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Baltic VS MDF


Dave A

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4 hours ago, DizRotus said:

@Randyh and @Dave A

 

I was under the impression that MDF began with H3s.  Irrespective of our impressions, those were not H1s and they were not MDF.

 

The following photos are of the same speakers that were eventually sold to @The History Kid.  In the closeup (second photo) you can count 5 or 6 layers, the unavailability of a whole cross section without routing for recessed drivers makes it difficult to make an exact count.  In any case, it’s clearly not the 13 uniform layers of good Baltic birch.

 

As an aside,  had these been Baltic birch, I would not have needed to reinforce the driver mounting holes with toothpicks and wood glue.  These speakers were bought off eBay and were poorly packed.  When they arrived, drivers and horns were loose; many of the mounting screws were stripped, so many, I decided to reinforce them all.  Baltic birch would not have stripped like this.  MDF would have been a true disaster.

 

To be fair,  a prior owner may have stripped the threads prior to shipping.  Perhaps the same owner who did a sloppy job of staining them (photo 3).  Fortunately, none of that mattered to Tim, aka The History Kid, as he used the components to restore a vintage console.

 

Perhaps Andy @HDBRbuilder or Jim @JRH can shed some light on this while they’re at home “social distancing.”

 

E7A65FC7-2D0E-4219-BBFF-4EB55D2310BD.thumb.jpeg.64006a4baaa63eb8073023bdfa3d5c95.jpeg

 

098116DD-3B08-4871-8795-E489AA87EB15.thumb.jpeg.8816ff1c6885d03d5dce24ee1c8c0cef.jpeg

 

 

Klipsch went to MDF box panels DURING the production of the Heresy II, not at the BEGINNING of production.  The term "box panels" refers to the finely-veneered panels which are the panels used for the box top and bottom and both sides.  I left Klipsch prior to the introduction of the Heresy II, so I cannot give an exact time frame when this occurred.  But we already knew what was in the eventual plans for the Heresy II speaker's construction. I own a pair of Heresy II's made in 1998, and their "box panels" are MDF.  The two pics above show that the move to MDF had not yet occurred when this particular box was built because it is obvious to me that its box panels were finely-veneered poplar lumber-core plywood.

 

Klipsch eventually also went to MDF panels for the motor-boards.  The easiest way to tell with a glance if the motor-boards are MDF or not is to just note whether wood screws are used to attach the drivers and horns or whether they are attached with machine screws.  Wood screws just don't do well in MDF panels, so machine screws into some kind of threaded metal receptical, such as T-nuts, inserts, or edge-clips are required to secure the drivers and horn lenses to the motor-board.  Make sense?

 

The reason wood screws DO NOT work well with MDF is due to what happens when the wood screws are installed...as the wood screws go into the pre-drilled pilot holes, the MDF swells outwards towards the screws as they are installed, which makes a good tight seal of the horn flanges and/or the woofer frame nearly impossible...add to that the fact that MDF has piss-poor wood screw holding ability!  Finding out that all of the drivers have come loose during shipping to dealers is not a good thing! 

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3 hours ago, Randyh said:

ok so why not give klipsch customers the option to have cabs made out of BB  ---just charge them the extra ------but to buy a pair of Lascala-Khorn-CW made of MDF , ----------somewhere along the line these wont last as long as BB

No actually it should be charge them less since they could offer them in raw birch like they used to and not have the considerable expense of veneering something.

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14 minutes ago, Dave A said:

No actually it should be charge them less since they could offer them in raw birch like they used to and not have the considerable expense of veneering something.

SIMPLE ANSWER IS production costs would be higher due to the wood costs AND the cutting tool costs. Density and glues used in Baltic birch wear out cutting tool edges rapidly, and require replacing them much more often!  More labor cost is required (for replacing saw blades and router bits), in addition to the costs of quickly worn out cutting edges on cutting tools.  BUT I STILL PREFER BALTIC BIRCH OVER MDF!

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7 hours ago, HDBRbuilder said:

SIMPLE ANSWER IS production costs would be higher due to the wood costs AND the cutting tool costs. Density and glues used in Baltic birch wear out cutting tool edges rapidly, and require replacing them much more often!  More labor cost is required (for replacing saw blades and router bits), in addition to the costs of quickly worn out cutting edges on cutting tools.  BUT I STILL PREFER BALTIC BIRCH OVER MDF!

Somehow I would have thought the price of good veneer and the labor to put it on would be much more expensive. On the tools are you talking HSS or carbide? The advances in carbide would make today's cutters last much longer.

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2 hours ago, Dave A said:

Somehow I would have thought the price of good veneer and the labor to put it on would be much more expensive. On the tools are you talking HSS or carbide? The advances in carbide would make today's cutters last much longer.

The problem is a combination of all the extra cross-grain cuts involved with so many plys involved in Baltic birch PLUS the extra layers of hardened glue for all of those plys...generates extreme heat And dulls the edges at the same time...it is one thing to be a hobbyist builder, quite another to have to do production runs of parts....production runs is the key to the issue which is seldom noticed much by the hobbyist builders who don't NEED to make runs of many pallets of parts for what few they build.  Remember: Klipsch doesn't lay their own veneers, the MDF is veneered at its source. So, if they used veneered Baltic Birch, then it would ALSO have to be veneered at its source....and shjpped to Klipsch in pre-veneered and edge-banded matching pairs panels, and THAT would be EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE...plus addressing the quality controls at the source would be almost impossible!  I mean that would be GENUINE "global out-sourcing" for those panels!  Look at it this way...how many times have you ACTUALLY gotten baltic birch sheets that were even square at the corners, yourself? Think about that for quality control of pre-veneered Baltic birch panels at the source....make sense? Thern add in the issue which Baltic birch has ALWAYS HAD, thickness of the sheets being spot-on...good luck with that!  Even within the same bundle the thickness can vary quite a bit, which will  be evident to the eye when building mitered joint boxes! 

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16 hours ago, DizRotus said:

@Randyh and @Dave A

 

I was under the impression that MDF began with H3s.  Irrespective of our impressions, those were not H1s and they were not MDF.

 

The following photos are of the same speakers that were eventually sold to @The History Kid.  In the closeup (second photo) you can count 5 or 6 layers, the unavailability of a whole cross section without routing for recessed drivers makes it difficult to make an exact count.  In any case, it’s clearly not the 13 uniform layers of good Baltic birch.

 

As an aside,  had these been Baltic birch, I would not have needed to reinforce the driver mounting holes with toothpicks and wood glue.  These speakers were bought off eBay and were poorly packed.  When they arrived, drivers and horns were loose; many of the mounting screws were stripped, so many, I decided to reinforce them all.  Baltic birch would not have stripped like this.  MDF would have been a true disaster.

 

To be fair,  a prior owner may have stripped the threads prior to shipping.  Perhaps the same owner who did a sloppy job of staining them (photo 3).  Fortunately, none of that mattered to Tim, aka The History Kid, as he used the components to restore a vintage console.

 

Perhaps Andy @HDBRbuilder or Jim @JRH can shed some light on this while they’re at home “social distancing.”

 

E7A65FC7-2D0E-4219-BBFF-4EB55D2310BD.thumb.jpeg.64006a4baaa63eb8073023bdfa3d5c95.jpeg

 

098116DD-3B08-4871-8795-E489AA87EB15.thumb.jpeg.8816ff1c6885d03d5dce24ee1c8c0cef.jpeg

 

703B023F-D236-4122-B75F-E9CE2E3CEF49.thumb.jpeg.947f906c0a307f0a9c2a9cd23b149012.jpeg

That almost looks like plywood layers sandwiching a particle wood center.

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5 hours ago, HDBRbuilder said:

The problem is a combination of all the extra cross-grain cuts involved with so many plys involved in Baltic birch PLUS the extra layers of hardened glue for all of those plys...generates extreme heat And dulls the edges at the same time...it is one thing to be a hobbyist builder, quite another to have to do production runs of parts....production runs is the key to the issue which is seldom noticed much by the hobbyist builders who don't NEED to make runs of many pallets of parts for what few they build.  Remember: Klipsch doesn't lay their own veneers, the MDF is veneered at its source. So, if they used veneered Baltic Birch, then it would ALSO have to be veneered at its source....and shjpped to Klipsch in pre-veneered and edge-banded matching pairs panels, and THAT would be EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE...plus addressing the quality controls at the source would be almost impossible!  I mean that would be GENUINE "global out-sourcing" for those panels!  Look at it this way...how many times have you ACTUALLY gotten baltic birch sheets that were even square at the corners, yourself? Think about that for quality control of pre-veneered Baltic birch panels at the source....make sense? Thern add in the issue which Baltic birch has ALWAYS HAD, thickness of the sheets being spot-on...good luck with that!  Even within the same bundle the thickness can vary quite a bit, which will  be evident to the eye when building mitered joint boxes! 

I had no idea they bought pre-veneered panels. For some reason I thought veneer was done in house.

 

 Currently working with a cnc router shop in Nashville that has a 5' x 20' table and there are a few other routers under their roof too. They keep them busy and so I would say they qualify as production and it involves many different parts. When they get a piece of Baltic, which as you say is often not quite square, they throw it up on the vacuum table and there is a laser origin finder that takes just a few seconds to align to the sheet and make sure there is enough for a true square corner that can extend the full width of the sheet in both x and y. Tooling for them is not a problem and they cut baltic all day long as their major source of income is and has been speaker builders for a long time. When things do wear out there are probes for tool setting like I have on my Haas mill and setting tool diameter and length is just seconds to do. Takes longer for me to change an endmill out than it does to measure the new tool relative to X Y Z. Whole process is maybe 4 minutes and if you buy the right carbide for the job does not happen until you have cut a lot of product.

 

  I would not want veneered BB and when I talk about BB I mean raw as I think it is pretty on it's own. I have seen thickness vary on BB which has an acceptable tolerance range  that could cause trouble but then again so does regular plywood. I assume Klipsch would order sanded plywood to tight tolerance to avoid that problem since they must buy it by the truckload.

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4 hours ago, MechEngVic said:

That almost looks like plywood layers sandwiching a particle wood center.

You are looking at the end of the wood grain on that ply and not parallel to the wood grain which makes it look like that.

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On ‎3‎/‎16‎/‎2020 at 6:47 AM, Dave A said:

I have a large research group in Nashville. Sales reps for the two big Baltic outlets tell me MDF goes to boom boxes on wheels and BB goes to people building serious commercial cabinets for the music industry.

 

These guys look at all aspects of cost which is after all cost to buy AND cost of ownership. Sure the upfront purchase price of MDF is better but long term cost and over all savings over MDF is the domain of BB.

 

I am amused by those who can't see past the purchase price of a piece of wood to total cost over the life expectancy.

 

 

 

Could it be that BB is really the only choice for pro gear because it is the only material that can hold up and have nothing to do with sound quality?

 

I get what your saying, I myself have been a re-seller for many years bought and sold lots of Klipsch gear but I can tell you from my experience I have seen more mint like new 25+ year old mdf cabinets than I have seen wasted ones. 

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19 hours ago, Randyh said:

SAD - BUT TRUE ,  12k$ PAIR OF SPEAKERS MADE WITH MDF --------------PWK would not be very happy -----

I'm pretty sure PWK was still around mid to late '80's when they transitioned to MDF

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8 minutes ago, jjptkd said:

 

Could it be that BB is really the only choice for pro gear because it is the only material that can hold up and have nothing to do with sound quality?

 

I get what your saying, I myself have been a re-seller for many years bought and sold lots of Klipsch gear but I can tell you from my experience I have seen more mint like new 25+ year old mdf cabinets than I have seen wasted ones. 

 

I feel the answer to the question is yes, and don’t doubt the second sentence.

 

IMO, the claims of sonic superiority for MDF are a rationalization.  While MDF is possibly more sonically inert the similar thickness Baltic, I would defy anyone to perceive a sonic difference between my DIY Baltic cabinets, with egg-crate foam glued to the inside, and MDF.

 

I would never invest the time and money to build with MDF for anything larger than a boombox.  My DIY Baltic Super cabinets are shown below prior to Duratex.

 

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1 hour ago, DizRotus said:

 

I feel the answer to the question is yes, and don’t doubt the second sentence.

 

IMO, the claims of sonic superiority for MDF are a rationalization.  While MDF is possibly more sonically inert the similar thickness Baltic, I would defy anyone to perceive a sonic difference between my DIY Baltic cabinets, with egg-crate foam glued to the inside, and MDF.

 

I would never invest the time and money to build with MDF for anything larger than a boombox.  My DIY Baltic Super cabinets are shown below prior to Duratex.

 

59daea66caaf8_IMG_0342(Mobile).JPG.3576a530813890d2bc621ec9ff338a44.JPG

 

59f4e20661760_20171028_103329(Mobile).jpg.fb54ff237e05172fd70a59ce1a108c60.jpg

Nice looking cabinets. How did you cut the hole for the woofer.  Looks perfect.

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1 hour ago, jjptkd said:

 

Could it be that BB is really the only choice for pro gear because it is the only material that can hold up and have nothing to do with sound quality?

 

I get what your saying, I myself have been a re-seller for many years bought and sold lots of Klipsch gear but I can tell you from my experience I have seen more mint like new 25+ year old mdf cabinets than I have seen wasted ones. 

It is because the pros know they can have both durability and quality sound. Certainly there are more nice MDF cabinets around than bad ones but that has nothing to do with sound quality or durability. Those Klipsch speakers are revered by most owners and well taken care of but I see the sad side of what happens to those that suffered one way or another and MDF offers nothing better in sound but all kinds of problems with durability. Even the pretty ones often have screw holes stripped out and rarely do I see that in plywood.

1 hour ago, DizRotus said:

 

“Around” as in alive, but not “around” as in control of the company he no longer owned.

Precisely.

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