How many K-horns have been produced?

[johknow4@gmail.com]

Is there an estimate as to how many Klipschorns have been produced since 1946?

[WMcD]

Is there a failure to back up a trash 80 involved?

Also an estimate that there were 20 x Heresy?  and X x CW and Y x LaScala and Z x Belle?

 

[JRH]

There have been many "old computer systems" failures to be backed up!  Through 1983 (the end of the paper logbooks) the total Klipschorns exceeded 20,000.  Over the same period  the total Heresy's exceeded 173,000.  At the time of the Heresy's introduction (1957) there had been a little over 1100 K-horns shipped.  Therefore, roughly 18,900 K-horns were shipped vs. 173,000 Heresy's.  To "engineering accuracy", the correct multiplier would be approximately 10 rather than 20.  Obviously that multiplier could vary year-to-year.

[HDBRbuilder]

Just for the time that I worked at Klipsch, July 1976-October 1983, I estimate that if you take all the K-horns, Belles, LaScalas, and Cornwalls TOGETHER ...the Heresy out-sold them at LEAST 20 to 1.  But one must also consider the economic climate of the time-period!  Inflation was running rampant, while money was tight and interest rates were ridiculously high!  Each year people found that they had less spending power than they had the year before, even after getting raises at work!  People settle for what they can easily afford in those kinds of times  PLUS, the Heresy had fully-developed to much more than just a supplementary speaker by then!  No matter how one looks at it, the Heresy is what kept the company in the black once it FINALLY GOT INTO the black!

 

When you are working in the plant every day, and you know what the production rates are, and you can count how many people are building particular models...it is much easer to estimate things to a ratio even if you don't have the exact number for them. Numerous things happened to the way speakers were assembled and parts were produced while I was there.  As far as production rates go, the most improved methodology for parts and assembly occurred specifically for the mitered Heresy boxes.  The elimination of the chain clamps for a quicker construction method increased the numbers which COULD be produced by an individual builder.  The individual daily production rates actually fell a bit with the change-over from the HDB(X) birch Heresy to the HB(X) build, because it took longer to build one...but the sales numbers rose because they all came with grilles on the HB(X) build.

 

Of all the speakers built while I was there, the least cost-effective for the company by far was the Belle.  It had to sell below the cost of a K-horn, and at the same time it took at least twice the labor time to build it!  It, like many others (Cornwall and Heresy come to mind!) was originally designed as a supplementary speaker for a K-horn.  But, by the  time it entered production, since stereo systems were already in full vogue, its INTENDED use was a supplement CENTER CHANNEL speaker between two flanking K-horns...for a three-speaker stereo array.  People still ordered them as pairs, though, for regular stereo!  It was really funny how things "took different turns" after a specific design intent had caused them to enter the picture to begin with!

 

By the time I left, the Klipsch line was already producing the KG2 with other "smaller footprint than a Heresy" speakers about to go into production.. additionally other in-house Heresy sales competition came along....all of which began to knock the Heresy downwards (but never completely down!) from its perch as sales leader, but it still out-sold any other particular model.  But many of those models are NOW gone forever, although some have made a return to production with updated changes after being "dead" for a few years.  BUT the Heresy has never been out of production in its history.  It somehow just keeps rolling along!  It really is a great speaker, though, IMHO!  Probably, for "best bang-for-the-buck", Klipsch has never had anything else close to it!