difference between crites CW1526C and Klipsch K43E..?

[Daan]

Hello fellow members,

I recently stumbled upon a set of mint K43E woofers [as used in the industrial La Scala's as I believe].

Is there any benefit in changing the Crites cast frame woofers I currently have for these K43E's ?

At the moment I have my cabinets empty for changing out the midhorns [routing a bigger opening in the motorboard] so it would be nice to know what woofer to put back in without having to A/B them.

If you have any thoughts about it, please share.

Thanks,

Nico

[Daddy Dee]

I think the Crites woofer is more similar to the K33.

In my understanding the K43 replaced the K33 in the pro / industrial LaScala and such. The mission of the K43 is to handle higher power than the K33. As a result of that particular design compromise the K43 does not have the bass extension of the K33.

My take, for home listening the K33 or the Crites woofer would be preferred over the K43.

some time back one forum member posted on being delighted with the K43 performance in LaScalas noting that the performance in upper bass registers had noticeably better definition.

Of course, the lesser bass extension of the K43 could be mitigated with a dialed in sub.

[Daan]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about this subject.

I realized that my message was not complete since I have opened the doghouse accoarding to the suggested bass mods for La Scala's by DJK.

I've been experimenting with just the upper chamber added to the volume of the basscabinet [closed the upper chamber at the back], added ports in this extra panel and also tried the bass mod suggested by Dave [bass port in chamber under the cabinet].

In all cases this resulted in more and extended bass response; best configuration for my ears and room is only the upper chamber added and closed at the back.

I also use a very good REL sub that dials in very nicely for the remaining frequencies that the LS's never will be able to reproduce.

After reading your post I understand that it might be worth in my case to try the K43's, to listen [and measure] if they are better suited for my system, more comments

regarding this are very welcome as I'm always keen to learn!

Thanks again,

Nico

[Marvel]

Regarding the K43... Below is what Dennis posted in the past about porting the LS:

The taper rate of a LaScala is 100hz,The mouth area is good for 125hz. Below this it is a big woofer in a small sealed box. If we plug the T/S parameters for the K33E into a box program we will see that the Qtc=. 85, the Fc=82. 5hz, and the F3=70. 9hz . If we close in the back of the high frequency cabinet and open the woofer rear chamber up into this volume and fill with fiberglass we now have Qtc=. 577, Fc=58. 2hz, F3=73. 6hz . Bessel=Qtc. 577=D2 gives the best transient response and the least group delay of all the sealed boxes. At 30hz the Qtc=. 577 has 4. 5dB more output than the Qtc=. 85 .

Compared with sealed enclosures,the transient performance of the best vented enclosure is worse than the best sealed box enclosure. Since we have made great gains in performance some may elect to stop here. But please read on. The next step is to port it. The K33E is not the optimum woofer for this but it works pretty good. With the box size optimized for a D2 we can port the stock woofer to an SC4. The transient response of an SC4 while not as good as an SBB4(more on this later)is better than the more common QB3. Unequalized the F3=49hz and has 3dB more output at 30hz than the D2. The response curves are parallel with the D2 the only difference being the Fc being a half octave lower with the SC4 and the output being 3dB higher from 30~70hz. The output of the SC4 does not drop lower than the D2 until you go below 17hz.

Again this may be a stopping point for some. But by adding a simple two pole high pass filter ahead of the power amp we can now have a C6 with a -3dB point of 31hz. Since this is the Fb of the system there is no increase in cone excursion or distortion. The filter consists of a cap an inductor and a pot. The pot allows adjustment at Fb of +/- 3dB. This is similar to being able to change the Qtc of a sealed box from . 5~1. 0 .

If you think about it we have the choice between a D2,SC4,and a C6 in the same box by plugging the port and/or bypassing the eq. If you have a SET amp or simply want to get the most out of the LaScala you will want to upgrade the woofer to something with a lower Qts. The Klipsch K43E does the trick,as do the EV DL15W and the JBL 2205. The EV and JBL drivers require some minor network changes. The lower Qts drivers allow for an SBB4 alignment which has the best transient response of the vented alignments.

With no eq they have 3dB more output at 30hz than the stock woofer. With eq we have a maximally flat B6 and the F3 of the system is 27~28hz. If using a solid state amp with the low Qts woofers a small resistor must be added in series with the driver to have the same Rg as the SET does.

[Daan]

Thank you Marvel ,for posting this explanation.

I do understand most of it....but not all. I get confused where the text starts about D2, SC4, C6 and a "two pole high pass filter ahead of the power amp".

As I like to keep things [ my install] simple, do I understand correctly that with using the K43E woofers I already gain 3Db at 30Hz , compared with the K33E [stock woofer] ?

Also the so called "D2 " alignment is what I use [having opened the doghouse and closing the high freq. cabinet] , giving a Qtc of .577 and 4.5Db more output at 30Hz than with the stock woofer chamber ?

Forgive me for maybe asking for answers that are obvious , but the language is sometimes a barrier when it comes to technical explanations...

And I do use two SET monoblocks [Decware Zen] btw.

Thank you for your help,

Nico

The Netherlands

[Marvel]

Nico,

I can't really answer that question. Perhaps Dennis will chime in here and explain. You are already most of the way there, I think. I have a second pair of LS cabinetsand opened up the doghouse, but am still trying to decide what mid horn I will put in them, so they are a work in progress. I have everything else now, but it's a slow project.

Bruce

[Daan]

Hi Bruce,

The midhorn I finally chose is a EV HR-60 constant directivity horn. I found them local [new] for very little money.

After putting them on top of my LS's and listening for a few weeks I just couldn't go back to the tractrix horns I used before [which were a huge upgrade already over the stock K-400's ]....

[Daan]

Work in progress here as well..

[Daan]

Wood cutting after some sleepless nights...

[Daan]

After removing the long flanges with the holes and the hole routed to mount the horns flush with the motorboard, these horns look like they're tailor-made for the La Scala... and sound awesome with the K-55-V drivers!!

[Daan]

Just wanted to add that I show these pics for the first time to anyone; this conversion is the result of years of listening [23 as a matter of fact] before I could not live with the original sound anymore.

Reading a lot on this forum, and becoming a member enabled me to learn more about the shortcomings of the LS, other people describing JUST what I was hearing as annoying colouration and such.

DO NOT think I'm just another guy who can not appreciate what Mr Klipsch has achieved with building this speakersystem; it's just that in the end I think a speakersystem should do what it's made to do.... produce sound that's as close to reality as possible. The original LS just don't do that IMO.

I spend hours and hours deciding wether to stay with the original looks [and performance] of this system; in the end I choose for better sound with materials from ALK, Bob Crites and the help of everyone here who helped me.

Before raving about "upgrades" I read about what other people's experiences are, think about it for a while, then buy,let my ears decide, then my RTA analyzer. This has brought me closer to a "real life experience" than I ever could imagine possible with my good old LS's.

Thanks

Nico

p.s; K43E woofers, found local

[Marvel]

You are doing great! The k400 is the weakness in mine right now, and I am not quite sure what I will do. I may try a tractrix with a 6-8 inch driver, like one of the guys here did (Rudy81). He put some Oris 150 horns with Tang Band 1808 drivers on top of his dual bass bin corns. I can't afford the Oris horns. I do have a pair of JBL 2365A horns, but they are a little wider than the LS cabs. If they were on top of some Peavey FH1 cabs it would be ok. Your EV horns look fantastic!

Bruce

[ClaudeJ1]

One of the things not menitioned is the superior lower midrange performance of the K-43. It's not just more power handling, but the higher BL product gives much better response at 400 Hz.. You don't even need to measure it. Guitars, female vocals, sax, etc. all benefit from the K-43. In my case I went one step further with the EVM 15 L but I really liked my K-43's in LaScalas before I sold them in favor of straight axis midbass horns.

Looking at my Avatar you can see I have a "cheap Scala" otherwise known as a Peavey FH-1, which I prefer to refer as a Super Scalas since it's build better and is a little bigger. I prefer a tapped horn sub to porting, but that is a nice solution also.

Go forth and conquer, you are on the right track.

[Daan]

Thanks for your reply's; I will put the K43E woofers in when re-assembling. For the real low frequencies I use a REL STRATA 3, which can be fine-tuned to every system IMO.

When the midhorns are put next to each other, the difference in size is....well HUGE ; the difference in sound is accoardingly. Most appearent is the coherence with lower frequencies, lyrics can be followed all through a song [ some words and "the meaning " of a song I never understood] and these EV's sound much more "lively" than the other midhorns.

Using the K-55-V gives really great results, these horns have a 2 inch throat and they came with a set of original aluminium cast adaptors for 1 inch drivers.

After re-assembly I will post some pics here on the forum for others to maybe benefit; these horns seem to be cheap on Ebay.

THANKS for your help!

Nico

[Daddy Dee]

Nico,

You are doing very neat cabinet work on the LaScalas and the EV horns you've installed have a nice OEM trimmed look installation.

Might have missed this in your post, but noticed in the pics that it looks like you currently have tractrix horns in the mids. Right? Those don't look like K400's from the mouth.

The other thing, was wondering if you could post some pics of your top end work on the back with ports and such.

great job!

[Daan]

You are right about the midhorns I used; after more than 20 years of listening to the stock LS's [with the K-400] I swapped them for Dave's Fastracks.

These horns were the first evidence that I needed to move forward.... In my opinion the best upgrade I made amongst the others [ ALK universals, crites cast woofers and tweeters].

Dave's horns made the biggest difference, then AL's filters and then the tweeters from Bob. I replaced the woofers because the original [square magnet] ones were a bit out of center, though they still play fine for their new owner!

I will look up some pics of the porting I tried; with them in place I experienced too much bass and found the bass a bit "slower" .... maybe because of the room, don't know exactly but after closing the back again I immediately heard what I liked more again.

At some point my LS's actually were not LS's anymore.....but sounded much more natural, and suddenly I could listen to them all day !

Nico

[Daddy Dee]

Nico,

Thanks for your take. I've got Dave's fastrac LaScala horns, too and think the sound is very good.

[Marvel]

I will look up some pics of the porting I tried; with them in place I experienced too much bass and found the bass a bit "slower" .... maybe because of the room, don't know exactly but after closing the back again I immediately heard what I liked more again.

Do you just have the backs enclosed and not ported? I believe Dennis originally made the port length 10 inches, but everyone seemed to settle on 7 inches and a bit tighter and faster.

Bruce

[Daan]

Bruce; I tried the closed back first, then tried the ports in several lenghts. 7 inch was about right indeed, but even although the speakers are not positioned in corners this gave too much bass.

After closing the back again everything seemed to "sound right" with the right amount of bass, which also sounds tighter to me.

Looking for the pics.

Nico

[Daan]

A few pics of the porting.