What's Up With the KG SW?

[skorpioskorpio]

1 hour ago, Staples said:

I just picked up a kg sw. It did not come with the plastic ports. Can you tell me the dimensions of yours, particularly the length so I buy replacement parts? Thanks.

3" diameter, 5" long, no taper or flare. Shouldn't be all that difficult to find, like I said in a earlier post, it looks like an off the shelf, unaltered part that you should be able to find just about anywhere that carries PA parts. Wish I had the specs for the original drivers, I'd love to see just how off the specs of this box are, because just running the numbers in WinISD on the box and adjusting some known 8" woofers that would be around those specs at that time (perform in the 38-150Hz range), and I can't see that there would be anything even close that would work with that port configuration. The design appears to be specific dimensions to maximize the number of pieces you can cut out of a piece of standard sheet, all the dimensions are basically divisions of a 4x8' sheet with about an inch of total waste. Internally the box just has for its' divider between the sealed and vented sections one panel straight down the middle lengthwise that the driver mount to. I would make a guess that they made a half a dozen or so of these boxes, drilled them for a few different off the shelf PA ports, measured them with an analyzer, and the one that measured the best became the KG SW after they tweaked the crossover some. I'm also guessing the woofer is an automotive component woofer from the time, maybe out of the Klipsch parts bin or maybe sourced from an OEM supplier. Given that this was really 'designed' to compliment the KG 1.2s and 2.2s and was passively crossed over where it was, as a high pass intermediary, it just needed to rumble and echo some and give some volume back to the 1.2s and 2.2s in order to make those speakers sound more Klipschy. All the other higher end speakers in the KG line actually had a frequency response lower than the KG SW, so it was really just aimed at those 2 models, the 2 available shielded.

[skorpioskorpio]

On 9/28/2019 at 11:17 AM, Peter P. said:

Thanks for the detailed refinish instructions! I'll definitely refer to this post when I get to work. While mine isn't black, it has some paint stains and many scratches, and I expect I'll be just as surprised at the results.

 

I was not able to remove one of the ports from the outside, and after removing the bottom screws I couldn't remove the bottom panel. Any secrets to removing the panel?

The ports are, well mine anyway, pretty slopped up with glue on the backside, I don't think I'd be able to remove mine without destroying them. Which I am ok with. The bottom panel needs all the perimeter and center row screws removed, there is no magic screws under feet or labels or anything, not on mine anyway. It's been quite a while since I originally took mine apart, but I seem to remember it was very tightly fit and had to remove the crossover panel for some sort of leverage and just knowing how I think, I probably stuck a hammer head in there and used it like a dent puller to knock the base loose. When I sanded it the other day the panel was actually off and when I put it back on it had to be aligned at all for corners and pushed in, there was not enough slop to angle it in in any way. It's a tight fit and there is no gaskets and no glue.

 

For it's last cross country move it wasn't screwed together and the feet were not on it, it just had a strap holding it together, and given how many things the movers broke in the move is all the more reason I'm surprised it fared as well as it did. I was able to find the feet, though not the original screws, but they're pretty easy to replace.

 

Bought a power amp off of eBay, a Sony TA-N55ES which I guess will do around 300 watts in bridged mono. My AV receiver (also a Sony) does 110W per channel 7 channels of which I'm setup for 6 at the moment, forgoing the center for now, just so I can see what kind of room balance I can get out of all this, and waiting on a couple spools of speaker wire. So first I guess I'll see how it does, as is, driven independently with the passive crossover bypassed and fed a low pass signal from the receiver via this new amp. Anyway so some methodical guessing probably by the end of the week.

[Peter P.]

When you refinished your sub, it sounds like you sanded around the ports or did you avoid any work on that face?

 

That's the only reason I want to remove the "stuck" port, as part of the refinish.

[skorpioskorpio]

5 hours ago, Peter P. said:

When you refinished your sub, it sounds like you sanded around the ports or did you avoid any work on that face?

 

That's the only reason I want to remove the "stuck" port, as part of the refinish.

For now I left that side black. If and when I re-driver it, at that point I'll have to retune (change out) the ports then I'll refinish that side. I didn't touch that whole side because of the ports, couldn't really sand around them and have it look decent and couldn't really remove them without destroying them. So if you see in the picture of the port side I posted it's still black, and fortunate for me, it was probably the original black side that was the least scuffed up.

[Staples]

20 hours ago, skorpioskorpio said:

3" diameter, 5" long, no taper or flare... Given that this was really 'designed' to compliment the KG 1.2s and 2.2s and was passively crossed over where it was, as a high pass intermediary, it just needed to rumble and echo some and give some volume back to the 1.2s and 2.2s in order to make those speakers sound more Klipschy...

Thank you. And Thanks to Peter as well.

 

The 2.2s and 1.5s are exactly what I was looking to match this with. I will give it try with Heresy I as well, but I'm not expecting much.

[skorpioskorpio]

So I've re-drivered my KG SW now with a pair of Dayton RSS210HO-8s aluminum cone sub drivers, and yes I ordered the wrong ones, I meant to order the 4 Ohm version and instead ordered the 8 Ohm version, so the other bird to kill here was to be able to drive this as an 8 Ohm box, unfortunately I landed myself right back at 16 Ohms, which is OK, the amp I am using is happier there anyway, a Sony TA-N55ES. Without any other modifications at this point other than simply swapping out the driver and eliminating the original crossover, since I'm running it electronically crossed at the AV receiver anyway as Dolby LFE Sub, it's amazingly good. All the other speakers in the setup are more than capable of producing solid bass into the upper 30Hz range so, I am crossing them over, through a lot of trial and error, at a 60 Hz electronic high pass through the receiver which is where it sounds the best to my ear. The AV receiver just does straight out Dolby/DTS spec sub crossover so there is a 120 Hz low pass to the sub. Anyway, with music the sub is there but completely un-intrusive, as it should be, you have to put your hand on the box to tell it's really part of things, again as it should be and listening to it in or out it definetly does contribute in a positive way. Movies on the other hand, it's presence is obvious, in just the right sort of way, the Omaha Beach landing scene from the Saving Private Ryan Blu Ray is pretty astounding.

 

I plan to buy a calibration mic soon as I'm looking at a couple of projects for another room, so it'd be worth it for me, but just a guess I'd say that this modification added a good 8-10Hz to the bottom of the subs output, and actually seems better in all ways from where it started. It's as good or better musically than it was and night and day different as a surround LFE, it's punchy, rumbly and still tight. I may still extend the ports to get them closer to what software says they should be, and perhaps use something a bit more robust than the cheesy ones that are on there. I have some seriously heavy duty industrial shipping tubes laying around, which has a near 1/4" wall, that I think would be exactly what is needed. They're the right inside diameter (3") for the existing openings and I think if I ran them the whole width of the box with a hole drilled in the side with a hole saw right at the closed end they'd be both solidly supported and pretty close to the right length according to the box calculators. But for right now, I am quite happy with it as it is, so the moral of the story here I guess is that I don't see how the original configuration would calculate out with modern software, and amounts to basically a trial and error guess using what seems like off the shelf products, and my equally guessy modifications seemed to just make it better, significantly better I think. Extending the port to be closer to where the box calculators say it should be, I think is a worthy exercise, and I guess could make it even better, but in all honesty it has absolutely none of the negative characteristics one would think it should have, it isn't slappy, or peaky, or flat sounding. I think extending the port should make it incrementally better, but I don't expect to be wowed by it being tuned mathematically correct, at least not as wowed as simply changing the drivers to something more modern and more specifically built to be a sub driver has been.