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New $49 aftermarket K-510 Horn - Anyone Try yet?


SkyDover

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6 minutes ago, Dave A said:

I leaned towards the bulge being deliberate but as crude as these 510's I have are I was not sure.

I've seen different variations of the mumpless 510 horn out there I think there's an earlier "crude" version out there along with a cleaned up version. I'll pull the driver from my klipsch 510 and do a closer comparison of the two horns.

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3 hours ago, Dave A said:

Got a pair in and side by side they are different. The mouth of the EBay horn has a sharp corner where it meets the mounting flange and the 510's I have are rounded there. The throat has as shown a square cutout like area like the 402 horn does and again my 510's don't have. Sharp corners EBay and rounded corners 510 from throat to mouth. The EBay horns are a more precision made product 

I think you have the older original version of the 510 I just checked the horns I have on hand and they are exactly the same. The one with the bug screen is a factory Klipsch k-510 

 

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1 hour ago, jjptkd said:

I just checked the horns I have on hand and they are exactly the same.

It's not difficult to make a copy of a molded horn.  I think that's what these new ZXPC horns are...second generation (non-mumps) K-510 clones.

 

When the ZXPC horns come in, I intend to compare the polar sonograms with the mumps (third generation) K-510 that I ran a couple of years ago.  It will be nice to see the effect that the mumps provide. 

 

Roy once said that the mumps can be added by hand using non-hardening modeling clay.  I think that the horn wall angles on the non-mumps second gen horns are a little different than the third gen mumps version, but for home hi-fi duty, that small difference is probably not nearly as critical as it is for commercial cinema duty (as tweeter horns using 2" compression drivers). 

 

Chris

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2 hours ago, jjptkd said:

I think you have the older original version of the 510 I just checked the horns I have on hand and they are exactly the same. The one with the bug screen is a factory Klipsch k-510 

 

20200314_090824 (600x800).jpg

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Older for sure as mine looks nothing like that. As bad as the old 510's are and as cheap as these new ones are I think I will replace them if the new ones test good. Ought to be able to sell the old ones for at least what the new ones will cost if the new ones test good.

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Chris, I am sure you know this already .... If you take a straight edge to the inside of the horn near the throat, the angle re: the mounting flange will be straight contour with an angle of about 45deg. If you "roll" the straight edge along the contour (toward the mouth), then at about 2/3 of the way out (toward the mouth), that angle becomes about 55-60 deg for about a half inch. This second straight portion then transitions smoothy to final curve.

 

This "discontinuity" at one time had been referred to as the "bump" (not to be confused with the mumps). I was told it was to help control the dispersion at the higher frequencies. I do not see the bump in the photos posted for the zxpc horns. Maybe the photo/lighting is not clear enough? I don't know. As of right now, however, I don't think these are a careful clone or "leftovers" from the factory. 

 

 Measuring the polars is a great idea. I am a bit concerned about the influence of the more modern phase plugs on the polars at the highest frequencies. IOW, the newer phase plugs are helping to limit the narrower dispersion which can occur  at the highest frequencies (the older ones did not and were narrower at the top octave). IOW, any benefits of the "bump" may be swamped by the benefits provided with the new phase plugs. 

 

 We gone far off topic at this point, but I wanted make sure others appreciated some of the subtle features that Roy designed into his modified tractrix horns (although my knowledge is far from perfect).

 

Good Luck,

-Tom

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3 minutes ago, PrestonTom said:

Chris, I am sure you know this already .... If you take a straight edge to the inside of the horn near the throat, the angle re: the mounting flange will be straight contour with an angle of about 45deg. If you "roll" the straight edge along the contour (toward the mouth), then at about 2/3 of the way out (toward the mouth), that angle becomes about 55-60 deg for about a half inch. This second straight portion then transitions smoothy to final curve.

 

This "discontinuity" at one time had been referred to as the "bump" (not to be confused with the mumps). I was told it was to help control the dispersion at the higher frequencies. I do not see the bump in the photos posted for the zxpc horns. Maybe the photo/lighting is not clear enough? I don't know. As of right now, however, I don't think these are a careful clone or "leftovers" from the factory. 

 

 Measuring the polars is a great idea. I am a bit concerned about the influence of the more modern phase plugs on the polars at the highest frequencies. IOW, the newer phase plugs are helping to limit the narrower dispersion which can occur  at the highest frequencies (the older ones did not and were narrower at the top octave). IOW, any benefits of the "bump" may be swamped by the benefits provided with the new phase plugs. 

 

 We gone far off topic at this point, but I wanted make sure others appreciated some of the subtle features that Roy designed into his modified tractrix horns (although my knowledge is far from perfect).

 

Good Luck,

-Tom

Which version of the 510 are you talking about?

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The "bumps" were on the early versions of the K-510 horn without the mumps. I am not sure how early, since I do not have them any more.

 

I glanced at the modern "mumps" horn (K-510) and I did not see the bump on the side walls (can't tell about the top/bottom walls). My guess is that whatever the function of the bump was also taken care of by the mumps (provide a more consistent & controlled polar down to lower frequencies, IOW, control the polars without the pinching).

 

Again my knowledge is limited and I am already speculating far too much.

 

Good luck,

-Tom

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14 hours ago, jjptkd said:

What "differences" do you see other than the serial number? I've had these right in front of me for days now and they look like exact copies to me must have been molded from an original as suggested above. 

 

I agree I'd rather have the "mumps" version but $1250 a pair vs $120? 

 

$1250 for K510's with mumps? I'll take a pass on that too. That $120 is sounding better and better all the time if I do decide to go that route.  It's not like my speakers are authentic. 

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9 hours ago, PrestonTom said:

 I do not see the bump in the photos posted for the zxpc horns. Maybe the photo/lighting is not clear enough? I don't know. As of right now, however, I don't think these are a careful clone or "leftovers" from the factory. 

I have posted several pictures of both the new zxpc horn right next to a factory Klipsch horn-- from what I can tell they are very much identical as I've stated before. 

 

I dont know if you're confused? Are you looking at my pictures and thinking they are all of the new horn? 

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Here are some pictures of the new horn I got and one of the old 510's with problems. The two with the mouth looking at you shows the busted out screw hole and canted hole pattern rotated slightly counter clockwise. Mounting flange is seriously sloped and broken on one spot where the uneven flange surface was pulled down to the driver or just dropped but this one was still mounted to the driver when I noticed it so who knows. As disgusted as I was by then I did not peel the cork off to see and nothing else is precise on this so I suspect the flange. Twice as thick as the new ones and almost looks like it was hand formed in places. The two 402 horns I have by comparison are superbly made and quite precise and uniform relative to each other.

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15 hours ago, PrestonTom said:

If you take a straight edge to the inside of the horn near the throat, the angle re: the mounting flange will be straight contour with an angle of about 45deg. If you "roll" the straight edge along the contour (toward the mouth), then at about 2/3 of the way out (toward the mouth), that angle becomes about 55-60 deg for about a half inch. This second straight portion then transitions smoothy to final curve...This "discontinuity" at one time had been referred to as the "bump" (not to be confused with the mumps).

I think that the local horn expansion irregularity at about 2/3 of the distance to the mouth is more than likely an artifact of how the horn expansion was laid out.  This is visible in the K-402 horn (the second and third generation K-402s), but my mumps-type third generation K-510 horns had no hint of this artifact and the first generation K-510 shown above also has no indication of this that I can see. Below is a picture of the second generation K-510:

 

1022315090_SecondGenK-510HornonBellewithXover.thumb.jpg.084191ae86ffb49869fdf207c3245c4a.jpg

 

The first 2/3s of the horn (the throat end of the horn, that is) comprises a straight-sided horn.  The mouth end of the horn is tractrix in two-dimensional profile, horizontally and vertically. 

 

A tractrix horn curve starts at the mouth of the horn, not the throat.  So to join the straight sided section of the horn (throat end) with the tractrix expansion mouth, there is a resulting discontinuity between these two sections, generated from opposite ends of the horn.  That short area of visible change in the horn expansion angle is this join of the two sections. Both the first generation and third generation K-510 horns have no sign of this. 

 

Since this discontinuity in expansion is so far away from the throat, it is only the lower frequencies that can be affected in terms of polar coverage.

 

Chris

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5 minutes ago, Chris A said:

I think that the local horn expansion irregularity at about 2/3 of the distance to the mouth is more than likely an artifact of how the horn expansion was laid out

Entirely possible. The blend where the straight section would meet a three point arc is hard to do well in some software and depending on the age of the part CAD has advanced to allow for much better surfacing over the years. It can also be as simple as the designer fudged his surfaces because he did not know how to do a seamless join. You just never know unless you were there to see why decisions were made.

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17 minutes ago, Dave A said:

Entirely possible.

It's more than possible.  It is the join section.  This was an artifact that was evident from the horns fabricated by certain supplier of the horns (i.e., the second gen horns only).

 

The more pressing subject in my experience is the area around the throat.  The first gen horns that you have Dave have a smooth transition from circular to rectangular, while the later horns have the typical abrupt round-to-square transition, but there is no explanation for this change.  This is an area that also shows discontinuities in the polar coverage angles up around 8-10 kHz going from the compression driver phase plug to the horn expansion (third gen horn shown below):

 

K-510/K-69-A horizontal polars:

 

K-510 with K-69-A horizontal polar sonogram.jpg

 

and vertical polars:

K-510 with K-69-A vertical polar sonogram.jpg

 

Chris

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No way to tell without the production/sales log books of the Klipsch Professional line of loudspeakers from the 1990s to early 2000s.

 

Chris

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Interesting here is a couple pics of different Tractrix horns with the same shape at the horn throat, these are from my Chorus II project. The tweeter is the k-791 and the mid horn is from a CF-4. Both are factory Klipsch horns.

 

 

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REW and a UMIK-1...and lots of absorption material on the floor and nearby objects: 

 

You have to set up a rotating index table of moving the microphone in 10 degree increments, so there are at least 10 REW measurements required--assuming symmetry of the horn/driver output.  If it's not symmetric (like for skew horns), it takes 20 measurements in the skewed-horn direction to cover 180 degrees of output. 

 

OmniMic (freeware) is used to create the polar sonograms from the imported REW measurements...usually 10 REW measurements.

 

Chris

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