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KG 4 modifications


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brace the cabinets. Re damp with HD fiberglass. Solder all the crimp connectors and re flow the joints in the crossover. Replace the caps with Plastic and foil versions or other good quality caps of your choice. Damp the baskets with dynamat on the struts and inside with 1/4" S.A.E. rated F-11 acoustical felt. make three 1/8" thick doughnuts and install then over the spider of the woofers. place a layer of 1/8" F-11 over your woofers. Dynamat the back of the horns. build some nice four post speaker stands and loose the stock risers. get the centre of the horn up to your seated ear height. that ought to keep you busy and make a huge improvement. don't forget to buy a set of Bob Ctites ti diaphragms for the horns to replace your old and tired phenolic diaphragms. try inserting a set of 40 mm ping pong balls into your horns to improve both response and dispersion. Best regards Moray James

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  • 1 month later...

Just got some super cheap at a yard sell. I think my bass is good but I believe the my horn is a bit buzzy. The horn is that rectangular thing at the top? I seen people say they replace with a titanium horn, is that right? Is that hard to do where to find. Also if I open up the speaker will I be able to see if anything is damaged or will have to special equipment. 

 

Thanks 

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Just got some super cheap at a yard sell. I think my bass is good but I believe the my horn is a bit buzzy. The horn is that rectangular thing at the top? I seen people say they replace with a titanium horn, is that right? Is that hard to do where to find. Also if I open up the speaker will I be able to see if anything is damaged or will have to special equipment. 

 

Thanks

thought you said your horns were ok? if they are buzzing pull them and check to see if the motors are mounted firmly re install and listen again to see if you have a fix. I mentioned Bob Crites I do so again. Bob is THE go to guy for parts and service help, see the ling below for what to do. You will see that the horn and the diaphragm are two different parts you would be replacing the diaphragm rather than the horn. The motor off mounts from the horn lens and then the diaphragm is removed and replaced and the horn lens remounted then the whole horn assembly is re installed back into the cabinet.

As previously suggested you should at this time replace the caps in your networks they will then sound better and you will never have to worry about them again for a very long time. I usually suggest removing the poly switch in line with the tweeter but in this case I suggest that you leave them in place. As far as looking for potential damage simply remove the terminal cup and have a look and sniff at the network there to see if there are any burnt parts. If all looks and smells fine you are most likely fine to go for now with no worries. You can also look to the archives and read up on speaker modification and upgrades to see what others have done. That should cover you. Contact Bob he will help you turn your speakers into better than new. Best regards Moray James.

http://www.critesspeakers.com/replacing_the_diaphragm_on_.html

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  • 2 months later...
When I was playing around with my KG4's the mod that made the biggest difference was replacing the stock phenolic tweeter diaphragms with newer titanium diaphragms. These can be sourced from either Bob Crites or Klipsch directly. Some people have had issues buying directly from Klipsch so it might be easier to talk to Bob? I have purchased/used many of both and they are nearly identical. The second best upgrade came with replacing the capacitors and inductor on the high pass side of the crossover network. I actually tried out/tested a bunch of different components in the KG4 network! I settled on ClarityCap SA capacitors and a 16ga wire inductor. Those parts are BIG for that board though and it took some finagling to fit them... in retrospect it would have been easier to relocate to a separate board but at the time I didn't feel like finding two pieces of scrap wood. Obviously you can choose to use whichever parts you like but I would say, as a rule, bigger is better. I did also replace the woofer network components but noticed little difference using a larger gauge wire inductor or better quality capacitor there. I think it is important to note here too that changing the values of any of the capacitors will tweek the crossover even if only slightly. Going from 8.0uF to 8.2uF I didn't do much but deciding between 2.7uF and 3.3uF to replace the 3.0uF is a personal preference. There are a few options if you want to stick with the actual intended values (3uF & 8uF) but far more if you allow for a slight varience (2.7uF/3.3uF & 8.2uF). I personally almost always choose the lower value but like I said that is my preference. 

 

My KG4's were heavily modded when I sold them. I also preformed many of the other mods listed in this thread (bracing, damping, etc.) and they are technically upgrades but for me the differences are so minute part of me feels like they were kind of a waste of time on this speaker? I mean duct seal cost almost nothing so you might feel like picking some up or you might have a bunch of dynamat lying around like some of us or you might just feel like killing a weekend cutting up and installing braces and if any of that is something that sounds good to you I would not discourage you but I felt like I should let you know that if you don't feel like doing all of that you aren't really missing out on all that much.

 

Have fun with whatever mods you choose to do. =)

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I would upgrade the crossovers with new caps or replace entirely.  Also replace the tweeter and squaker diaphragms with titanium.  A band pass roll of between the mid and tweeters may be required.  Required when I updated my forte II a couple years ago.

 

Stop there and get used to the improved sound, before moving on to changing the inards with braceing etc.  Just my humble 2 cents worth.

 

John

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