The History of the Jubilee

[Deang]

It's nice to finally see a picture of Mike Faulkner -- I believe he built all of the prototypes for PWK and Roy, and he's named and thanked at the end of the JAES paper.

So I guess you're the person that picked up all of Mike Klementovich's gear after he put it up on AudiogoN? Man, that was one crazy ad. I know Mike switched out the original driver, which I'm pretty sure would have been the B&C, for the Beyma. You mentioned that you prefer the passive in a two-way configuration, but surely you know that the passive in those things was designed to be used with the B&C and K-403? I mean, you can't just swap drivers and horns around without making some changes to the networks. Well, you can, but you shouldn't.

[Deang]

This has been posted several times before. Here it is again for those who don't know how to search for it and/or have never seen it.

AES-Jubilee.pdf

[Deang]

Rumors persist that the plans in V. Klipschs' possession are different than what Klipsch/Roy is using, which of course would mean different results after the build. Let's see if we can put that one to rest. I've decided to do it by comparing the impedance curve as published in the JAES article to what Roy put on the forum after we started buying them. I would use the FR curves, but I sometimes think they add fuel to the rumors because they all look a little different. This is largely due to the different smoothing methods that are applied in combination with the changes in scaling. So let's look at the impedance curves. First up is the curve from the JAES article. It's a .jpeg and the quality is kind of poor. If you want a better look, go to the article itself. The article was published in 2000.

[dtel]

Another horn..........sorry Dean I didn't know you were doing that.

[Panacea Engineering]

Dean,

Yes, I am the guy that purchased Mike's STUFF.......[] Yes, we also understand the principles of passive crossovers.......I am certainly NO expert, but I do KNOW what sounds good or not. The system with the Martinelli's is the best I have ever heard and I have been around a few systems, in my time. I have talked to Bill on several occasions and when I purchased the second set of his Horns, he gave me the complete history of them. That was pretty interesting, considering that he would remember individual sets of Horns that, he made. For him, it was like Old Home Week. Here is a picture of the Goldens with the two sets of martinelli's on top:

[Deang]

Here is the curve that Roy gave us. It's dated 2006. Notice that the curves are identical. You cannot make a change without effecting this curve.

JUBLFRAWZ.pdf

[Panacea Engineering]

Here's another of the Tags on the Goldens....FWIW, I certainly do not want to sabatage bracurrie's thread.....we can open another or if it is OK with Him, we can continue with this one as it IS titled "The History of the Jubilee".......

[Deang]

There are major differences between those horns and drivers. With respect, you can only trust your ears after you've validiated the performance with measurements.

[Deang]

Technically, you have half of the Golden Jubilees.You need the original drivers and K-403s to have the approved, official Valerie/Paul Klipsch sanctioned design. []

If Roy, who was intimately involved with the project from start to finish makes a change, it's a violation of some audio law and probably sounds like crap, but if some OCD audiophile (Mike K.) changes the whole top section without taking any measurements and making the appropriate network changes to compensate for the physical changes, it sounds wonderful. Seriously, it makes me want to pull my hair out.

[bracurrie]

Here's another of the Tags on the Goldens....FWIW, I certainly do not want to sabatage bracurrie's thread.....we can open another or if it is OK with Him, we can continue with this one as it IS titled "The History of the Jubilee".......

No. no. This is fine. In fact its great. Thanks DeanG W.C. and all others. No doubt there are many who may not understand what all the fuss is about. Self Agrandizment is encouraged here.[]

[Panacea Engineering]

Dean,

Hell...don't pull the rest of your hair out...if you are my age...you don't have that much to play with.....[:^)]

I doubt that I will ever get my hands on the K 403's nor the original drivers.......Heve NO idea what happened to them...so I will just have to live with what I have. If you have a set of the 403's bring them on down, with your test equipment and we can do some comparisons.........[]

[bracurrie]

Here is the curve that Roy gave us. It's dated 2006. Notice that the curves are identical. You cannot make a change without effecting this curve.

DeanG - For those of us without the technical training could you give us, in lay mens terms, what these charts are intended to show. Without understanding what impedance graphs mean its still clear to me you are correct about if there were changes to the cabinet the curves would be different.

Thanks

[Panacea Engineering]

Self Agrandizment is encouraged here.

Brad,

That is WAY too funny.......I just wanted to be sure that we did not go to far off topic with anything that I have posted. hell,

I would love to write a complete History of the Jubilee's, as I am pretty sure that I have just about everything that has been printed about them and some that has not. I would certainly need the review from the "Experts" here, before anything was ever published in the Forums. As it is now, it is just all "Hearsay" and I do not mean that in any type of negative way, at all. As someone mentioned earlier, there are probably a lot of false rumors floating around with no definitive answers.

Anyway, we shall see what shakes out and this thread is very informitive and interesting.....!

[boom3]

(raising my hand from back of the room) hey guys, guys...did anybody figure out the current price of a pair with K402s/K69s?

[dtel]

I have no idea Boom3, but if your ever interested in hearing the K402/K69's you could always come hear. By far not a perfect listening room and it's not on jubes, but you could get an idea, if you haven't heard them already ? Were 30 min North of Slidell La

[Deang]

Here is the curve that Roy gave us. It's dated 2006. Notice that the curves are identical. You cannot make a change without effecting this curve.

DeanG - For those of us without the technical training could you give us, in lay mens terms, what these charts are intended to show. Without understanding what impedance graphs mean its still clear to me you are correct about if there were changes to the cabinet the curves would be different.

Thanks

I'm not good enough to take this topic and explain it in layman's terms. Basically you have a loudspeaker, which is a complex system, and when you add a horn, it gets worse! You can't change any part of the system without effecting the impedance to some degree. I'm not an engineer, and I suppose I could be wrong, but still -- even a careful examination of the FR plots from then and now reveals no difference.

[Deang]

Someone earlier mentioned all of the different things you can do with these. Sure, absolutely true, but it's infinitely more complex if you want to stay two-way. You really can't do it right unless you can measure your results. What Bob Crites is doing with the Faital driver and horn is an example of how to do it right. He doesn't have the perfect environment for measuring, but he's generally very careful and meticulous about things.

Now, when Jordan out in California called me to build some networks for him, I was glad to do it for him. However, he had already built his horn, which was a 2" version of Al's Trachorn, and some monster JBL driver. I explained to Jordan that I couldn't use Roy's passive 2-way design for the combination, and that his best bet was to go active and wrestle with it until he found the best settings. Jordan was pretty well set on wanting to use passives, so I suggested that he go three-way -- which isn't exactly a bad idea considering what I'd heard down in Hope when Roy fired up the three-way version. For good two-way passive network design with these big drivers, I don't think an RTA and a microphone is enough. You really need some good modeling software (iows, expensive) -- which I don't have. So, I called Al and JC and built what I thought was the best way to go for Jordan's situation. Though I can't repeat his three word review, Jordan was pretty happy with the results.

[ZAKO]

Just reading part of this,,,Klemintovich and the 403 horns,,Mike gave it to me,,,The throat of that horn was distorted on both units,And would not couple to the driver properly,,It sounded terrable,,,I got alot of flak about its quality,,,Delgado said it was not one of theirs,,go figure,,,I gave them away to some gent in Arkansaw dont remember his name,....I wouldnt recommend the 403 as a FOG HORN !!!!I took some POLOR plots,,Its somewhere in my files,,Plots look good but sounded terrible,,,Used several drivers,,that didnt help..

[Panacea Engineering]

Maron,

Thanks, Mike had told me the "Story" on this and I am prety sure that the quality of the wooden 403's that they were trying to get made was just about horrible. Isn't that the reason that they gave up on the wooden 403's for the Top's of the Jubes...?

EDIT: I've found that to be true more than once........Great looking Plots and the Polars dead on and they sound like Crap.....Another note...You have to have a great room to have great sound...this is just MY observation

Thanks,

[Deang]

It seems we don't know much if anything about the horns that Valerie had made up for her Jubilees. All we know is that she had one of the originals, and had it reverse engineered. I guess we don't know anything else, is that right? Roy of course is right. How can he or Klipsch be held responsible for a horn they had absolutely nothing to do with? Obviously if the horn doesn't couple to the driver properly, you're going to have major issues -- doesn't matter what the polars look like.

Many of us saw one of the original wood horns. It looked really nice. The issue was that Roy couldn't find anyone to build it to his standards. IOWs, it wouldn't curve right.

So, there are three versions of the K-403. 1) The wood versions, 2) The original fiberglass versions, 3) and the reverse engineered versions -- and no one liked the sound of any of them except PWK and Iain. Seriously, if Iain likes the sound he's getting out of them, they must of okay. I suspect Maron is just deaf.