K69 on 402 or 510 and why?

[Stevenarrow]

still trying to follow up with the 510 order...

[Coytee]

 

 

The jump to a 2" throat seems to be a significant jump.  Once you hear it, it's difficult to go back to the smaller horns without a bit of kicking & screaming. (Coytee)

Can you elaborate?  I have heard Moray James and others make the same claim, but without hearing it live, it's hard to imagine.  Does the 2" driver have to be playing at insane listening levels to really shine, or does it help equally well with moderate listening levels?  Can the 2" driver in a two-way cover all the way to the top frequencies?

 

 

 

As has been said, no....you don't have to have them blaring to notice the difference. (though it will probably show the most there) 

 

It's (for me) all about scale.  Some think I'm a volume *****....  and when I have ear muffs (over ear hearing protection) on and I'm using a circular saw or framing nailer....yeah, it's all about volume as I want to hear something through that noise.  That's not normal though.

 

So for me it's all about scale as Cinema Head has alluded to.

 

I'm not a technical type but my understanding is the 2" format has something like 4x the radiating area of a 1" throat....  and has something like 25% of the distortion.  Put differently, the K510 has "X" distortion and a smaller format horn playing the same load might have 4X distortion.

 

So if you are hearing things clear today.....  just imagine what it might be like if you reduced the distortion you might be hearing by 75%.

 

As to the range....  if you look at the 4-way MWM system or perhaps even the 3-way Jubilee you will see the small K510 on top.  It's actually the tweeter for those stacks.

 

I personally don't feel there's any loss over another Klipsch speaker by using these in a 2-way format.  If one has the desire, you can also upgrade from the Klipsch driver to something more fancy... and get the TAD-4002 with the Berrillyum (sp) diaphragm.

 

My personal 2-cents is the top horn with the stock driver is already SO much better than what is coming with the base speaker (K400/K77 for example with the LaScala) that getting the TAD is simply optional.  The K69 on its own will make someone a believer.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Coytee

[Speed]

I would love to upgrade my LS 1's into the 510-K69 combo ! Someone make an easily installed , kit... Please...

[mustang guy]

I would love to upgrade my LS 1's into the 510-K69 combo ! Someone make an easily installed , kit... Please...

 

I don't see how a kit can help.  The hardest thing to do is make the hole for the horn, and then you still have the gaps at the ends left from the K-55 removal.

 

You could remove the entire motorboard, but is is integrated into the cab so well, it would take a lot of work removing it without destroying something. Then fitting a pre-made motorboard back in place would likely require sanding for an exact fit. 

[OO1]

they are all good and hard to find - I will take any of these anytime =

[Coytee]

I just thought of something when I saw the request for a kit...

 

What about this....

 

Take  K510, build a box that will house ONLY the K510.  Make the box out of Walnut or Oak or anything one desires.  Slap the K510 inside the box and set the box atop the LaScala or Cornwall or anything else one wants to experiment with.

 

Plumb the box with leads out the back so you can wire it up to anything.

 

Then, if you have a stock LaScala, you could simply set the box on top of your LaScala, remove the wires to the woofer and set things up to go active.  Take one leg from your amp to the box with the 510 inside and the other leg to the woofer connection (bypassing the passive)

 

Would that work?

[Coytee]

 

I would love to upgrade my LS 1's into the 510-K69 combo ! Someone make an easily installed , kit... Please...

 

You could remove the entire motorboard, but is is integrated into the cab so well, it would take a lot of work removing it without destroying something. Then fitting a pre-made motorboard back in place would likely require sanding for an exact fit. 

 

 

Rather than remove the front motorboard, I envisioned mounting another one over the top of it (with another layer of 3/4 on the top/sides to allow everything to match up and solidify the sides to lower the resonance.  (I never said it would be pretty!)

 

Anyways, add a new 3/4" plate to the front and cut out the requisite hole through the new face AND the original face behind it.  Slap new driver/horn in and be done.  I never planned to remove the original motorboard in any way (too much work for me and it would be really, really fugly if I did it with my skill set....or lack thereof)

[Heritage_Head]

I have 4 extra of these mounts for the 510. Not sure if this would work. 

[Islander]

Those steel 510 mounts will work, but they're designed to be screwed to the tops of the bass or mid unit the 510 horn is being used with. Most folks here would prefer to avoid drilling into their cabinets.

Another way to go is to use the 510 mounts, along with a separate stand to support them. This is necessary because the 510 mounts won't stand by themselves. They're front-heavy and will fall on their front edges if they're not bolted into place or otherwise supported.

I had a pair of Plexiglas stands made locally and they work quite well, and look good too. At first, I thought of trying to integrate the 510/K-69 tweeters into the La Scala cabinets, but tried them sitting on top first. That wound up sounding better and more like the musicians are on a stage in front of you.

The La Scala cabinets are not that tall, so sometimes you get the effect that the musicians are sitting on chairs on the floor in front of you, which is not the typical concert arrangement.

The taller/bigger sound seemed better to me, so I went with mounting the tweeters on top of the La Scala cabinets, instead of modifying the cabinets to accept them. This worked out well when I upgraded from La Scalas to La Scala IIs. All I had to do was move the tweeters from the tops of the old speakers to the tops of the new speakers, without any need to even disconnect the speaker cables.

I disconnected the HF section of the La Scala IIs, since the Jubilee (K510/K-69) tweeters were now doing their job. The original La Scalas became the left and right surround speakers, so I just reconnected their HF sections and they went back to being stock speakers (but with CT125 tweeters).

Some may not be crazy about the look of the Jubilee tweeters sitting on top of the La Scala or La Scala II cabinets, but it works for me.

Here's a picture so you can see what I mean.

[Islander]

In related news, I'd be interested in getting a pair of 510 horns with mumps, in order to have the current and best-sounding parts. Is there any way to obtain the horns alone, and is there a new part number for the "mumps" version?

[moray james]

I would love to upgrade my LS 1's into the 510-K69 combo ! Someone make an easily installed , kit... Please...

 

I don't see how a kit can help.  The hardest thing to do is make the hole for the horn, and then you still have the gaps at the ends left from the K-55 removal.

 

You could remove the entire motorboard, but is is integrated into the cab so well, it would take a lot of work removing it without destroying something. Then fitting a pre-made motorboard back in place would likely require sanding for an exact fit.

gaps or openings at either end of the newly installed K510 would be a good thing not a bad thing. They would allow a place were off axis radiation of the horn could disappear and not reflect as would happen with a solid baffle you don't want reflections.

[Heritage_Head]

Those steel 510 mounts will work, but they're designed to be screwed to the tops of the bass or mid unit the 510 horn is being used with. Most folks here would prefer to avoid drilling into their cabinets.

Another way to go is to use the 510 mounts, along with a separate stand to support them. This is necessary because the 510 mounts won't stand by themselves. They're front-heavy and will fall on their front edges if they're not bolted into place or otherwise supported.

I had a pair of Plexiglas stands made locally and they work quite well, and look good too. At first, I thought of trying to integrate the 510/K-69 tweeters into the La Scala cabinets, but tried them sitting on top first. That wound up sounding better and more like the musicians are on a stage in front of you.

The La Scala cabinets are not that tall, so sometimes you get the effect that the musicians are sitting on chairs on the floor in front of you, which is not the typical concert arrangement.

The taller/bigger sound seemed better to me, so I went with mounting the tweeters on top of the La Scala cabinets, instead of modifying the cabinets to accept them. This worked out well when I upgraded from La Scalas to La Scala IIs. All I had to do was move the tweeters from the tops of the old speakers to the tops of the new speakers, without any need to even disconnect the speaker cables.

I disconnected the HF section of the La Scala IIs, since the Jubilee (K510/K-69) tweeters were now doing their job. The original La Scalas became the left and right surround speakers, so I just reconnected their HF sections and they went back to being stock speakers (but with CT125 tweeters).

Some may not be crazy about the look of the Jubilee tweeters sitting on top of the La Scala or La Scala II cabinets, but it works for me.

Here's a picture so you can see what I mean.

You could mouth the metal bracket to a nice piece of wood that was painted or finished also. But that plexiglass idea is really cool also and would be even better I'm sure. The 510 on your LSii looks great imo. I think I have seen other pics of those in other threads. So do you run your LSii as 2 ways I take it? How low do you xo the 510 to the LS bass bin? And how much better do you think the LSii sound vs the 3 way with stock klipsch horns? 

[PrestonTom]

 

 

I would love to upgrade my LS 1's into the 510-K69 combo ! Someone make an easily installed , kit... Please...

 

I don't see how a kit can help.  The hardest thing to do is make the hole for the horn, and then you still have the gaps at the ends left from the K-55 removal.

 

You could remove the entire motorboard, but is is integrated into the cab so well, it would take a lot of work removing it without destroying something. Then fitting a pre-made motorboard back in place would likely require sanding for an exact fit.

 

gaps or openings at either end of the newly installed K510 would be a good thing not a bad thing. They would allow a place were off axis radiation of the horn could disappear and not reflect as would happen with a solid baffle you don't want reflections.

 

I don't think there is much "baffle step correction" required on a K-510 horn.

The waveform seems fairly well "launched". I have measured them with and without a baffle (mock up for testing purposes).

[moray james]

I would love to upgrade my LS 1's into the 510-K69 combo ! Someone make an easily installed , kit... Please...

 

I don't see how a kit can help.  The hardest thing to do is make the hole for the horn, and then you still have the gaps at the ends left from the K-55 removal.

 

You could remove the entire motorboard, but is is integrated into the cab so well, it would take a lot of work removing it without destroying something. Then fitting a pre-made motorboard back in place would likely require sanding for an exact fit.

gaps or openings at either end of the newly installed K510 would be a good thing not a bad thing. They would allow a place were off axis radiation of the horn could disappear and not reflect as would happen with a solid baffle you don't want reflections.

I don't think there is much "baffle step correction" required on a K-510 horn.

The waveform seems fairly well "launched". I have measured them with and without a baffle (mock up for testing purposes).

adding baffle around a horn does you no favors take a look at the polar plots and see how much wrap around there is. So holes on either end of the horn on a baffle would help rather than hurt.

[PrestonTom]

Of course this depends how low you are crossing. But the polars on the K-510 are fairly well-behaved and not that broad (I have seen the relevant data). I am only pointing out that the possible problems with the baffle would be the least of my worries. If they are a problem, then foam on the baffle is a good solution (again, I have done this and have measured the effect)

[Coytee]

Perhaps this should be in a new thread but...  the idea of a 'kit' hit me today.

 

Think this would work?

 

Take a piece of (I'm thinking solid) wood.  Cut a hole so the 510 will sit in it.

 

Take the right and left sides of the wood and cut a slot about half way up the face.  We'll call it a 3/4" slot.

 

Take another piece of wood that is (guessing) 20" long.  Cut a half slot in this so that it will slide and automatically lock onto the front board and now lay perpendicular giving some lateral support.

 

Take a 4th piece for the rear, cut the 1/2 slots in it (as well as the back side of the cross pieces) but, this piece would have a "U" type divot cut into it where the "U" would be where the base of the horn would rest.  I guess the driver would be hanging out the back (unless you made it all larger)

 

Anyone care to tell me how dumb my idea is?  (my feelings won't be hurt unless you patent it and turn it into a bustling business allowing you to spend your winters on a private island being fed pineapple by the wild local women)

 

 

 

So far, we're looking at 4-boards and they will all slide together and be removable.  (be real easy to ship it in a flat pack)

 

What has me scratching my head is the top.  This is where I've hit a wall with my idea.  I guess it could be left open?

[Heritage_Head]

The metal mount klipsch uses gives the ability to swivel the horn up down left and right. Would be nice to have that with what ever was used imo. 

Edited March 18, 2015 by Cinema_head

[Islander]

 

Those steel 510 mounts will work, but they're designed to be screwed to the tops of the bass or mid unit the 510 horn is being used with. Most folks here would prefer to avoid drilling into their cabinets.

Another way to go is to use the 510 mounts, along with a separate stand to support them. This is necessary because the 510 mounts won't stand by themselves. They're front-heavy and will fall on their front edges if they're not bolted into place or otherwise supported.

I had a pair of Plexiglas stands made locally and they work quite well, and look good too. At first, I thought of trying to integrate the 510/K-69 tweeters into the La Scala cabinets, but tried them sitting on top first. That wound up sounding better and more like the musicians are on a stage in front of you.

 

You could mouth the metal bracket to a nice piece of wood that was painted or finished also. But that plexiglass idea is really cool also and would be even better I'm sure. The 510 on your LSii looks great imo. I think I have seen other pics of those in other threads. So do you run your LSii as 2 ways I take it? How low do you xo the 510 to the LS bass bin? And how much better do you think the LSii sound vs the 3 way with stock klipsch horns? 

 

 

 

Yes, the JubScala, as the La Scala woofer/Jubilee tweeter hybrid is known around here, is a 2-way bi-amped speaker system, as is the Jubilee.

 

Running them as 2-ways instead of 3-ways eliminates one crossover point and any related phase issues.  It was PWK's original desire to run the Khorns, La Scalas and Belles as 2-ways, but back then there were no drivers with a broad enough frequency range available, so he went with the 3-way setup.

 

Much later, when designing the Jubilees with Roy Delgado, newer wide-range drivers had become available, so the Jubilee and its JubScala derivative are 2-way.  There are a couple of owners who have gone 3-way, but that's an experimental setup, not the factory tested and tuned 2-way system.

 

The crossover I'm using is the Electrovoice Dx38.  It was the same model used by Roy in testing, so it will come closest to sounding like what he was getting in the test lab.  The crossover point is about 480 Hz.

 

The JubScala speaker system also calls for a pair of matching 2-channel power amps (for a 2-channel stereo system).  This makes for consistent timbre/tonality from the bottom to the top of the frequency range.

 

Some people think that tweeters always use very little power and think that they can get better sound by going to a different amp or amp type for the tweeters, like a low-powered tube amp, for example.  That does not work in this case.  Many popular speakers cross over from the woofer at 1200 or even 1800 Hz, so you hear the midrange through the woofer, not an ideal situation.  The JubScala crosses over at 480 Hz, so you hear the midrange through the mid/high speaker, not the woofer.

 

The 480 Hz crossover point means that the woofers are covering the bottom 4-1/2 octaves, while the tweeters are covering the upper 5-1/2 octaves or so.  Therefore, the tweeters actually need a bit more power than the woofers in this situation.

 

I've confirmed this for myself by noticing that the tweeter amp runs slightly warmer than the woofer amp.  Both are Yamaha MX-D1 dual-mono Class D amps.  They are rated (and tests confirm the numbers) at over 500 watts per channel.  The K-69 tweeter drivers are rated at 100 watts RMS/200 watts peak, but they have not had any problems for the seven years I've been running them with the MX-D1 power amp.  The sensitivity of the system means that the speakers can produce very high volume levels without much input power.  When listening in a normal-sized residential room, the sound would be literally deafening long before maximum volume would be reached.

 

That brings up something else.  Pro audio power amps are usually run near their rated output, so they're designed for best sound in those conditions.  At typical home audio listening levels, they won't be operated in their cleanest or lowest-distortion range.  These particular Yamaha amps are designed for home audio use, and have their lowest distortion figures in the 6-10 watt operating range, where they spend most of their time.  The rest of the power is used for overhead, to add realism and authority to loud transients that occur even at moderate listening levels.

 

If you have a chance to listen to music through a 100Wpc amp, and then through a 500Wpc amp in the same system at the same volume, the benefit of the extra power will be easy to notice.  Drumbeats and handclaps, to give just two examples, will sound much more realistic through the more powerful amplifier.  This adds to the overall realism of the listening experience, and isn't that the whole point of hi-fi?

 

 

As for your final question, maybe I should clarify that the La Scala and La Scala II are both regular production 3-way speaker systems.  The original La Scala was produced from 1963 until 2005, when the La Scala II went into production.

 

The JubScala is a configuration that was suggested to Roy by Coytee, one of the forum members, as a possible more compact and less expensive version of the Jubilee that could possibly be assembled from components a person already owned, namely La Scala or La Scala II speakers, so that only the Jubilee tweeter driver and horn would have to be purchased, along with an electronic crossover and a second power amp.  Roy did some testing and found it to be a very workable combination, with much of the Jubilee sound.  It turns out to be not all that much less expensive, but it's really worth it.

 

The La Scala sounds good, the La Scala II sounds better, but the JubScala is in another league, and the JubScala II is an incremental improvement on that.  The Jubilee tweeter sounds clearer than the standard La Scala squawker/tweeter combo, with less distortion, plus the bi-amping reduces the distortion levels even further.  The Dx38 has a large number of parametric equalizers, so the frequency response can be tailored with a level of precision that's not possible with a passive crossover.  Also, when better settings are discovered, there's no need to change any components.  The new settings are just punched in and saved on a new page in the Dx38's memory.  The old settings are not lost and can be called up for comparison.

 

The Dx38 also has several very precise delay units, so the woofer and tweeter can be time-aligned.  This is a worthwhile feature, and eliminates a sound flaw that's a characteristic of nearly every speaker on the market.  You can hear the difference.

 

To sum up, the Jubilee and JubScala have much lower distortion, much higher clarity, and better stereo imaging than any other speakers in the Klipsch consumer line.  As for the big pro theatre and concert speakers, I haven't heard them, so I can't comment.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Islander

[Gorm]

Hate to bump an old thread. Is this info any good?

 

# 131027 ……. K-510 HORN ONLY

[djk]

132005 K-510 HORN (UNPAINTED) EA 207.00

132004 K-402 HORN (UNPAINTED) EA 776.25

132003 K-510 HORN PAINTED EA 168.19

132001 K-402 HORN PAINTED EA 491.63

131037 K-904 1.5 THROAT (THROAT) EA 274.28

131036 K-904 1.5 HORN (HORN ONLY) EA 672.75

131027 K-510 HORN EA 329.39

Edited June 16, 2015 by djk