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Mr. Roy please?


colterphoto1

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Ian,

Welcome to the Forum!! I suspect there are several of us collecting the Klipsch Pro gear and would love to learn all there is to learn as Michael asked above. Please tell us of your roll "from day one and out before the end" and fill us in on all you can.

Thanks so much for your willingness to share!!

Blessings,

Bill

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G'day Y'all,

I will get back to this forum with more time permitting and set out the timeline, rise and fall of Klipsch Pro. But just to quickly let you know my role with pro and past with Klipsch ...... I was the distributor for Klipsch in Australia for 18 years until I moved to Hope AR in 1992. I joined Klipsch & Assoc and helped facilitate the sale of the pro "division" to WWR Technology and then moved over to work for them with an office within K&A in Oakhaven. I eventually became president of Klipsch Pro building a new production plant in Hope along the way. I led the development of most of what was the pro product line. More later but ask questions if you wish.

Ian Thacker

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Excellent!! This will be great . . . .Mate. [;)]

Where do you live now, Ian?

I, for one, will be most interested in the complete lineage of pro products, from large to small, and the design/application considerations behind each model.

Golly, Ian, there's an entire book in just the speaker models. Are you sure you're up to it??

Gratefully,

Bill

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Bill, a book will one day be written when I return to Australia and I will be "naming names" so to speak. But to quickly answer you I worked with everybody at Klipsch from P Wilbur and down and even married one. Most of us old school Klipsch folk are no longer with the company except for Jim Hunter amongst a few. I now live in Little Rock, AR and still have close ties to Hope. I moved from Klipsch to Community, then to EV/Midas Klark Teknik and eventually dbx/Allen & Heath until I just had enough of corporate USA and we returned to Arkansas. By the way Klipsch pro had a variety of owners ........................

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Greetings Mr. Thacker and Welcome to the Madness (or rather a return to the Madness for which you are responsible),

As Mr. Hendrix states, there are several of us who collect, restore, and utilize Klipsch pro gear and would be interested in stories of 'what begat what', how products were designed, the history of Pro including the transfer to WWR, back, and the demise.

Personally, I own the KP600 system, MCM, LSI, HIP, KP682, 362, 301, 250, 201 and KSM 2 and 12 monitors. So any stories would be great!

I had the good fortune to work at Klipsch for 18 months recently and was writing FAQ's for our web site and working with Hunter to catalog some of the Klipsch archives when my tour of duty was cut short. I wish I'd been around in the heyday!

Michael

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I moved from Klipsch to Community, then to EV/Midas Klark Teknik and eventually dbx/Allen &amp

Thackmate; your bio doesn't give your real name. I was with EVI 1995 through 2000, first in Oklahoma City with Altec and eventually in Minneapolis with Telex. I wonder if we ever met.

Greg

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Of course the Heresy was initially designed as a sound reinforcement system and for that matter so was the laScala or laScallywag as we called it. But the "Klipsch Commercial" line eventuated to be just a hard wearing black paint job of regular product in order to sell it. The Heresy was eventually ported and the MCM was developed then the KSM's then the KP600. While the consumer line grew so did the pro line. The pro line development was in one way to add creditibility to the consmer line and to research new technology that worked its way down to consumer. Now when the Pro Division split off we had a limited range of products that only a few sold well. The development was focussed directly at cinema, MI and fixed install. For fixed install the houses of worship business was the greater potential so we went for it with trap boxes, reliable flying hardware and three color options, raw birch to stain, black and the white hot selling white product. We did do a successful shot at the MI business with carpeted OSB boxes to make up for slowing sales of the painted line. This was mostly the KP2500 .... carpet version of KP250 and KP4800 sub-woofer sets. We had good success in dance clubs and that boosted sales of MWM's that got us all fired up to go after the cinema business. Clearly the cinema products and business was sold by Klipsch Inc to WWR but there was a dispute over this, (amongst many it seemed). Nevertheless we reworked the TMCM system to what it is today borrowing from KP600 and we also made the KP201 and KP250 sit flat against a wall in a downfiring box design. The cinema series was then designated the KPT prefix for Klipsch Pro Theatre. We had spent much time and energy on developing an "all round" series of systems that featured cabinets molded in polycarbonates and tested with amazing results. It had new tractrix horns and trap cabinets. There was an 8" 2-way, 12" 3-way, 15" 3-way and a compact sub. These never came to market and I still have the designs. The 8" model did actually come out under another brand that featured a strong man holding up the planet.

more later

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Interesting stuff, Ian. Golly, I don't want to get into "naming names" kind of stuff, but will certainly look forward to understanding the development and production of the pro speakers. I have had a great time collecting the pro speakers and re-living some of my younger days. I worked for the largest U.S. Klipsch dealer from 1970 to 1980 and used lots of LaScala's and pro Heresy's for the live band PA work we did. We had one of the early sets of MCM's that Paul and John Fricks brought to the dealership to demonstrate. That was fun!!

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Greg..... my name is Ian Thacker and I was GM of KT Group with my office in Buchanan, MI. I reported to Dave Merrey in Kidderminster until he was let go. Who are you?

Ian, I recognize your name but it's been too long to associate a face with it.

I am Greg Berchin; I was originally the DSP engineer with the digital group in Oklahoma City, also under Dave Merrey. We developed the Merlin ISP-100, then eventually moved to Minneapolis, where we attempted to develop several KT digital products before being disbanded.

Welcome to the forum. I hang out here because, in addition to DSP, I like to dabble in horn loudspeaker design. Lots of nice folks here.

Greg

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Thanks for the great intro...

'cinema, MI and fixed install', ok MI = ??

I was with Calliope Sound (now Indy Pro Audio) in the early 80's put MCM's into discos, roller skating rinks and had 480's and LSI's in gentleman's clubs around Indy in the 80's. It was fun doing the hookups in the afternoons when business was slow. Suffice to say that 'roadie' had a real good time back in the day.

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MI = Music Instrument and the term in the context of speakers here is primarilly what sound reinforcement products are sold through music stores like Guitar Center, Washington Music etc. They are used as small PA rigs or in mobile disco etc. Carpet covered was desired to reduce box maintenance and the other side to that was they are cheaper to build and therefore can go to market at lower prices. This "K-Pro" line was done as a fill in to maintain and actually gain market share while we developed moulded poly products.

In fact what we were doing in many cases at Pro was "parts bin engineering". We would adapt exixting parts to new designs and product upgrades.

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