Klipsch tangent 500 rebuild

[Planegeek89]

Hi, this is the first time I have ever been on a forum and I am not really sure how this all works. Any advice is welcome. I am a custom cabinet builder and I love speakers. I like to purchase speakers that are in rough shape and build new cabinets for them. I recently took a rp280f that was damaged and turned it into a center channel speaker. I would like to rebuild a pair of tangent 500 speakers to match but want to make a better cab. I’ve heard people say it has essentially the same components as the heresy 2 but doesn’t sound as good. What can I do when I rebuild them to make them sound better? Can I change the horns to fastrac horns? Thanks. Here is the rp280f that I converted. 

Edited October 20, 2018 by Planegeek89

[Marvel]

The Tangent 400 has the exact same as an HII. Not sure about the T500. The  crossover should have labeling that says it's for a Heresy II. The Tangent 500 lists the same drivers, but also has a passive radiator. Could be the same crossover.

 

https://www.klipsch.com/products/tangent-500#post-product-summary

[jjptkd]

Nice work! The T-500 is close to a forte you could build a cabinet with the passives on the rear and upgrade the mid horns to the larger Tractrix k-61's they're easy to find on eBay.

[Planegeek89]

Thanks for the advice. Do I need to upgrade the drivers if I want to do the horn upgrade? I will probably replace the crossovers with an alk or crites upgrade as well if that makes a difference. 

[avguytx]

Personally, I wouldn't mess with changing or "upgrading" the horn; they were designed as they were and work with the crossovers they come with.  Sure, they can be changed but if you're looking for something to "upgrade" on the T500's, why not just sell off those parts and buy, or build, a better pair of speakers with new parts or whatever works?  The T500/5000/400, etc were darn good sounding speakers overall but were limited in their cabinet quality.   If you have original crossovers, maybe just upgrade the capacitors to start before buying higher end crossovers and see how they sound.

 

Or, build the cabinets to work with the drivers you have with a motorboard that can be removed and/or changed if you want to tinker with a different mid horn some day.  At least that way the cabinets are good to go and all that has to be done is the motorboard.

 

Just an opinion....that's all.  

[Alexander]

Not sure exactly what is in a T-500 but the T-5000 has a k-75-k, k-53-k & k-28-k (same as the 4 ohm k-24/25-k of forte I/II). I have a set of T-5000's and all I did was re seal the cabinet and build my own copy of the factory schematic with better parts, like Solen caps better not the more expensive stuff. The inductors I used were basic 18 awg stuff. I look at my T-5000's as a large cabinet version of a forte I. And you could build a better quality box than that would be the way to go.

[Marvel]

The t-400 / 500 / HII have the same parts. The only difference is the 500 has a passive radiator, the 400 is ported and the  cabinets are different sizes. It may have a different crossover.