Cigar Bum's Born-Again Cornscalas....

[bigrfish]

I got the Cigar Bum's Cornscala cabinets modified and populated with components and they sound better than I thought they would. Here's a list of what I installed in them with a little info:

Woofers: Selenium 15PW3-SLF 15" 40-4KHz, 250RMS, X-max 3.0mm, 98DB 1W/1m $70.19 ea from Parts Express

Tweeter Horn: Selenium HM 17-25, $5.60 ea on e-bay

Midrange Horn: H4427, mfg unknown, 1" bolt-on, 500 Hz cut-off, 17.5 "W by 10 5/8 H, $39.95 ea on e-bay ( a beefy, attractive piece BTW)

HF Driver: Eminence PSD 2002S-8 1" Titanium Driver $58.97 from parts express. I only bought one b/c I already had a spare with a brand new dome

Midrange Driver: Selenium D 250 X 1" Phenolic Horn Driver $35.10 ea from Parts Express

L-Pads, 100w 8-ohm, 4 ea, one for each of the HF and MF horn drivers $11.88 ea

Crossovers: Eminence PXB 3:3K5 3-way 500/3500Hz, 12 dB/octave LP, 6 dB/octave MP, 18 dB/octave HP $54.97 ea from Parts Express

Also, a pair of Selenium ADF25-25 Horn Adapters were needed, Parts Express $3.76 ea

Dayton Nickel binding posts, 4pr, $6.45 ea, Parts Express

and other incidentals like speaker mounting tape, hurricane nuts, spare crossover fuses, black silicone caulk, etc...

The rationale for this particular brace of purchases is that I found the best fit of components by specifications relative to the project for the budget I had to work with, with the happy accident that the Mid and High horns took very minimal modification to the cabs...I only had to shave off about 3/4 of an inch from the top of the midrange horn opening in the motorboard, and had to fill about a half inch on either end with silicone caulk.

The woofers were not as large as the drilled bolt-hole circle in the bass-bin motorboard, so it was not possible to mount the woofers up against the inside of the bass bin, and I had to mount them through the holes from the front...dropped the woofers into the holes and centered them, made four wooden lugs, relieved about 3/4 of an inch so they would fit over the woofer rims, and fastened with SS machine screws from the inside of the cabinet, of course with a good washer, through the motorboard, and into the lugs via the hurricane nuts..hurricane nuts from parts express were a boon. If I had not ordered them, I'd still be sitting there wondering what to do. I used the 3/8" foam mounting tape to line the interior of the woofer-holes, and black Silicone caulking to plug any extraneous holes, and they are now there for the duration, a very firm and serviceable fixation. I cut the excess screws off with a Dremel cut-off wheel(or 2 or 3 or 4), painted the lugs with black spray, and the grills fit fine and you can't see the fixation. I could not feel any air chuffing around the woofer cone/frame or from any of the old holes with the back of the hand test (more sensitive b/c of nerve endings around hair follicles).

There were departures from the norm. One is that I used a heavy-duty titanium driver for the High-Frequency horn instead of the typical tweeter set-up. I already had one of the Eminence titanium drivers lying around from my previous adventures with the KP 3002's, and I knew them to be a little bit prejudiced toward the high-end and fully capable of making all the HF I wanted or needed; plus, they are more durable than the whizzers, and they fit the horn that would fit into and cover up the HF horn holes in the motorboards. The other main departure is that I used L-pads on the mids and highs. Another is the front-mounting of the woofers with home made chocks rather than from the inside.

Are they typical? No. Am I happy with them? Yes...but I have not had the chance to wring them out when the neighbors were not home and I was not totally consumed with fatigue. They sound great at very low volume levels, very smooth and balanced. I listened to a Roberta Flack album that was recorded at one of the velerable old analog studios in New York with I speculate telefunken tube preamps, noise floor through the basement, and heard things I never heard before, had me perking up my ears, so that's a good thing.

This proves to me at least that it is possible to take a spartan approach, use logic and the published specs, and make an educated guess about what to put into these cornscala cabinets and have a good result without breaking the bank. This is ballpark about $560.00 of parts, and then there is the matter of fasteners, caulk, screws, and other hardware miscellany that I figure should run about $100. if not a little more, and gas to Lowes...I was there at least every 12 hours for a couple of days!!

These speakers don't sound like the K-horn, 'cause they're not k-horns, but to my ear they sound better than either a stock Cornwall or a stock LaScala, and I have some experience in that regard having worked with and known Kerry Likis, the only respectable Klipsch dealer ever in Birmingham, for over 40 years. I know what good sounds like, and these are good. I can hardly wait to get the chance to really check them out, maybe after this weekend.

Chuck Snow

PS Thanks to C.B. What a blessing you have been!!!

[Bill H.]

Born Again-----------Hallelujah !

[bigrfish]

Born Again-----------Hallelujah !

Bill, I just got home from working all night and my ears are fresh...put on a CD made by the Taylor Guitar Company and Windam Hill records entitled "Sounds of Wood And Steel 2" which I had given up on listening to because it just did not sound good at all. Taylor obviously wanted to paint their guitars in the best light possible, so no trouble or expense was spared in making these recordings, and several luminary artists who use Taylors were recruited and hand-picked for this project. Taylor guitars are remarkable instruments. Bob Taylor is a lot like Mr Klipsch was, maybe with a little less audacity and eccentricity...but man, Oh, Man...how this CD sounded on these Born-Again Cornscalas....so much detail and texture and freedom from coloration and smoothness. I think that I picked the exactly right components for these cabinets and absolutely would not change a thing...they are so pleasing and gratifying...especially at the total cost figure I am at here. What a trip!

Hallelujah, indeed!!

[Invidiosulus]

Oooh,

I love my taylor,

I bet that CD sounds great on those speakers

-Josh

[CIGARBUM]

As I sit here enjoying one of those wonderful cigars, I am so glad the cabinets have found a good home. It sounds like you have some pretty good components in there and I bet they do sound real good also.

Enjoy my friend, it has been a pleasure

CigarBum

[tigerwoodKhorns]

READ THE FORUM RULES!!!

You are not allowed to make a post like this without at least a few photos. It's just cruel.

[Marvel]

I don't have one of mine by itself... Love my Taylor, too.

[bigrfish]

TWKH,

I am truly sorry and humbly repent. My Canon digital camera is currently on the fritz and will not make a picture. It is in need of repair. There however will be opportunities for photos, as I did not get my 12ga wiring on time to do this job, so I used a temporary field expedient and wired the internals up with lamp cord. I will at some point in the near-term future replace all that wiring, but will wait to do that until my picture-making apparatus is up to snuff. Actually my work is not as slick as some of the other peoples' b/c I had to take these components and make them work in the environment. When I started the project, I noticed several of the woofer screws were bent like stainless steel spaghetti and wondered why it was, looked like CB got mad at the screws or something, then found out why when I started preliminary fitment of the woofers...those holes inscribed a circle that was too large. I had to get McGuyver on the things to mount them. I just had to sit down with a cigar and a cup of coffee (yes, as a result of this whole thing, I bought a box of nice but MUCH less expensive cigars than the ones I traded to the CB for these cabinets) and figure out how the heck I was going to mount these woofers with nothing to put a screw into. If I had run screws through the holes for them in the woofer flange, they would have been dangling in air inside the cab. I had to plug all those holes with silicone caulk...just put a piece of tape on the backside of the holes, pumped them ful of caulk, and pressed on them a bit to make a flange on the inside to seal the holes ...it worked admirably. Chopping the top out of the midrange horn hole was a little iffy, (jig saws are the spawn of satan) but the butchery was covered by the horn flange. A half to 3/4 inch seam of black silicone caulking on either end of the midrange horn flanges to finish plugging up the holes was not particularly aesthetically pleasing. This was like doing surgery in a mash unit or like cracking someone's chest in the ER, not pretty at all, but highly productive in the end...there is nothing pretty to look at here, but praise be the Almighty, we hear music and don't see it. The end result is good, and they look just like they did when the Cigar Bum ws listening to them. I think I counted 22 wiring connections in each cabinet, top and bottom. I got so tired of solder smoke in my nose for days.....

[Mike Dubay]

Great job on the rejuenavated Cornscalas! Like to see some one mix things up and try different drivers. I used the selenium D250X in my cornscalas which saved amount $250 on the build. Enjoy!

[hklinker]

READ THE FORUM RULES!!!

You are not allowed to make a post like this without at least a few photos. It's just cruel.

Ditto!

However your narrative has brought a smile to the face of this former B'hamian. I have fond memories of going down to Likus and checking out the great stuff. Today I'm in ATL visiting my son who is still in mourning after the Iron Bowl.

This area seems to be a hotbed of Cornscala posters like Marvel, JWC and CigarBum and you. Some day there should be a convocation of CS disciples that would allow us to share ideas, swap plans... wait a minute, that's what this forum is! DUH!

I am curious to know how much the whole project set you back. It seems you got a lot of speaker for the dough!

Herb

[bigrfish]

Herb said, " I am curious to know how much the whole project set you back. It seems you got a lot of speaker for the dough!"

Herb, the first post in the thread details the retail cost of the components and sources. Add in a box of cigars and about $100.00 for Lowe's and some other misc hardware and that's the ticket...well under $1000. To build them from scratch and install wood horns, fancy crossovers, etc would be in the ballpark of about $3200.00.

[hklinker]

Of course, IF I had read the whole thread, I would have seen your final tally!

Hope you put up some photos once your camera gets fixed. Sounds like a new camera for the fish for Christmas???

Herb

[bigrfish]

I have been listening to them by themselves (have 3 other pr of Klipsch in the same room) for the last few days, trying to get them dialed in and understanding what they are and aren't, what they'll be and do, etc, and found something interesting.

With Klipsch speakers I have listened to in the past, there is a quality of the sound that I would describe as a certain "percussiveness" , not a boominess, just a certain attack the bass had that I was missing in these. By fiddling with settings I accidentally found that I could reproduce that quality to a degree by turning my amp output all the way up, where I had been running it about 65%. I guess it's a gain stage management issue, where I was backing off on the power amp (a Crown XLS 602) and increasing various mixer and peripheral settings.

Now, with the power amp turned all the way up, and backing off on some of the preamp-level and post-processing settings(Mixer, EQ, BBE, etc) that old nostalgic quality is there in spades. I have the attenuators turned up all the way on the midrange and HF horns, (the same operating condition as if they were straight-wired) and the mixer running pretty flat, with the bass boosted a little in the EQ (a Rane pro unit with excellent adjacent filter characteristics), and they sound good, coherent, can't hear the transitions, Low-Freq attack is there, mids and highs are pleasant, can walk around and it sounds pretty good, so horn "beaminess" is minimal, and I am a happy camper. I still have had to use the attenuators on some albums that were mixed and mastered a little too bright to my liking, and I am glad I put them in there, just to have if I think I need or want them.

Currently I am listening to a Kenny Loggins album, "Outside From The Redwoods" and it is sounding excellent in here this morning!! (Is Sonny Landreth an alien??) I can see that integrating the other speakers may be problematic...my tentative plan is to have a pr of '73 O.W. H's on the same side of the room as the CornScalas (both finished in wood and of similar timbre), the Eminence 15" sub in a Gallien Krueger ported bass cab and a center channel consisting of a Dr Bill black box, an Eminence titanium driver through a short, wide Selenium horn (HG 23-25) respectively driven by either side of a Phase Linear 400 for the main side, along with the XLS 602 and the CS's, and a pair of KP-3002's and a pr of H-1 industrials through a TC electronics reverb and delay processor and a Crown XLS 402 on the other side of the room...kind of a home-made surround deal. It sounded pretty good before the CornScalas, but I have a couple of bad cables so I had to order some new interconnects for the back side of the room from MonoPrice.com and need to get either my Hafler DH-101 or my Spectro-Acoustics Model 217 preamps repaired...both are kinda limping right now, in order to get it up to snuff, and I have finally succumbed and caved in and decided to hook up the TV sound to the system...I guess it's a new day around here.

Has anybody put an 18" woofer in these CornScala bass bins yet??? That's the next question coming to mind.

I read someone's e-mail signature tag line the other day that said if you are not blowing stuff up there's something you're not doing right.

Apparently there's some truth to that??

[bigrfish]

FYI re source for custom-made decently priced interconnection cables.....

Pacific Custom Cable Inc, 4170 B Place NW Auburn, WA 98001 http://www.pacificcable.com/

This is the only place I could find RCA male to 1/4" Male Mono cables to interface my consumer audiophile-grade preamp with my pro-grade TC Electronics multi-effects processor. The cables I have there now I made at home by cutting off and wiring in some 1/4" male connectors onto some RCA patch cords I had lying around, leftovers from some DVD machines or TV's or something, and they were spindly and not up to the grade of the rest of these components, a definite weakness that needed to be addressed.

Interfacing consumer-grade and pro-grade components is not easy, in terms of finding the cables. Usually, MonoPrice comes through for me, but they did not have this one, and also I tried American Consumer Cables, and they did not have it either. These people from Washington State will even make this cable in a custom length for me, of good materials, and at a very good price, also....very comparable to the excellent pricing from MonoPrice.

Happy wire-dogging everyone...