A Quick Rundown of the "New Guy's" System...

[Charles T]

5 hours ago, Marvel said:

Looks to be a bighter morning and it looks like the fog has cleared ... 🤯 That was was some night.

 

 

 

And that's all I ever wanted. We all have enough nonsense going on in life these days. That nonsense shouldn't extend into the forum(s). I use music, audio equipment and audio forums like this as a little getaway to enjoy and relax and listen to my system and forget the outside world for a little bit. So with that, I hope we all move on in good company.

[Charles T]

6 hours ago, jimjimbo said:

I am sure you will enjoy them should you go that route.  I've built 6 pair (still have the original built by ClaudeJ1, plus 1) and several others here have built them with great success.

 

Whenever I get around do getting a pair and playing around with them, they'll be for our bedroom system. But I will try them out in the main system as well just for fun. I'd also like to eventually build quality crossovers for my III's as well. 

[ClaudeJ1]

21 hours ago, Charles T said:

 

No, not redundant at all. I have looked through that thread. That's one of the reasons I've been thinking about getting an old pair, just to experiment with. Lots of good info on that thread. 

The Super Heresy Thread is over 6 years old and it's version 1.0. I've since started a v2.0 thread using a Neo Magnet woofer and DaveA's sMAHL tweeter lenses. They will soon replace my Super Cornwalls as L&R Side Channels in my 7.2.4 Dolby Atmos setup in the living room. I need the space for CD and Movie storage, LOL.

 

You have a choice of the larger magnet/cheaper DE-10's or the DE-120's from B&C. I think Dave has the largest stock of them in the USA and offers them at a competitive price, as far as I can recall.

 

I originally shared the "Super Heresy Joy" with my fellow Klipsheads here because their performance sounded even better than the way the Curves looked! In the "big picture" of Audio Budget and Finance departments, it's very affordable, especially if you use the original woofer in the 1.0 thead to save a few bucks, since their performance is almost identical. 

 

Either way, enjoy the music as any flavor of Heresys represents one of the very best "bang for the buck" loudspeakers ever produced. Incidentally, the Heresy saved the company, financially speaking, in the last century.

[OO1]

-

[Charles T]

2 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

The Super Heresy Thread is over 6 years old and it's version 1.0. I've since started a v2.0 thread using a Neo Magnet woofer and DaveA's sMAHL tweeter lenses. They will soon replace my Super Cornwalls as L&R Side Channels in my 7.2.4 Dolby Atmos setup in the living room. I need the space for CD and Movie storage, LOL.

 

You have a choice of the larger magnet/cheaper DE-10's or the DE-120's from B&C. I think Dave has the largest stock of them in the USA and offers them at a competitive price, as far as I can recall.

 

I originally shared the "Super Heresy Joy" with my fellow Klipsheads here because their performance sounded even better than the way the Curves looked! In the "big picture" of Audio Budget and Finance departments, it's very affordable, especially if you use the original woofer in the 1.0 thead to save a few bucks, since their performance is almost identical. 

 

Either way, enjoy the music as any flavor of Heresys represents one of the very best "bang for the buck" loudspeakers ever produced. Incidentally, the Heresy saved the company, financially speaking, in the last century.

 

Thank you Claude for the very informative post. There certainly are a lot of options for these little Heresy's. Different drivers, different horns, sealed or ported, even 2-way options. I'll have to search for that 2.0 thread though. 

 

And I didn't know that about the Heresy saving Klipsch. Then again, I also didn't realize that the H III has been around since 2000 either. I just started seeing and reading reviews of the H III's in the past two to three years, so I thought they were only around about 5 years or so. 

[MechEngVic]

On 3/4/2020 at 10:06 PM, Charles T said:

 

Correct. 

 

The front baffles of the Heresy's are exactly 3.5' in front of the wall, and their centers are exactly 2' from the side walls, toed in slightly where their paths probably cross about 15' behind me... Well into the mud room. Maybe even further! LOL

 

In my seated position, my ears are right at the top edge of where the woofer and midrange horn join.

Pulling the speakers away from the wall behind them adds depth to your soundstage.

 

The spot between the low and high frequency drivers is the vertical sweet spot IMO.

 

Looks like you're a perceptive listener.

[Charles T]

9 minutes ago, MechEngVic said:

Pulling the speakers away from the wall behind them adds depth to your soundstage.

 

The spot between the low and high frequency drivers is the vertical sweet spot IMO.

 

Looks like you're a perceptive listener.

 

Thank you.

 

I'd like to think that I'm a pretty good, perceptive listener. I try to eek out as much performance and possible from my system, more so from my speakers since they are the easiest things to tweak, free tweaks at that because you're just moving them around and giving a listen to see what the results are. And those are instant results as well.

[MechEngVic]

3 minutes ago, Charles T said:

I try to eek out as much performance and possible from my system, more so from my speakers since they are the easiest things to tweak, free tweaks at that because you're just moving them around and giving a listen to see what the results are. And those are instant results as well.

The center fronts of my KLF-10's are 33 inches away from their back wall, 7 feet apart (centers), and towed in 45 degrees. They are on either side of my desk in a near-field setup. I've become addicted to close up listening. It's like headphones with still a room-full of bass, and no room reflections. I actually built 6 inch stands for them so my ear would be between the woofer and the tweeter. They are extensively modded but some of the best improvements were positional.

[Charles T]

Nice. Years ago, I had the older version of those, the KG 5.5's. In some ways, I preferred them over the Cornwall's. They had better bass as well as better treble. Smaller and lighter was a plus as well. The Cornwall's had better midrange though, but that was only after I had upgraded the caps on the old 1979 crossovers and added an inductor to the midrange circuit to make it a bandpass filter instead of the stock high-pass only filter. Those KG 5.5's are a speaker I kind of wish I kept. 

 

What I really wanted though were the CF-4's. 

 

I've tried near field listening before, and it's great. It takes the room out of the equation. But in a small house with limited space, it's not a practical setup unfortunately. 

[ClaudeJ1]

2 hours ago, Charles T said:

 

Thank you Claude for the very informative post. There certainly are a lot of options for these little Heresy's. Different drivers, different horns, sealed or ported, even 2-way options. I'll have to search for that 2.0 thread though. 

 

And I didn't know that about the Heresy saving Klipsch. Then again, I also didn't realize that the H III has been around since 2000 either. I just started seeing and reading reviews of the H III's in the past two to three years, so I thought they were only around about 5 years or so. 

A few people were looking for the 2.0 thread, so I added the link in the 1.0 thread. Since the magnet space is smaller, I was able to move the port to the center in the 2.0. The original Heresy was designed to be a Center channel between 2 Klipschorns. It was the very first non-corner speaker by PWK. Then came the Cornwall, LaScala, then the Belle, which was the final Center Channel from PWK (I heard the one he had at his house, named after his first wife, Belle, who died of lung cancer). It saved the company because they were selling like hot cakes and generated way more income than Khorns, which eventually led to all the other products beyond Khorns.

[Charles T]

8 minutes ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

A few people were looking for the 2.0 thread, so I added the link in the 1.0 thread. Since the magnet space is smaller, I was able to move the port to the center in the 2.0. The original Heresy was designed to be a Center channel between 2 Klipschorns. It was the very first non-corner speaker by PWK. Then came the Cornwall, LaScala, then the Belle, which was the final Center Channel from PWK (I heard the one he had at his house, named after his first wife, Belle, who died of lung cancer). It saved the company because they were selling like hot cakes and generated way more income than Khorns, which eventually led to all the other products beyond Khorns.

 

I'll definitely go check out the link to the 2.0 thread. Thanks for adding that! 

 

Speaking of the Belle, any idea why Klipsch never continued this model? You would think nowadays where a lot of people are a lot more concerned with looks than sound, they would prefer something like the Belle over the LaScala due to the addition of the grills. Other than the grills, there were basically the same speaker, correct? 

[DizRotus]

Belles were similar to La Scalas, but had several significant differences beyond the grilles.  The squawker horn in Belles was shorter than the one in Las Scalas—which was the same in Khorns.  The configuration of the bass horn was different also.  Both differences were dictated by the shallower depth of Belles.

 

It cost more to produce a Belle than a La Scala, which contributed to its demise.  When Valerie Klipsch entered PWK’s life, the chances of resurrecting a speaker named for his first wife dropped to zero.

 

[Islander]

3 hours ago, Charles T said:

 

Speaking of the Belle, any idea why Klipsch never continued this model? You would think nowadays where a lot of people are a lot more concerned with looks than sound, they would prefer something like the Belle over the LaScala due to the addition of the grills. Other than the grills, there were basically the same speaker, correct? 

 

There may be other reasons, but the main one was the arrival of the La Scala II.  Next to the Belle, the La Scala looked like stage or studio gear, but then then, in 2006, the La Scala Ii showed up, replacing the first-generation model.  Instead of being made of 3/4” plywood panels, now they were all 1” thick MDF, which not only looked better, it sounded better, because the bass horn’s sidewalls were now much stiffer.  This addressed a bass-robbing resonance that could occur during high volume listening with the earlier model.  This meant that the new model had more and better bass, with no change of bass driver (I believe that’s true, but don’t mind being corrected if I’m wrong.).  Although the frequency response specs were unchanged, the new speaker seemed to go a bit deeper, as well as giving the impression that there was simply more bass than before.  Sensitivity was now up to 105 dB/W/m, just a bit better than the Belle at 103.

 

As for the midrange, the La Scala is 24” deep, rather than the 18” of the Belle.  This allows the Scala to use the longer K400/K410 mid horn, while the shallower Belle used the shorter K700 mid horn.  The lower frequency limit of the K400/410 meant that more sounds were reproduced by the squawker, rather than the woofer, which was a good thing.

 

As well, the LS2 had many of the styling cues of the Belle, which has been called one of the best-looking Klipsch speakers, or even the best-looking one.  Now the La Scala looked more at home in living rooms, and less utilitarian.  For these two main reasons, the Belle seemed redundant.  Instead of producing two similar-looking speakers, especially speakers that didn’t sell in large numbers, it made sense to pick just one, and the new La Scala II was the obvious choice.

[Islander]

12 minutes ago, DizRotus said:

 

It cost more to produce a Belle than a La Scala, which contributed to its demise.  When Valerie Klipsch entered PWK’s life, the chances of resurrecting a speaker named for his first wife dropped to zero.

 

 

Wow.  Even Paul Klipsch, genius and audio pioneer, had to deal with WAF.  His first wife, Belle, grumbled about the looks of their Cornwall (am I right, or was it another model?) centre speaker, so he created the Belle Klipsch, much prettier, and named after Belle.

 

Years later, his new wife, Valerie, didn’t like the idea of a speaker named after his previous wife, so he created the La Scala II.

 

Rich people have the same problems as the rest of us, but they cost them more to solve...

[ClaudeJ1]

6 hours ago, Charles T said:

Speaking of the Belle, any idea why Klipsch never continued this model? You would think nowadays where a lot of people are a lot more concerned with looks than sound, they would prefer something like the Belle over the LaScala due to the addition of the grills. Other than the grills, there were basically the same speaker, correct? 

I met Paul in 1985 and spent a day with him at the factory, lab, and his home (my wife was with me then). As you can imagine, I had lots of questions for him. He sold the company to his cousin Fred Klipsch, the garage door king of Indianapolis (PWK did not know his cousin until they were introduced by and Indy Klipsch Fan). So, at 85 years old (he lived to be 98), he sold the company in 1989 and remained chiefly as an impressario. Anyhow, Fred grew the company 7 fold before it became one of the largest speaker companies in the world and was sold off about 10 years ago.......but I digress.

 

From a business and consolidation perspective, the powers that be at the time decided to make a pretty version of the LaScala instead, so it effectively made the Belle redundant. PWK always said that a horn was a rigid air column and you just had to figure out what shape to make it. This allowed production to increase their volume of the K-401 horn, which is acoustically the same as the Speakerlab metal copy you own (I had the Speakerlab 350 horn in my version of a "CornScala" in 1975 before it was even conceived and named as such by fellow Klipsheads here, but I digress again.

 

Yes, the Belle is, essentially, a pretty version of a LaScala with a wider/shallower footprint using the same components EXCEPT for the Midrange K-500 Horn, which had to be shorter a result of the Belle having less depth, but the driver was the same as a LaScala/Khorn/Cornwall/Heresy at the time. As an "obscure fact" as told to me by PWK himself, the K-500 horn used in the Belle measured so well that he said he thought his K-400 horn was "longer than it had to be." PWK was not into "overkilling" his components like JBL was during this time period.

 

You can still get Belles in the used market or build a clone of the bass section, but I would use more modern horns and drivers. Look to Volti Audio's curved version of a LaScala/Belle as an example, which sells for about $25,000 a pair. As long as the taper rate, horn length, mouth size, back air chamber, driver, and throat are similar in a bifurcated "W" bin, they are essentially all the same, with a 2 1/2 foot length and approx. 100 Hz. cutoff as a horn and a direct radiator below that.

 

As PWK might have said, using his famous phrase: "There's not a dime's worth of difference between them."

[ClaudeJ1]

2 hours ago, DizRotus said:

Belles were similar to La Scalas, but had several significant differences beyond the grilles.  The squawker horn in Belles was shorter than the one in Las Scalas—which was the same in Khorns.  The configuration of the bass horn was different also.  Both differences were dictated by the shallower depth of Belles.

 

It cost more to produce a Belle than a La Scala, which contributed to its demise.  When Valerie Klipsch entered PWK’s life, the chances of resurrecting a speaker named for his first wife dropped to zero.

 

LOL, yes indeed, but having met Miss Valerie (PWK's second wife), I doubt she would have minded that much. I'm pretty sure it was simply a business decision by the new owners, since, I suspect, the sales volumes were very LOW for the Belle. Roy Delgado and Jim Hunter (among others) would know for sure.

[ClaudeJ1]

2 hours ago, Islander said:

while the shallower Belle used the shorter K700 mid horn.

The Belle used a K-500, not a K-700, but it still used the K-55 driver, like all the PWK designed speakers at the time, which is pre-circa 1980.

[ClaudeJ1]

12 hours ago, Randyh said:

I cant  FIND the v2.0 thread ,

I added it to the Super Heresy 1.0 (Baby Cornwall) thread, so just go back there now.

[Charles T]

Well it seems as though I just learned a whole ton about the Belle and La Scala. Ask one little question and get a plethora of informative answers. 👍

 

And since we're on the subject of the Belle and La Scala, what is the limiting factor of their bass extension? Is it the driver, the size of the sealed cavity, or the size of the horn? Since those drivers are asked to play up to 400 - 500 Hz, I would think that the horn is possibly more designed to help amplify and project those higher frequencies than it is to help in the bass department. 

 

Via Google searches, I've found a thread in a forum in Australia where a member modded a La Scala bass horn with a Crites woofer and then created a ported enclosure that attached under the horn with of course a pass-through from the sealed chamber to that ported enclosure. 

 

https://www.stereo.net.au/forums/topic/64191-3-way-eliptrac-horn-klipsch-la-scalas/

 

[glens]

1 hour ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

LOL, yes indeed, but having met Miss Valerie (PWK's second wife), I doubt she would have minded that much. I'm pretty sure it was simply a business decision by the new owners, since, I suspect, the sales volumes were very LOW for the Belle. Roy Delgado and Jim Hunter (among others) would know for sure.

 

On the face of it, I feel saying his second wife having any influence in the matter really amounts to an accusation of pettiness on her part, and I'd seriously doubt that to be the case.  The product pre-existed her being a "Missus Paul Klipsch" and my guess is she wouldn't have minded in the least.