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Klipsch vs Cerwin Vega?


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On ‎4‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 9:59 PM, Carey said:

So first of all the CV's are not as sensitive as the Cornwall's. You will need a lot of power to get them shaking. I managed to turn the volume up to 80 on my pre today it tops out at 100. And still 0 distortion....Wow.... I now have to Velcro all the pictures on the second level in my house to prevent movement :D. In  addition all pots, pans, plates, glasses, and light fixtures on level 2 in my house and level 3 are now shaking and moving. Now if I could only get the Corwall 3's in the same room as the CV's :wink:...Still love my Cornwall's but the CV's are impressive. Pics are in my profile. Cheers music fans!

After almost 4 weeks of running the CV's at 5 hours a day at very loud volumes these speakers keep sounding better and better. Very impressive foundation shaking speakers. Love them!😎

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  • 8 months later...

CV blazed new trails with the use of manufactured wood and wood grain vinyl in the 80's. It seemed more like pressed wood than high grade MDF. I recall how easily they were damaged when my first wife dragged them out of the house one evening and pushed them into a corner on the front porch. She called them trailer speakers. Believe they were D5s or D7s and I still have them somewhere with the foam intact. She, however moved on. At the time I powered them with a Sansui QA 7000. Has it been 33 years? Geez. From memory, they were clean with attenuated highs but would be devoured by an  L100. They do seem to be making a comeback of sorts.

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15 minutes ago, JGT914 said:

CV blazed new trails with the use of manufactured wood and wood grain vinyl in the 80's. It seemed more like pressed wood than high grade MDF. I recall how easily they were damaged when my first wife dragged them out of the house one evening and pushed them into a corner on the front porch. She called them trailer speakers. Believe they were D5s or D7s and I still have them somewhere with the foam intact. She, however moved on. At the time I powered them with a Sansui QA 7000. Has it been 33 years? Geez. From memory, they were clean with attenuated highs but would be devoured by an  L100. They do seem to be making a comeback of sorts.

If fidelity is not your thing, they'll do fine. Make a helluva racket, if that's what yer after.......

 

Shakey

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On 4/11/2018 at 5:42 AM, Frzninvt said:

I never said I didn't like CV speakers.  I absolutely do.  I had a pair D-8's in the late 80's and thought they were great, but I did end up replacing them with Klipsch Forte's in 1988.  I also had a pair of CV HED U12's as well.  They also made the best 6x9 speaker for cars ever in the late 70's through the late 80's with the CS line, the CS-18A's were amazing.

 

CV CS-18A Back.jpg

CV CS-18A Front.jpg

 

 

Yep....those 6x9's with the top mount circuit breakers were the bomb.  I had a set of those in the back of an 81 Camaro Z28 I had in 1983.  They would play anything you needed them to.

 

I think as far as home CV speakers go, I've owned maybe 3 pairs over the years including the pair of VS-150's I bought a few months back.  Damn VS-150's sound quite good after I refoamed the woofers and will move with me to the new upstairs audio room soon.  I've played everything from Norah to Boston to SRV  to Lyle Lovette to Heart to ZZ Top and they do all of it well and, as much as some won't like to hear, they do sound better than the '78 Cornwall's I had.  I've also had the more rare Model 2000-15's that were quite different than the typical big mini fridges like the others.  They used the usual 15" woofer with a rear slot port but used 6 mids with a center mounted tweeter in a D'Appolito array and used quite an elaborate crossover.  I might have a pic of those somewhere.  I hated selling them but I was selling everything off when I lived in Texas to go back to college.  Also sold those one previous owner '78 Klipschorns....that sucked.

 

Found a picture.  This was before I refoamed the woofers and they are standing next to a pair of EV Interface C's for size comparison.

 

 

 

 

MiscPics014 (2017_10_06 01_49_14 UTC).jpg

 

Also found a pic of the VS-150's I bought for a song.  Someone had painted the cabinets black so a little work to do there some day.  Surrounds have been replaced, too.  Opinions of CV are always all over the map and that's fine; we all like what we like.  I've gone through so many speakers in the last 20 years (especially) and I've enjoyed every one of them that I was able to experience.  The VS-150's definitely do bass better than my Belle clones so when I "need" to have that, then I can do so.

 

20180825_200202_crop_720x981.jpg

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  • 1 year later...

Bought a pair of JBL L100 classics, one of the best sounding speakers I have ever owned. In addition I just ordered a pair or Heresy 4's. Best off all 3 worlds now. Cerwin, JBL, and of course klipsch 👍😎

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  • 1 year later...

@Frzninvt,

 

 

Have to give you kudos on mentioning the CV 6x9's. I had 4 of these in my "83" Toyota long-bed SR5, made in the USA Concord tape deck w/Dolby B&C as reasonable in-dash CD players didn't hit the market for a couple of years.   The CV's were powered by 2 made in the USA Linear Power 100's rated at a true 100 watts RMS (@12 volts, not inflated at 14.5). Front's in the lower doors and rears mounted sideways in the rear kick panels. No extra cab's on the market in 83. We heated up tar roofing panels which allowed us to contour them to the chassis, then we used contact cement to make them stick! Didn't take long to realize that we needed a new alternator and two batteries to keep the headlights from dimming, well worth the time an effort. Have to say, a good TDK processional metal chassis/metal tape recorded in Dolby C really rocked the house! Almost nobody had something like this in there car or truck, bit of a pioneer if you will. I do remember fondly those CV 6x9's! They really hit fast and hard, detailed clarity, tweeter was really good too. Miss those days when  you could bring down the house for $500 bucks (okay that would translate into $2000 today), but still, I digress. Miss the CV 6x9's, they were really something in their day and would hold their own today as well...

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CV built it's reputation in the 1970s with the 320 modular system comprised of a separate bass commode with one or more 18, 15 or 12 inch woofers and a mid range MT320 unit with its 12" driver, horn and 2 dhorms - it uses an ER-123 (stamped frame - 13 lb magnet, 17,800 guass) 12" mid driver.   These systems could generate heart stopping decibel levels at very low distortion.   The CV motto was " Loud is Beautiful ... if its Clean".    

 

The MT320 unit specs
125-20 khz (+/- 3.5db)
128db @ 4 ft
125hz, 1500hz, 4000hx crossover frequencies

 

 

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There's one 320 config not listed in the Cerwin Vega factory brochure and that's the 320D system which was the MT unit with its 12" driver, horn and 2 dhorms, and its bass commode had an 18" CV driver. I talked to Gene Czerwinski at the audio show in Washington, DC in 1975  The 320D system was at the DC  show. It was great to have a chance to talk with the proprietor of Cerwin Vega. He drove the systems with his own amplifier, the A-3000I, 365 watts/channel at 8 ohms (hopefully I recalled the impedance correctly). The 320D/320MT system was an amazing system. I took a friend with me to the show in DC at the Washington Hilton. As we walked down the hall, you could feel it. As we got about 15 feet from the door, someone opened the door to leave the room. The effect was visceral. Such an amazing experience for a home system in 1975. The only other system comparable with it was the Klipschorn.

Unfortunately, I don't have any CV literature from that era. Its all kinda floated away with many moves over the years.

The likelihood of finding a good condition, operational 320 system is slim to none but for the folks on the board that were into the audio scene back in the day, they will recall and appreciate the impression and mark that the CV 320 system left at that time.   

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I guess there's a CV "fan" site and I recall visiting once, but didn't join.  Memory holds that it was active and had a bunch of data.  FWIW.

 

Personally, I still have some HED somethings somewhere in the basement along with some other weird collection of wildly-different well-beaten old speakers I keep to occasionally wire-up and recalibrate my head. 

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I have had a pair of CERWIN VEGA 380 SE speakers for over 40 years now. They still look and sound great. I listened to them daily until I inherited my fathers 1986 Forte 1s. My nephew is enjoying them now. 

 

As much as I like the Cerwin Vegas the Fortes always sounded better to me in every way. The very deep over powering bass the 380 YEs provide are fun, though. - I do not miss them in my system.

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The Cerwin Vega MTD 320 and either the 320 B, C or D satellite system really had nothing in common with other CV home systems.     They were an exercise in extreme duty / extra sound pressure levels engineered by the owner of CV, a former aerospace engineer.     They combined horns with overbuilt heavy duty woofers in solid wood cabinets  --- built to out loud anything - but with very low distortion.   They competed in the same price category as K-horns.

 

 The CV 320 modular system was comprised of a large bass cube or commode (320 B,C or D) with either two 12 inch heavy duty woofers or a 15 or 18 inch woofer with a heavy magnet structure and oversized voice coils.  The cube alone weighed a lot - maybe 100 lbs or more,

 

The two rectangular satellite speakers were shaped in a manner somewhat like Bose 901s.    These cabinets utilized horns and a large heavy duty 12 inch mid bass speaker.   These satellites also weighed close to what the bass cube weighed.

 

Not many of these systems were sold to the pubic --- they were the outgrowth of CV's outdoor concert sound reinforcement systems.    The 320 system could reach loudness levels  at very low distortion previously unseen by home audio speakers --- they measured at about 127 - 130 decibels at 30 hertz for the bass cube with similar levels for the satellites.    The 320 system could sustain those incredible sound pressure levels for long periods without failures as they utilized large 40 - 50 lb magnet structures on the woofers and ultra heavy duty voice coils.    

 

A handful of the 320 systems were made available to only a few select dealers nationwide - one such system was offered for sale by Shrader Sound in DC after the 1974 Audio home equipment show.    They were never envisioned to be a low leader or volume sales leader ---- rather they were built to demo what the state of the art was in the early-mid 1970s.

 

There is CV 320 system literature for sale on ebay from time to time and that can be viewed on ebay 

 

To sustain the company, CV sold lots of D-3 and D-5 systems back in that era.   The 320 system was special and limited production as the company flagship offering.      

 

 

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On 4/8/2018 at 5:37 AM, Shakeydeal said:

When I see pics like this I just have to shake my head at what the sound must be. So many things wrong, hard to know where to start.

 

Shakey

THANK YOU! I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets annoyed at some of the f*ckery I see on these forums and ESPECIALLY the Klipsch Facebook groups. There are some weird people in this world who buy Klipsch speakers. More so than any other community in hifi. Sorry not sorry. Go to any Klipsch Facebook group and have a look around. You'll see what I mean. 

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