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Would like your opinion on a CL buy Heresy II...


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25 minutes ago, Endo said:

^ Thanks for the clarification!
There is something about the nature of online, public forums that encourages cantankerous, ill-mannered exchanges.  @HDBRbuilder Thanks, again.
If I misspoke, I certainly meant no offense. I love this place!

Don't worry...it was nobody in particular!  But, instead, It was just a "Charlie-Foxtrot"  of everybody together!  Each using invented terms!  Here is the deal,:in an analogy. form:..Just because each can of pinto beans has a different label on it, doesn't mean people have to make a separate row in the pantry for each can! If they can all fit in the same row, then put them all iin the same rowt!  THEY ARE ALL PINTO BEANS!  LOL!  Make sense?

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Did anybody even CONSIDER that those heresys MAY HAVE BEEN RE-VENEERED in light ash with front edge veneer banding  strips added which were cut in a miter at corners??  HMMMMM?

 

After all, people post doing the SAME thing on this forum ALL THE TIME!...just saying....

 

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1 hour ago, HDBRbuilder said:

... It was just a "Charlie-Foxtrot" ...

 

A Viet Cong ballroom dance?

 

51 minutes ago, HDBRbuilder said:

Did anybody even CONSIDER that those heresys MAY HAVE BEEN RE-VENEERED in light ash with front edge veneer banding  strips added which were cut in a miter at corners?? 

 

Without reviewing the photos I've gotta say the shot of the top right rear corner with the chip looked a lot like mitred plywood as I recall.  So there's that.

 

Yeah, the thread sure got clustered...

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14 minutes ago, glens said:

 

A Viet Cong ballroom dance?

 

 

Without reviewing the photos I've gotta say the shot of the top right rear corner with the chip looked a lot like mitred plywood as I recall.  So there's that.

 

Yeah, the thread sure got clustered...

We didn't use birch plywood for miter cuts...poplar lumber-core is what we used until MDF replaced it!  That's part of the reason I think they are butt jointed birch plywood re-veneered...to look like mitered cabinets.  They used the original rear panels with labels indicating birch raw...but that ain't what they are, ANYMORE.  I did the same kind of thing with the oak LaScalas I built 20+ years ago...the front edge banding at the bottom corners MAKES the viewer THINK they are mitered, but underneath they actually have rabbeted joints at those corners, instead.  The only way anybody can actually tell is looking at those joints from UNDER the speakers!  Then the truth is known...Woodworking trickery!  Rabbeted joints=25% more wood glue surface strength than miter...and 50% more than butt joint...stronger, tighter,  and STIFFER! joinery!  More structurally sound!  ALSO reduces harmonic vibrations/flexing from sound waves passing thru the bass horn lens, without resorting to using thicker plywood in the construction to achieve the same results.  Don't need to be an engineer to know those things!  Wood-working experience is enough!  LOL!

 

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4 hours ago, HDBRbuilder said:

We didn't use birch plywood for miter cuts...poplar lumber-core is what we used until MDF replaced it!  That's part of the reason I think they are butt jointed birch plywood re-veneered...to look like mitered cabinets. 

 

Go to the first post, follow the link therein, and gander closely at pics 3, 6, and 7.  Sure looks to me like mitred plywood.  That's all I'm saying.  If they applied a veneer to those edges to make it look like plywood which is mitred, they did a damn good job.

 

Personally I think the price meeds to drop quite a bit further based on what you've said, since now I wonder (as much as I even care) whether the boxes themselves are even original.

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11 hours ago, HDBRbuilder said:

We didn't use birch plywood for miter cuts...

Yes, Klipsch did, I have a pair.

 

Please bear with me, here... This was one of the points I was trying to make. Actually, Klipsch used at least 2 different types of "birch plywood" – and NOT interchangeably.

 

The 2 kinds of birch ply seem to be used, each for different cabinet types:

 

• The high-grade product that originates in Northern Europe (aka Baltic Birch). This is easily discerned by its uniform and alternating contrasting layers (there are 7 of these layers in the 18mm/3,4 product). Klipsch used this on the typical, unfinished, butt-rabbet-lap-jointed from first series time period. (sometimes called 'multi-ply'; if Klipsch wasn't getting it from Russia, then they were buying something comparable)

 

• The other kind is what I've been referring to as a cabinet-grade, veneer core (likely a mixed-fir core or poplar as you've noted, as opposed to MDF core, or a hybrid core). While the latter is also void-free, it does appear more irregular in the edge striations, is available faced in either rotary or plane cut – and Klipsch used this on the miter joint Birch cabinets in addition to the MDF core. They exist. Also, it appears these 2 kinds of birch ply were NOT used interchangeably–but each to its intended purpose.

 

[ Edit ] – While it may sound like I'm itching to be contrary, I'm more motivated by the fact that these historic speakers are valuable – and anyone concerned with their care, preservation (and maybe restoration?) might find these not-so-important details of interest. If an enthusiast isn't willing to venture into absurdity once in a while, attempting to satisfy the insatiable, why bother? It just feels right. Peace.

 

I invite correction, if I've got any of this wrong.

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4 hours ago, Endo said:

Yes, Klipsch did, I have a pair.

 

Please bear with me, here... This was one of the points I was trying to make. Actually, Klipsch used at least 2 different types of "birch plywood" – and NOT interchangeably.

 

The 2 kinds of birch ply seem to be used, each for different cabinet types:

 

• The high-grade product that originates in Northern Europe (aka Baltic Birch). This is easily discerned by its uniform and alternating contrasting layers (there are 7 of these layers in the 18mm/3,4 product). Klipsch used this on the typical, unfinished, butt-rabbet-lap-jointed from first series time period. (sometimes called 'multi-ply'; if Klipsch wasn't getting it from Russia, then they were buying something comparable)

 

• The other kind is what I've been referring to as a cabinet-grade, veneer core (likely a mixed-fir core or poplar as you've noted, as opposed to MDF core, or a hybrid core). While the latter is also void-free, it does appear more irregular in the edge striations, is available faced in either rotary or plane cut – and Klipsch used this on the miter joint Birch cabinets in addition to the MDF core. They exist. Also, it appears these 2 kinds of birch ply were NOT used interchangeably–but each to its intended purpose.

 

[ Edit ] – While it may sound like I'm itching to be contrary, I'm more motivated by the fact that these historic speakers are valuable – and anyone concerned with their care, preservation (and maybe restoration?) might find these not-so-important details of interest. If an enthusiast isn't willing to venture into absurdity once in a while, attempting to satisfy the insatiable, why bother? It just feels right. Peace.

 

I invite correction, if I've got any of this wrong.

NO OFFENSE INTENDED, BUT....First of all your post is chock-full of assumptions! and errors on what was used in NORMAL PRODUCTION!  I must have explained this at least a hundred times on this forum since the late 1990's!!  Doesn't anybody do a forum search before they write a post, anymore?

 

In the late 1950's and through the 1960-'s into the early 1970's Klipsch used finely veneered lumbercore panels, and marine grade fir panels for almost EVERYTHING in varying thicknesses according to what the specs for the speaker were.

 

Klipsch used Baltic birch for folded-horn panels in K-horns...not for Heresy, Cornwall, La Scala  or Belle cabinet-body main panels!  That NEVER happened!  PERIOD!  It was experimentally-TRIED, but it just ate up too many saw blades and router bits!...so the idea was shelved early-on!  We had an ungodly amount of it which the company had picked-up very inexpensively...made in the USSR!...sometime shorty after I started working at Klipsch in July 1976...that stuff was likely bought in 1977 sometime  All the glue in between the plys in it was hard as hell urea-formaldeyde glue...and the plys themselves were all ARCTIC birch...very dense heavy stuff to begin with, and "it didn't want to look pretty"!  It was also in various sheet sizes!  So we used it where it worked best with the least wear-and-tear on edged tools!  It was tried on the drop-in fronts (motor-board panels) for Heresys, but the staples folded when trying to install them, and router bits just got so hot, so fast, that the cutting edges exploded out of them in tiny pieces!! Trust me, I KNOW!!...and I still have the tiny scars on my neck and arms to prove it!!.  So use of  the thicker Baltic birch was NOT for anything that required routing out holes!  MOST of it ended up eventually being used for crossover network boards. the thinner stuff, around 1/2" thick was used in K-horn horn bass bin interior panel assemblies and for the side panels of the horn body...stuff that  would have screws securing it instead of other fastener types!  Drilling holes for screws was no issue when with using it!  Staples and finish nails??...forget it!...didn't happen because they folded or bent trying to get thru it!  That huge purchase was BELIEVED to be a great idea when they made it at a great discount, but none of the decision-makers on the deal knew chit about trying to use it for building our speakers!!…. and didn't bother asking us!...AS USUAL!!  The Baltic birch panels we got which were approximately 1/2" thick...had 9 plys.  The Baltic birch we got that was approximately 3/4" thick had 17 plys,  It was marine-grade Baltic birch!  And it was NOT pretty!  So it was never used for speaker cabinet  main box panels. It would have made great boats though!  Down at my father's place is something I used scraps of it to build back around 1980! It was a canoe/kayak rack designed to fit inside of my 1980 Dodge Ram 50 pick-up truck bed edges!  It has ALWAYS been out in the weather!  No paint of anything else to protect the wood!  I replaced that pickup in 1988.  That rack has been siting there on sawhorses out in the weather ever since then!...there is almost no sign of ANY ply separations except here and there on the very edges, and it is more due to erosion than to separation from what I can tell!  I have replaced the saw horses it sits on at least a dozen times!...they were made of pressure treated wood and have consistently rotted away and been eaten up by insects!, where nothing like that has happened to the Baltic birch!!  Go figure!  That is totally amazing to me!

 

The Birch-cabinet-grade 3/4" plywood used was a custom lay from Georgia Pacific..."void-free"...and whenever GP decided it was to THEIR advantage, they would send some with lots of voids so that they could jack-up the price on us for the next shipment when management raised hell about "all of the voids in the plywood coming-in lately"!  It had FIVE-equal-thickness interior plys, which were generally from a variety of fine-grained/tight-grained hardwoods and its outer plys were top high quality birch veneers which generally ran  AT or ever-so-slightly UNDER 1/16th " thick...we had to sand the raw speakers before they left the factory/before finish was applied , and we had to be able to ensure NOT sanding thru the outer birch veneers , or so close to the underlying ply's grain that it would show thru the outer birch veneer ply when finishes were applied! OUR working tolerances for speaker parts was NOT TO EXCEED 1/64th" !  This was to eliminate construction issues! (ESPECIALLY IN THE FOLDED BASS HORNS!!)  So, the plywood actually had SEVEN TOTAL PLYS! and HAD to measure AT 3/4" in thickness when we received it...no more, no less!  TRUST ME, I KNOW!!  I'm pretty sure there was no evergreens wood involved in the interior plys, because I would have smelled it when cutting or routing it!!...this includes fir!  I'm from a multi-generational timber family...timberland sawmills, etc!   We can generally ID the wood from the smell when cutting it!...or burning it...without seeing the leaves or paying attention to the bark on the trees!  I got much more expansive in my being able to do this due to working with exotic woods over the years, too!  "What kind of wood it this? All the boards are almost black with crap on them!!"  Take a saw and cut into it a little and let me smell! it's like a scratch and sniff thing! Too easy after you were forced to do it for ten years!  That's what happens when you are out of something you NEED, but there are SIX 53' trailers outside full of exotic wood boards that were in a warehouse fire heavily-discounted salvage package, and are all mixed-up in each trailer!!  LOL!  Just had to love the pattern shop in the foundry!!  Always out of what we needed most for rigging patterns!!  LOL!  Had to find something else which would work, instead!...at least for awhile, anyway!!

 

All of THAT BEING SAID there were a handful of times while  I worked there where we had not yet received a shipment of from GP...so a local purchase of a few maybe two or three bundles of 3/4" cabinet-grade birch plywood was made to "tide us over" until the GP shipment arrived,  because we were almost completely out of it!  We called that our "emergency stash"...and as soon as the GP shipment arrived, we would stop using the local-purchase stuff and let it sit until it was needed again!  We only bought MORE of it when we were already out of the GP stuff and ALSO almost out of the emergency stash itself...just to keep  production going!...until the GP shipments finally arrived!  Our biggest problem was limited storage capacity in the cabinet shop for bundles of plywood...this was severely reduced even more when they bought those truckloads of Baltic birch!...most of which didn't get used up for years!

 

The later move to what much of the "cabinet-grade" birch plywood ended up becoming OUTSIDE of Klipsch was already being produced in limited amounts...I have no evidence Klipsch EVER USED THAT STUFF, though!  In order to allow for thinner outside veneer, the move was heading towards something like thin cardboard/Masonite directly under the outermost veneer.  That way, the outer veneer could be thinner and still could be sanded a decent amount WITHOUT becoming so thin that you could EASILY see its immediate substrate "grain:"...because its immediate substrate DID NOT HAVE ANY GRAIN!!  I worked with that stuff in the early 1990's for a while!,  I was NOT impressed!

 

ONE MORE CAVEAT:  I have no idea what Klipsch might have done in TRYING OUT other plywood types after I left...but I would imagine they would have sold the speakers from those attempts...even though they may not have decided to use that particular plywood in regular production!  WASTE WAS FROWNED UPON!

 

For the fine-wood-veered panels such as black walnut and all the rest of the finely veneered panels...what was used was Georgia-Pacific (generally!) custom lay of "void-free" Poplar lumber-core plywood.  This consisted of edge-glued poplar lumber boards which seldom were more than 1.5 inches wide.  On the inside "side" of the lumber-core, were TWO veneer plys of top grade birch! On the outside "side were two  more veneers, one of birch adjacent to the poplar lumber core, and one of whatever the fine veneer was....oak, walnut, rosewood, ebony...whatever! The same rules for outer veneer thickness and total panel thickness applied!  These panels were custom veneered by GP...in panels that were specifically sized for particular speaker designs.  Let's take Heresys or Cornwalls for instance:  for a pair of Cormwalls there were four panels to a pair.  they ARRIVED already edge-banded in veneer, just about a half inch too wide.  So let's take a side panel sheet.  The saw would be set for the over-all width of the SPEAKER panel, then the wood panel it was cut from would be ripped TO WIDTH from the "double-wide" panel we received....then the remaining piece would be put edge-veneer to he saw fence and it too would be ripped to its needed width...they would be laid face to face...you did this for each of the four doublewide panels...when you were done you had eight panels for a matched pair...then you mitered one end on all of them using a sled, then you set the fence at the end of the SLED and mitered the other end...for all panels according to required length of panel.this left a thin piece of scrap...NOW you had all eight panels of the matched pair ready for assembly!  Every panel received was already palletized for the individual pairs!  If something got screwed up, then you would end up with one single, and one to be painted black or white(best case scenario!).  This included Heresys, Cornwalls, Belles and K-horns...involving their fine-veneered panels! the panels for belles had no miters AT THE ENDS...they were just ripped to width!  I'm not gonna describe about all the K-horn panels...takes too damned long to do so!

 

When Klipsch moved from lumbercore to MDF, .there was "NO IN-BETWEEN involved" 

 

I left Klipsch in September 1983, we had just put the KG2 into production, the other speakers were K-horns, Belles, LaScalas, Cornwalls, and Heresys and the industrial line models.!  Others in the KG series were in the works and being readied for production over the next couple of years...prototypes had been approved, but they were not in production, yet!  Veneered MDF was being heavily considered for future speaker production!...the front-loaded drivers for what became called the Heresy II was already in the works and I had been involved in making the parts and assembling some of the prototype cabinets!  The transition period before the Heresy II was actually produced AS the Heresy II was a few years long...but the prototypes were already showung its new CABINET construction method(s).

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Wow, that's awesome! I appreciate the thoughtful response.

 

What are my Cornwalls made out of? They're just like the H's in the original post and also like the Nesovski H's posted above.

 

What kind of plywood is this?

 

Here is an image from the OP. You can see both the Fir in the core, and also the mitered construction to the cabinet.

Interesting... what is that stuff.

 

fir2.jpg

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1 hour ago, Endo said:

Wow, that's awesome! I appreciate the thoughtful response.

 

What are my Cornwalls made out of? They're just like the H's in the original post and also like the Nesovski H's posted above.

 

What kind of plywood is this?

 

Here is an image from the OP. You can see both the Fir in the core, and also the mitered construction to the cabinet.

Interesting... what is that stuff.

 

fir2.jpg

Once again...my best guess is that your boxes are re-builds...or maybe built from panels which were part of the emergency stash...we never used anything which looked like that for REGULAR  production   while I worked there...if they were CLOSE to the changeover to MDF, then they MIGHT have had to buy some local purchase stuff to tide them o9ver until the MDF production was fully rocking and rolling!  Fir is not he ONLY wood that looks like...hemlock a number of European evergreens, etc!  They may have bought some stuff that was made in CHINA, too!  WHO KNOWS??  If It was a LOCAL PURCHASE they had to get what was available locally...there was not enough time to order it from elsewhere...so your guess is as good as mine!  Canada has been shipping fir logs to China for DECADES! they also ship hemlock! I will tell you ONE thing, though...it is NOT what Klipsch PREFERRED TO USE...NOT ENOUGH INTERIOR PLYS!!  THREE-PLY interior is not what THEY WANTED for a variety of reasons...soft wood interior plys JUST UNDER the outside veneer layer were ALSO not what they wanted.  Here is the deal...you bump the veneer surface, a thick softwood ply immediately UNDER the veneer will DENT DEEPER...taking forever to use water and a steam iron to pull it UP thru swell/evaporation technique... the longer it takes, the less production you get!  SIMPLE!  BTW, the grain and pith of that outside veneer does NOT look like Birch to ME....in these pics!  And WHY is the speaker back panel NOT at least FLUSH with the rear edges of the panels surrounding it??   Something very wrong here!  As for rotary cut birch used for outside veneer plys...on main box panels...never saw that a single time in SEVEN YEARS there!  Not once at any time!  If it was ever used, it was NOT while I was there!  there is a major reason why too...too much "sanding fuzz!" possible!  it works just fine for most conifers, but not for birch!  The sanding room people would have been driven nuts!

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22 minutes ago, Sancho Panza said:

If I wasn’t like an Egyptian Mummy (pressed for time), I’d drive on down, if nothing else, to end this 08##9;* contest.

 

Maybe Thursday or Friday.

you Gotta make on next Monday or later...heading to drown  myself in the Fort Smith flood tomorrow!  Gonna take til then to  get-er-done!

Did  AOC open multiple forum accounts lately?

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On 6/2/2019 at 10:33 AM, Sancho Panza said:

Character.

 

I might swing by to see them, on the way back from Floridays...

 

Want a nice pair of HWO Heresy 'E' models, while you are in Florida?  I might have to go get the Chorus II's.

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3 minutes ago, Sancho Panza said:

Sure, I'd be interested, but we'll barely be in Florida.

 

Perdido Key, near the Flora-Bama line.

 

That's a 6 to 7 hour drive from central Florida.  You're right, a bit too far.  Check out a bar called "Howl at the Moon", a dueling piano joint.  My wife played with them for years.

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