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Manufacturing of the K400


Coytee

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It could ask about the manufacturing of any of the horns, but since I have 400's, I'm asking about them.

 

I've seen the mold in Hope that was used (I think) for the K400. 

 

Was someone working in a back room, melting all the metals down and pouring on site?  Was the mold given to a company elsewhere and they provided the finished horns?

 

If someone at the plant was making them, what kind of production could you get?  a Dozen horns a day?  more? less?

 

What other horns if any, were made in house?

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Horn lenses were cast at a foundry either as an entire part or in halves...and shipped to Klipsch.  For a number of years the smaller horns were cast as halves, and Tommy Crouch had a separate company called "Wounded Buffalo" behind the red brick building.  "Wounded Buffalo" was where the horn lens halve castings were cleaned of flashing, braised together, ground, the throat end was reamed and tapped, and then the completed horn lens was painted black...and sent to Klipsch final assembly for installation. in the cabinets.

 

The "Wounded Buffalo" operation ended in the very early 1980's (or thereabouts), and that building became the "Lab" replacing the "Lab" across the street in the old telephone exchange (now the museum building).  The "lab" was where the R&D was done.  Nowadays, the old wounded buffalo building is still the LAB, but has been expanded much larger than the original building was in size.  That is the kingdom of Chief Bonehead...LOL!

 

On the rear porch of the old red brick building, just outside of PWK's old office, there used to be a few horn halves which were rejects, and they were mounted with the flange end to the posts supporting that porch roof, so that hanging plants could be hung from the throat end of those horn halves.  Not sure if they are still there or not!  If you are going to the gathering you can look for them.

 

The only horn lenses fully "made in house" back while I was there (1976-1983) were the fiberglass horns used in the MSM section of the MCM 1900, which was the king of our Industrial Line.

 

In the late 1970's/early1980's, the Hope, AR area had back-to-back severe ice storms, which collapsed the roofs of chicken houses all around the area.  Chicken "ranching" was big-time back then in that area...and for a number of years prior to the ice storms, MOST of the new construction of chicken houses used all steel construction (no wood!).  Well, the trusses which supported the roofs of those all-steel chicken houses was basically angle-iron with short pieces of re-bar welded to it for the bracing.  They were never designed to handle the weight of that much ice accumulation...wooden trusses work better for that.  So, people from other states came in and helped the local chicken ranchers to clean up the mess from the ice storms.  Some of them liked the area and shortly after bought some farmland and moved into the area.  A small enclave of Mennonites were one such group who relocated to the Hope area.  Like all Mennonite men, they had to learn a specific NON-farming skill to ensure family survivability if/when farming was not enough to make ends meet...which happens!  One of them was a fiberglass guy.  He came in and made those horns...normally on a part-time basis.  Really nice guy...can't remember his name though.  He made and modified the molds and laid up the horns in fiberglass.  He also made lots of money repairing the bottoms of fiber-glass-hulled fishing boats which had their bottoms ripped out by bass fishermen on Lake Millwood (which is shallow and has lots of stumps just below the waterline).  Additionally, he made fiberglass crypts used for burials in Louisiana (where the groundwater table is right under the topsoil in many places, so they bury above ground).

 

BTW, JRH (the historian) was tasked with the "four-way-manifold" MSM horn lens project shortly after arriving at Klipsch (the original MSM had a single driver on it)...and it may very well have been JRH who initiated the link-up with the gentleman who ended up being the "OFFICIAL" Klipsch fiberglass "guru"....maybe he can remember that man's name.

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The only horn made in house prior to the fiberglass pro units (K-260, K-400-2, and maybe a few other misc.) was the k-5-J used prior to the K-400.  The first K-400's were made at Arkansas Machine Specialties in Hope using the sand cast method.  Only the slab of the building remains.  Several other casters and casting techniques were used over the years.  The mold you've seen is a more recent one.

 

No horns were received "in halves" as far as I know.  The ones HDBR are referring to were cut in half by (or for) Bob Moers to be plant hangers.  Same guy that kept an antique barber's chair in his office along with a K-horn/Belle 3-channel array. 

 

I too have forgotten the Mennonite's name, but he was not the originator of fiberglas at Klipsch. That honor would go to Jim Irvine.

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