something that may very well get you banned from this forum." ahhh.....so thats what happened to mobile homeless turned pompus azz. Bet I'm next! LOL

Ok. Then lets talk about religion! Audio belief's are kinda like religion, isn't it?

As a child, I was forced to.

Ok. I have an admission to make. Its embarrassing for an audiophile. Due to other circumstances (such as playing in a working band), my listening room was used primarily for rehearsing for many years. For convenience, I used mostly CDs & some tape exclusively. The result was my vinyl & TT werent touched for about 8 years. (YIKES!!!) However, things are now all back up & running. I must tell you, Im amazed at how good the vinyl sounds. And its quiet. Yes, my vinyl has been extremely well cared for. Before I even got things up & running, I bought a new replacement stylus, just as a precaution since I figured the stylus fulcrum (grommet) had probably stiffened up over the years of non-use & I didnt want to expose my records to potential damage resulting from that. At this point, the vinyl sounded very good, but, there was that good old groove noise, ticks & pops, etc. However I noticed that there always seemed to be more noise from the left channel. I tried re-leveling the TT, checking the arm & pickup alignments, etc. No change. Then, sort of by accident, I discovered that the damping brush (Shure V15-V MR) was not allowing the cartridge to track at the proper weight. The bearings in the damping brush felt gritty & did not allow the brush to fall slowly under its own weight. Shure replaced the stylus. And then, after another meticulous setup, guess what? No noise. Under most listening conditions,, there is nary are tick or pop & little if any groove noise, unless of course youre turning up the gain for something like Supertramp at 110Db+. I suspect that not only was the defective damping brush causing problems, but Id be willing to bet the stylus cantilever was also damaged & wasnt aligned properly either, possibly canted to one side (left channel). So I guess what Im saying is that TT/arm/pickup setup can make a big difference as to how much noise you will get from vinyl. In the past, my setup must not have been that good because I really dont remember my records being this quiet.

RE: The golden mean not only specifies room size ratio, but also position of speakers in the room. Im going to be as polite as possible. Because what has just been stated sounds about as stupid as some of the things KH was attempting to argue with me a while back. Anyone making such a statement obviously doesnt understand what the Golden Mean or Fibonacci Sequence is. Nor how to apply it. And it has absolutely nothing to do with determining the position of speakers in the room. The Golden Mean (or Golden Section) is represented by the Greek letter phi. The decimal representation of phi is 1.6180339887499. (Not one-fourth) If, for instance, you start with the numbers 0 and 1, and make a list in which each new number is the sum of the previous two, you get a list like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ... to infinity--> This is called a 'Fibonacci series'. If you then take the ratio of any two sequential numbers in this series, you'll find that it falls into an increasingly narrow range. 1/1 = 1 2/1 = 2 3/2 = 1.5 5/3 = 1.6666... 8/5 = 1.6 13/8 = 1.625 21/13 = 1.61538... 34/21 = 1.61904... and so on The number that this ratio is oscillating around is phi (1.6180339887499...). These ratios or proportions are used to determine which frequencies the room will have resonances at. Where you have gotten the idea that the Golden Mean specifies speaker placement to be one fourth of the length of the room away from the back wall, and one fourth of the width of the room away from the side walls is beyond me. Id like to see you do the math on the above sequence of numbers & come up with a value of one fourth¼. The Geometry: If you have a rectangle whose sides are related by phi (say, for instance, 13 x 8), that rectangle is said to be a Golden Rectangle. It has the interesting property that, if you create a new rectangle by 'swinging' the long side around one of its ends to create a new long side, then that new rectangle is also Golden. In the case of our 13 x 8 rectangle, the new rectangle will be (13 + 8 =) 21 x 13. Anyone see any one-fourths in this? RE: The sweet spot needs to be in the center of the room one fourth of the way from the front wall It is not possible to be in the center of the room if you are one fourth of the way from the front wall in three dimensional space. Furthermore, if you position the speakers as you have proposed, you will be positioned in the same frontal plane as the speakers themselves. You & the speakers will both be one-fourth of the distance from the front wall. RE: Khorns do not have to be in the corners. So what shape are you proposing those 3x4 false walls be? Parabolic? Convex? Trapezodial? (actually, I believe the correct term PWK coined is false corners). Its still has to be in a corner to achieve proper performance. And while Negligible improvement will be obtained from extending further than four (4) feet from the corner (note: CORNER), its obvious from Gary Gillums statement (Klipsch Dope From Hope False Corners Vol. 15 No. 5) that further improvement can be obtained with a larger false corner or true room corners, albeit negligible. Every time the stage has been confined by adding artificial corners, the results have been less satisfying than where natural corners were used. (Experiences In Stereophony, Audio, July 1955, Paul W. Klipsch) RE: There is a minimum room length of 16 feet required to fully develop the 35 Hz of the Khorns. The rooms diagonal distance may be used to calculate the lowest fundamental full wave frequency. And using the Half-Room Principal, this dimension may be effectively doubled. Using the Pythagorean Theorem, one may calculate the diagonal distance of a rectangular room. Using 35Hz as the lowest frequency to be produced, a 35Hz tone has a wavelength of slightly more than 32 feet. A 14x10 room will have a diagonal distance of 17.2 feet. 17.2 x 2 = 34 feet, well within low frequency tolerance as 34 feet equals a 33Hz tone. This is especially true for a speaker like the Klipschorn which was designed for room corner placement. (see Room Dimensions for Optimum Listening and the Half-Room Principal, IRE Vol. AU-6, No. 1, Jan-Feb 1958, Paul W. Klipsch) RE: For proper sound staging and imaging the speakers need to be one fourth of the length of the room away from the back wall, and one fourth of the width of the room away from the side walls. This is only valid for speakers that were designed specifically for non-corner placement in an attempt to have the speaker ignore the rooms physical & acoustical properties. If one ignores the rooms physical & acoustical properties, how are you to maximize speaker performance to take advantage ideal (or even near ideal) acoustical/room conditions? You cant. Those opposed to corner speakers, should be subject to scrutiny for motive, for certainly their views are the opposite of the scientists who have been mainly responsible for the creation of the art and of evaluation and advancing its features. PWK You need to do some more studying regarding things like Basic Principles of Stereophonic Sound, W.B. Snow, or the Bell Labs Symposium on Auditory Perspective. The laws of physics have not changed since 1934. And neither has the human auditory apparatus. Welcome to the Forum

Those old Grundig's actually sounded pretty good.

Doubling the power will produce 3 decibels of additional output. It takes 10 times the power to make it sound twice as loud. The difference between a 25 watt amp & a 75 watt amp is only about 4.5 decibels. You just don't want the amp to be "clipping" as it reaches beyond maximum output. Too little power can damage a speaker faster than having a large reserve of power. I'm not an RB5 expert, but it appears they have an efficiency rating of 96Db per watt per meter. 1watt=96 decibels 2=99 4=102 8=105 16=108 32=111 64=114 Don't forget you have 2 speakers & 2 channels of amp power. So add +3Db to the actual result because you are doubling what one speaker/amp channel can produce. In a live reverberant sound field in rooms the size we typically listen in, there is not much, if any drop off in sound level beyond 12 feet. The sound level drops by 3Db every doubling of distance. One good clean watt is better than 3 dirty ones. So as long as you're not expecting to play cannon shots or something like The Who at live levels, the choice is yours!

I've been wondering about this for many years. I have some vintage JBL D140F bass drivers that I'm not currently using. I've thought about installing these in the Khorns. This driver is similar to the D(E & K)130 except that they are designed specifically for bass, including organ pedal tones. The cones are much heavier/stiffer & the cone excursion ability is double that of the 130. I've seen these used in pro audio horn loaded bass bins in the past. Anyone have any experience/thoughts with this?

There is no such thing as an absolute optimum room size for the Klipschorn. Obviously, the larger the room, the fewer acoustical problems you will have, especially at lower frequencies. More important than room size, are the rooms proportions. As mentioned above, there is a mathematical ratio commonly called the Golden Mean. Also known as the Golden Section or Fibonacci Sequence. As applied to room acoustics, it can predict the Eigenton distribution of a room (the rooms modes where resonant frequencies will occur, and/or overlap). The smaller the room, the more modal problems occur, primarily in the lower frequencies. Also the smaller the room gets, the more (higher) frequencies are affected. The Golden Mean ratios for proper room proportions is: 1:1.26:1.59 (1 to 1.3 to 1.6) (height to width to length). There are a wide range of ratios that are suitable. And certainly good sounding rooms can be found outside of these proportions. Obviously the worst case condition would be cubical where all 3 room dimensions are the same as that of a particular wavelength of sound, causing a substantial room resonance at that frequency. A range from 1 to 1.26 to 1.59, to 1 to 1.6 to 2.5 can be considered good. The old studio 116 at Klipsch in Hope, AK. was 10x16x25, which falls outside of the ideal ratio but was still considered good. Just as important (if not more) are the rooms acoustics. It will do you little good to get the rooms proportions ideal, and then ignore proper BROADBAND diffusion & absorption, and reverberation time relative to frequency. See arttos klipschorn room in the architectural topic area for a more in depth description of construction methods & acoustic techniques.

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR ****ing MIND? (wonders never cease, ROFLMFAO) In case you haven't noticed, 'Bose' is a four letter word.

Glad to see everyone is enjoying it! On the subject of phono cartidges........that Klipsch phono cartridge looked extremely similar to a phono cartridge Mark Leveinson was selling around that same time. Interestingly, Klipsch showed up at the Chicago Summer Consumer Electroncis Show (after many years of absence at trade shows) with all Mark Levinson gear around that same time. Made me wonder if there was a potential "merger" in progress at the time.

Andy, Dean Markley makes a line of guitar & bass strings called "Blue Steel" that are cryogenically treated. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/sid=030326153811012249014048594156/g=strings/s=bass/search/detail/base_pid/101074/

OK friends. Ive got the news from the horses mouth. A company called 300Below, located in Peoria, Illinois, that does cryogenic treatment of metals has verified that cryogenic treatment of vacuum tubes can be done. HOWEVER, ideally, the internal metal components should be treated BEFORE installation in the glass envelope. He said there have been RARE instances where the entire tube was treated after manufacture, but in those cases the envelope is usually made from metal or some kind of molecularly tolerant plastic, not glass. He confirmed that the differing expansion/contraction ratios of the glass & metal would almost assuredly fracture the glass causing vacuum leakage.

Cryogenic treatment of metals is a real process. It does work. And it has applications. Its used for many metal components. Everything from car parts to guns & guitar strings. Some guitar & bass strings, for instance, are cryogenically treated, & they supposedly last longer. Ive used them. They feel soft & spongy. The caveat is that they also dont have the zip or zing that brand new strings typically have. They sound more like strings that have been used a while. So basically, you dont notice as much deterioration, because youre already partly there, sonically speaking. Cryogenic treatment of the metal internal components of a vacuum tube may be of some benefit. However, it appears that the individual selling these cryogenically treated tubes is full of Bull****. These tubes are all from well-known manufacturers/sources. So they are obviously not custom-made. Therefore, its implied that the entire tube was cryogenically treated after manufacture. Glass is actually a liquid. And as we all know, liquids have the unique property of expanding when cooled. Metal, as other solid materials, contract when cooled. It seems to me that putting the entire vacuum tube in a 300 degree cryogenic bath would promptly break the vacuum seal at the pins (not to mention possibly fracturing the glass) as the glass envelope expands & the metal contracts at different rates. And in this particular situation, does so under an extreme condition. Furthermore, if the vacuum seal somehow remains intact, I dont see how the metal itself could undergo cryogenic treatment being protected inside the glass envelope. This product gets my vote for the Hocus Pocus Award. Also The Laughing All the Way to the Bank Award.

I'm going to buy them! I want to know how he made those "y" things. I bet those "y" things sound awesome. They kind of remind me of those old Mercedes "gull wings", in WHITE

Klipsch "2PH3" phantom center channel circut from Klipsch Dope From Hope dealer newsletter Klipsch2ph31.pdf

Jim, some of the earlier vintage tube amps & receivers had a center channel output. I think McIntosh made some. The schematics Klipsch published were basically the same as the McIntosh circuts. You dont need to try & install this in the preamps chassis. In a vintage piece of equipment it will probably degrade its value. Ive been using a setup like this for 20+ years. There is no loss of separation. Someone on the forum mentioned adding a 10ohm (?) resistor to ground on the right & left channel to decrease crosstalk. I havent tried this. On the other hand, Im not experiencing any crosstalk problems. In fact, to me, even the standard circut seems to effectively increase separation. For instance, when a signal is present in only one channel, the opposite channel is effectively reduced in output. If the output level of the center speaker is properly adjusted (usually 3Db to 6Db less than that of either right or left main speaker) sound field depth is also increased, not decreased as some people seem to think. And as an added benefit, the general listening area where acceptable & stable imaging can be experienced is increased. I think youll want to use one of the circuts with at least the adjustable center channel level, not just a center channel bridge. I used extremely high precision military grade pots (like 6 turns from full off to full on) & 1% resistors. No such thing as the best tube amp for the Heritage series. Only YOU can define & quantify that. Its your ears. At the very least, extremely low noise & hum should be at the top of your list. All 3 of my speakers use the AA type network, albeit, modified by removing the zener diode protection on the tweeters, no fuses on the speakers as a whole, & disconnecting the inductor on the woofer. I havent made any comparisons to other networks. Al Klappenbergs (forum member) ALK networks seem to be fairly popular & well built. Im considering switching over to those. http://www.alkeng.com/klipsch.html

Try this DIY speaker cable project. Works great! It is a DIY project that anyone can do provided you obtain precisely the correct materials. These cables will produce the most dramatic improvement in your system, more than any single thing will, guaranteed! I made these cables by stringing together southern north pole magnetically petrified hardwood balls of various sizes using tightly rolled up BLACK electrical tape. The entire cable structure is completely suspended in a Strawberry Banana Jello pudding (must be Jello brand) sprinkled with loose debris from #2 grade steel wool which also provides the shielding (I've found that soaking the steel wool in a coffee can filled with water for a week so that the iron oxides build up on the wool improves the shielding characteristic by a whole 0.0001%)(Beaver brand steel wool works best). I used common straight pins at both ends for grounding. The cables are terminated using invisible gas filled (methane) highly polished uranium rods. Maximum performance can be obtained from these cables by suspending them precisely 0.003 meters from the ceiling or wall surfaces (not the floor). For those of you not so inclined to take on a project of this magnitude I can make these for you in any length up to 17 for $1,000,000,000.00 each (US$). Additional lengths cost $1 per foot up to a maximum of 5,280 feet. Seriously, this is the least of your worries, especially if you're new to this. Just use high quality materials, good CLEAN connections, etc., & avoid the hocus pocus stuff & you'll have money left over to buy more recordings.

I could have sworn ohm had something to do with the 60's.