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PWK had a little secret...


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On 5/9/2019 at 10:18 AM, JRH said:

Pretty sure this was made by Robert Wyatt, known to most as "Bois D'arc".  He is responsible for the Klipsch Garden adjacent to the old RR station in Hope.

IIRC...it was...Bois'd'Arc also built a "half scale" meaning 1/4-sized La Scala...I think it was before he built this, though...he told me this year or last year that somebody "appropriated" it no very long after it was built, tho...and "I sure wish I knew who took it!"

 

I definitely remember him trying to get some help for his Mini-K-Horn...in finding a driver to make it work...which he eventually acquired...I  think PWK had a hand in getting it!...and figuring out how to power it...an old pocket transistor radio earphone jack for source, IIRC!...Possibly, the driver also came from it!  I remember Bois'd'arc  was asking around the cabinet shop for a 9-volt battery...saying that it was all he "still needed to listen to it!" LOL!  What a character...still is!

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When I worked at Klipsch most of us in the cabinet shop were always building up miniature things (mostly speaker units!) during breaks and after work...The first thing I built was a pair of Mini-Heresys for Judy Harris, who wanted stereo in her bathroom in her apartment!  Outside audio manufacturers and such were always sending things to the lab to be tested, but that really got heavy after the anechoic chamber was built!  Seldom did the stuff sent to be tested have a requirement it had to be returned...so that stuff would build-up, and had to be gotten-rid-of...so they wouid let us "get rid of it" for them!  We NORMALLY had to pay SOMETHING for what we got, but it was way less than if we had to buy it elsewhere!...if not totally FREE!   So I went over to Don Peterson's office and figured he was in, since his BMW Sedan was parked outside...told him what I was building and what I needed for it.  So he looked thru the pile of stuff he had stored back in his office, and pulled out a pair of Pioneer Duo-cone 6x9 oval car speakers...told me they tested out similarly to what the Heresys put out, and said "FREE" and I was outta there!  I had already sawn from scrap  a pair of approximately half-scale(1/8th the interior volume of Heresys) Heresy cabinet parts including the motor-board panel ...but had not routed the opening for the driver, yet...SO I did that, slapped them together and got them shot in industrial textured black, along with the trim for around the motorboard to staple grille cloth under the trim onto the box...I put some trerminals on the rear panel and assembled it all up...took them  to the lab and asked them to test them...a few days later I got word they had been tested...and they were surprised at how close to Heresys they sounded.  Judy was a happy camper!

 

Made another pair of boxes up for some oval 5x7 Jenson Coax car-speakers  a year or so later for my best friend, Mike, for Christmas, too!  He had red Subaru 4WD wagon...wanted some speakers to put in the rear cargo area...so, with grille panel Velcro hook tabs on bottom of them, he could move them around on the rear cargo area carpet wherever he wanted to, to figure out the best sound location, and they would stay put on the carpet no matter how hard he drove that thing!  They sounded great, too! 

 

I even got a "universal-fit" Blaupunkt in-dash AM/FM Cassette deck that way...put it into my 75 Datsun pick-up, with a pair of 5 or 6 inch round Jensen coax door speakers into the doors, and was good to go!  My best buddy, Mike asked me why I was adding in an alligator clip to the speaker wires in the doors, instead of just female spade connectors to the speaker-terminals...I told him "You'll find out this weekend at the river".  He stopped by my place en-route to the river, and we loaded up the 55 gal drum BBQ grill, sacks of groceries and stuff, a large ice chest full of ice and beer, and a pair of LB-76' "FACTORY-LOANERS" into the back of the Datsun pick-up...we got to the river and unloaded everything, ...put the LB's way out on the gravel bar facing in, I removed the door speaker covers and ran speaker wire from each LB-76 to each door, thru the door windows...and the "alligator-clip-instead-of-female-spade-connector plan" was revealed to Mike!  Then I popped a 120-minute "greatest hits Vol. I" cassette (which I had recorded from albums) into the Blaupunkt, and it was Rock'N'Roll-at-the-river-time!  LOL! A huge crowd of friends showed and we all had a blast!  IIRC, that Blaupunkt AM/FM Cassette in-dash deck put out about 10 WPC max!!  It was already "more than loud enough!" thru the LB-76's with the volume knob sitting at ""nine o'clock"position! 😉

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