Welborne Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 Thanks Dean. Does your 15ohm parallel resistor work with Type A network? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 I believe the answer is yes. Here is the DHA2 I used, and you can see the similarity with the A. The DHA2 uses a 10 ohm... Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 Yes, used by Type A and Type AA users who find the midrange to be too aggressive for their tastes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
absolve2525 Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 (edited) Great thread! I agree, the K400 are bashed constantly even though they can sound really great with the right crossover and amp. You nailed it, the "liveliness" aspect of the sound. Edited February 15, 2016 by absolve2525 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 So another question: those of you who use SET (single ended triode) tube amp with your Klipschorn/LS, do you use 4ohm tap or 8ohm? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnA Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 (edited) Mike, A K-401 horn is pretty inexpensive and would make a good mold of the inside of the horn. The inner dimensions are the ones that matter. Hi William as I can design most types of boats I am not familiar with spread sheets and do not own Office or any other spreadsheet software. I own AutoCAD and Photoshop but no Office. I really do better with a picture or schematic. Thank you William! Mike Edited February 16, 2016 by John Albright Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garyrc Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 (edited) In the past I read A LOT about how bad and headache-causing the K400/401 could be even before I acquired a pair of La Scala ... Bright, honky, resonance here and there ... Everything you can read about "bad ugly horn sound" you name it. Yeah the La Scala k401 horn and tweeter are as bad as I have read ... Immediately I have dismissed the stock components and installed the Le Cleac'h flare and made a Type A crossover using solen coil and Russian K40-9y PIO capacitors. Hooked these to my tube amps again and yeah they sound so much nicer, so much less honkiness, things get much smoother, and now it started to sound more normal. But there is still some brightness and honkiness that I could not completely get rid of ... Some weeks later, I converted my tube amps tap to 8ohm ... The sound was too relax and lost a lot of the charm of the famous Klipsch 3-way horn that I first heard at a friend's home 10 years ago. The sound I get now has nothing too wrong but also lack lustre. I kept questioning myself "Is this what the Klipsch is famous for 60 years? Just this?" Then one day, out of the blue, I hook the LS (still with Le Cleac'h horn, Type A, B&C De120 tweeter) up with a Nuprime Sta-9 class D my friend lent me to try with my open baffle speakers ....The treble is so silky and smooth, violin sounds so airy and rich, mid is palpable and warm, bass is tight and dynamic, Nothing stand out to ask for attention, and nothing nasty to distract me from enjoying music. Inspired by this, I removed the Le Cleac'h horn, put back the k401, hooked up the stock Al-3 crossover and k77m tweeter, then I listened to everything stock with Nuprime class D.... This is shockingly amazing! I have goosebumps all over my body, violin is as silky as the B&C DE120, perhaps a little bit less extended but only a little bit if any. The biggest improvement is the MID! Human voice is hanging in the middle of the front wall as if musician is here, soundstage is deeper, image is much MORE solid and realistic. Bass, mid and treble all coherently come from the same piece of cloth. I played 50 recordings ranging from chamber baroque, violin concerto, solo, big choral works, jazz big band, wind symphony, saxophone solo, complicated symphoc works, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Sophie Mutter..... Etc etc and there is absolutely ZERO brightness, glare and ZERO honkiness to speak of. Where are all those nasties I read about horn and old Klipsch classic models? They disappear in front of this lowly class D Nuprime, completely. I deliberately turn up the volume to test to see if I was just listening to them too softly. No, even at higher volume that would have invited some complaints from neighbours those brightness, honkiness, harshness are not here, with k401 and stock crossover ... My conclusion: Klipsch classic horn are amazing design, can sound absolutely MINDBOGGLING head and shoulder above many other speaker design on planet earth, even in stock form which many people have written badly about. All you need is a low distortion amp with very low output impedance that can "drive through" the wild impedance roller coaster inherent in all Klipsch classic models (LS/Belle/Klipschorn/Cornwall etc) ... I'm glad you ended with that conclusion. I have had K400s and K401s, over a period of 30 + years, and have never heard anything even vaguely resembling a "honk." I've used Luxman, Yamaha, and NAD amps with them. I know the word "honk" is a favorite of some people in the (so-called) Hi End press, websites and forums when referring to horns, but I wonder if it is a legitimate description of what they actually hear. Or, perhaps they use inappropriate amps. Edited February 16, 2016 by garyrc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Last night I even invited a friend who owns a pair of Voltiaudio Vittora to come and listen to my fully stock AL-3 LS. I told him my long and winding journey. I hooked up my Wiener tpa3118 (with switching frequency configured at 1.2mHz) first and he was shocked by the very nice tonal balance of all the music he brought along with him. There was no honkiness, brightness and glare. Just natural sound and a lot of liviless. The second part of the audition I hooked up my zero feedback D3a-300B with my Bastanis OB which has an almost flat 16ohm. This set up sounded pretty decent as expected. Towards the end I hooked up the stock LS with the same 300B. He was floored by how horrible and shouty the LS suddenly became. They sounded like pretty mediocre radio speakers. Shocked. So it's true at least for two guys here. The K401 is that good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 My 300B has a fixed non changeable 16ohm tap as the output transformers were tailor made for my Bastanis OB when I thought I would not buy another speakers after Bastanis. With 16ohm it definitely sounds wrong. The 300B is a D3a-300B mesh plate run at 60ma/350v/5k as prescribed for me from my friend Thorsten Loesch. Lukily my 6c33c has a configurable 4/8/16 ohm tap though it still needs some soldering underneath. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 (edited) Speaking of Thomas Mayer, I happened to be sitting next to him at a dinner a couple of Friday ago here in Hong Kong as he visited a friend of mine who is a big customer of TM stuff, and there was a dinner set up. I wasn't expecting the guy who sat by me was TM.. LoL Edited February 16, 2016 by Welborne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 Tell us more about your 6cb5a amp. This is the first time I saw this mentioned. I was paying more attention to 4p1l before Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 So both of you use preamps? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 No I don't. Well sort of, a passive TVC called Django based on S&B transformer, not too disimilar to the Music First TVC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 16, 2016 Share Posted February 16, 2016 (edited) PWK's favourite amp was a Brooks 2a3 push pull (i forgot the model number, could be 12a) which I believe is NOT zero feed back. It probably has some % of nfb in it to make it less volunerable to the impedance roller coaster of PWK's own speakers. So if it has a 8ohm tap it will most likely than not sound decent, but if it has a 4ohm tap it may sound even more decent if lower volume. Klipschorn/LS design was born at a time when low distortion - push pull tube gears (with heavy feedback) and later SS (even heavier feedback) prevailed, so stating the nominal at 8ohm (which is true from a nominal/averaging's perspective) would still be problem free especially they are 104/105db efficient. But when one looks closer it's the Woofer-4ohm's call overall and with my limited knowlege we would get better sonic result if 4ohm tap is employed if there is one. Especially true if one uses high impedance zero feedback single ended amplifier, as DeanG has explained above. Correct me if I am wrong. Too bad My 300B does not have anything els but a 16ohm, so my experience is all just academics. Edited February 16, 2016 by Welborne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welborne Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 I tried the modified Type A circuit that Dean mentioned above: strapping a 16ohm resistor to the k55v, move the autotransformer tap to -6db attenuation (from -3db), and the rest remains untouched. On my Klipschorn it works flawlessly! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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