What's Wrong - Forte II's

[wuzzzer]

some things are upgrades and others are just maintanence. If you had a v6 firing on only four cylanders, youd get it repaired, not upgraded...

I've modified/upgraded almost every vehicle I've owned with the exception of my wife's car since she doesn't care about such things. Intake/exhaust/suspension, nothing radical but I like doing things like that. I'm the same way with my speakers.

[woolenmammoth]

thats all well an fine, however too many folks who are not technicians look at replacing a 20 year old cap as an "upgrade" when really its just simple maintainence that is required, not optional. This quickly could boil down to a discussion on symantics, but it is an important point for people to understand. Changing a dried out cap is like changing the oil on your car. I dont think many people would refer to an oil change as an upgrade and I dont think many people would resist an oil change because they dont want a fancy upgrade which they have been made to believe is snakeoil (and rightly so with the nonsense of hifi sometimes).

You can of course put very expensive components in your crossover, however, if you have 20 year old mylar caps in there and that bipolar electrolytic, putting cheap, fresh, new parts in there will improve the performance of your speaker. Not because you have upgraded it, but because its out of spec. Now, you can upgrade that electrolytic to a poly, you can change the iron core inductors for air core, you can do lots of stuff. But the simple act of putting fresh caps in an old crossover or amp is just flat out maintenence.

[WMcD]

I suspect they are damaged and maybe that is why they came back into your possession. That is just my suspicious self. My FII still sound great.

Before you start up grading anything, you should get them back to where they are operating correctly.

I'd suggest:

Put them on a chair or counter where you can see things.

Take off the front grill. You need a butter knife or a big paper clip which you have put a right angle bend about 0.25 inches from the end. You can get this hook behind the grill at an edge. This is just to pull off the front grill, which is held in place by magnets. It will pop off.

With spread fingers, push in on the front woofer gently. A good one will travel smoothly for 0.25 inches. If it feels gritty and jamming, you've got a partially hung up voice coil which has been damaged. It might still produce some sound but little bass.

While you're pushing it in, see if the rear passive moves. The box should be air tight and therefore when you push in on the front, the rear passive will move out. If not, you've got a leak someplace. Inspect the woofer and passive for damage.

As an electical test, if you have something like a 6 volt battery, hook it up to wires feeding the input cup. (Disconnected from the amp). A good woofer will give an impressive thump as you connect and disconnect. If not, something is wrong.

While you have the unit at ear/eye level. Try playing music and listen to the mid and tweeter individually. Some people use a paper towel roller tube as a stethoscope.

Further, even though both may be damaged, you might find interesting differences which will indicate something gone astray.

Let us know what you find.

Wm McD

[BE36]

I suspect they are damaged and maybe that is why they came back into your possession. That is just my suspicious self. My FII still sound great.

Before you start up grading anything, you should get them back to where they are operating correctly.

I'd suggest:

Put them on a chair or counter where you can see things.

Take off the front grill. You need a butter knife or a big paper clip which you have put a right angle bend about 0.25 inches from the end. You can get this hook behind the grill at an edge. This is just to pull off the front grill, which is held in place by magnets. It will pop off.

With spread fingers, push in on the front woofer gently. A good one will travel smoothly for 0.25 inches. If it feels gritty and jamming, you've got a partially hung up voice coil which has been damaged. It might still produce some sound but little bass.

While you're pushing it in, see if the rear passive moves. The box should be air tight and therefore when you push in on the front, the rear passive will move out. If not, you've got a leak someplace. Inspect the woofer and passive for damage.

As an electical test, if you have something like a 6 volt battery, hook it up to wires feeding the input cup. (Disconnected from the amp). A good woofer will give an impressive thump as you connect and disconnect. If not, something is wrong.

While you have the unit at ear/eye level. Try playing music and listen to the mid and tweeter individually. Some people use a paper towel roller tube as a stethoscope.

Further, even though both may be damaged, you might find interesting differences which will indicate something gone astray.

Let us know what you find.

Wm McD

William you always make it sound simple - Sign of True Genuis.

I would fix what is wrong by start doing what William says and upgrade the speakers and amps till hitting the magic piont.

[Trickster]

I'm new to this forum, I've owned my Forte II's since 1995( the day I brought them home was one of the happiest days of my life). I also have noticed that my Forte II's sound a little dirty as of late. I thought maybe my amp wasn't matching what the speakers like to operate on. I'm running a Denon DRA 335, and have for years

I'm now looking at Carver cm 1090 amps as a power solution..Going from approx 35 watts per ch to 100 watts per ch. What do you guys think? Will this make a difference in sound?..

After reading some of the comments, I'm curious to know how hard it would be to do the work on these speakers myself, or would other here have any ideas for me?.

[rgdawsonco]

I'm pretty sure the woofers are fine (thank goodness). I decided to order some new diaphrams and caps from Crites, and we'll see what that does. I plan on doing the diaphrams first. First the tweeters, then the mids. I'll listen after each step and see what changes I can hear. I'll post my results as soon as I can. These things aren't obviously damaged, but I do suspect some sort of damage/wear causing the poor sound.

[Arky]

Would loosening & re-tightening the screws to the inside wiring help?

[rgdawsonco]

Ladies and Gentleman.

Got home about 10 last night and found the new diaphragms and crossover kits in a box on the porch. So I replaced the tweeter and midrange diaphragms in one speaker and the difference was night and day. But it was too late by then to continue so saved the rest for this morning. I replaced the mid-range and tweeter diaphragms in the other and waited for everyone to wake up so I could do some semi-serious listening. The crossover parts are still in the box; I've not gotten to that yet.

First, some observations. I could not "see" any sign of damage whatsoever with any of the diaphragms I replaced. The old ones looked fine to me. The tweeter diaphragm I took out had some fiberglass wadding in the area behind the dome. I suppose it is supposed to be there, but I think probably some of that fiberglass wadding had frayed was occupying space in the magnet gap along with the diaphragm coil. Also, when I replaced the old diaphragm with the new titanium ones from Crites, it seemed to me that the plastic "thingy" (phase plug? not sure what it is called.) in the bottom of the horn was actually touching the dome of the tweeter diaphragm. It impossible to see by looking, but I could hear a slight "crinkle" sound of the diaphrahm when I placed and removed the horn. I cut n additional a spacing washer using an index card and the issue went away.

Now for the mids. I had these forte II's serviced once in ~1995 because I was hearing something funny on certain piano notes. Now I might not be able to find my car registration on tax day, but somehow I can sure find my 15 year old service tag on some Klipsch speakers that I bought 18 years ago - go figure. Well I looked again at what they had done back then. It said they replaced the midrange diaphragms and cleaned metal shavings out of the magnet gap. It said they replaced the diaphragm with a K-53 diaphragm. Now the astute observer would recognize that the forte II does not have K-53's, it has K-61's. (The original forte had the K-53.) I started to think that this may be the "problem". But the diaphragms I took out looked identical the the new ones I got from Crites, and perhaps they are interchangeable with the K-53 diaphrams, I'm not sure.

Results. TADA!!!! These things sound like forte's II's are supposed to sound. Authoritative. In your face. Rock and Roll babay. They might still need some breaking in, but so far, I have to call "touchdown". This has done the trick.

BTW, I happened to send an e-mail for Klipsch asking if they still had diaphragms available for the forte II's. They said yes. I happened to get mine from Crites, but I guess if you want "original" you can still get them from Klipsch.

So I am a happy camper! I'll let you know how the crossover repair kits go when I get to it, but that might be several weeks away given my current schedule.

Thanks to the Klipsch community for all the advice, opnions, and suggestions.

[wuzzzer]

As you can see in my signature, the only original parts in my Forte IIs are the active and passive woofers and the cabinets. I personally feel that each component I replaced was an upgrade. Some may feel otherwise, but I really, really love the way they sound.

[lyeerluna]

Would like to know what happened after the crossover upgrade. Recently bought some 89 Forte one's and plan on rebuilding the crossovers and replacing the tweeter diaphragms with titanium. I feel my "new" speakers are lacking a bit in the treble dept. Running a new NAD C315BEE amp with Kimber speaker cables and sounds pretty good, but not as great as was hoping. Please let me know your suggestions. Thanks, Brian. kimbrigreen7@gmail.com

[carbon summit]

Hi Brian,

I've got a few pairs of Forte IIs so I'm familiar with the sound of them. I sent the crossovers out of one pair to DeanG for him to rebuild them and also went with titanium tweeter diaphragms from Bob Crites. Since I've got more than one pair its easy for me to compare the difference, and I can say both helped a lot. I know Bob Crites also sells replacement crossovers or you can send him yours too.

[rgdawsonco]

I think rebuilding the crossovers helped...more than I expected. So after buying new mid diaphrams and tweeter diaphrams (titanium) and new crossover parts and trying all combinations of stuff, I ended up linking the original tweeter diaphrams better than the titanium. So I have new mid diaphrams and rebuilt crossovers original woofs and tweets. I think they sound like they are supposed to sound now. If you think your tweeters are lacking its probably your ears [] Hey happens to us all. (OK that was an attempt at a joke.) I'm sure I've lost alot of hearing above 7K, so I was surprised to be able to tell the difference between the tweeter diaphrams. For some reason the originals sounded more to my liking. The titaniums did seem to be "more".

[carbon summit]

I think rebuilding the crossovers helped...more than I expected. So after buying new mid diaphrams and tweeter diaphrams (titanium) and new crossover parts and trying all combinations of stuff, I ended up linking the original tweeter diaphrams better than the titanium. So I have new mid diaphrams and rebuilt crossovers original woofs and tweets. I think they sound like they are supposed to sound now. If you think your tweeters are lacking its probably your ears Hey happens to us all. (OK that was an attempt at a joke.) I'm sure I've lost alot of hearing above 7K, so I was surprised to be able to tell the difference between the tweeter diaphrams. For some reason the originals sounded more to my liking. The titaniums did seem to be "more".

If my son is in another room or there is any noise I can't hear him very well. Point being I've probably got hearing loss as well. That thought was running through my mind the other day. Maybe I'm spinning my tires with the effort I'm putting into this hobby considering I might be missing a lot!

Another thought I had was if it was worth redoing my crossovers when my receiver corrects the sound if its off. Hum... [:^)]