antelope Posted January 3, 2000 Share Posted January 3, 2000 Seven years ago I bought a pair of Klipschorns which were built in 1977. The bass response was lousy until I accepted the oft-stated need for 2 solid clear corners. I bit the first bullett and rebuilt two corners in my living room. I now have at least 5 feet of clear wall coming from each corner. The walls up to 48", have 3/4in. plywood facing, glued and screwed to a continuous line of 2x4s, glued and screwed together. One wall is an interior partition where the cavity between 2x4s is filled with sand! These corners are SOLID! and the bass response is outstanding. I've never heard such natural, accurate, clean bass. The other woofers I've heard sound distorted and artificial by comparison. Over the last year I bit the second bullett: The realization that the midrange and tweeter horns and crossovers in the Klipschorn system are poorly designed, and to try to improve them is futile. I decided that a horn with only a 1/2in. throat (at the driver) is never going to sound smooth. The reputation of honkiness in horns is attributable to such casual, careless designs. The upper cabinets are now sitting in a closet where they will honk no more. I replaced the midrange with a modern, carefully designed, JBL PRO 2354 fiberglass horn, coupled with a 2447 compession driver. The new crossover is a totally 20-bit digital JBL PRO DSC 260, which also has a time allignment feature, full EQ, 29dB of cut, and a host of other important features. Like PWK I've decided there is really no need for a tweeter. My system is now smooth as silk, but silk with massive, effortless dynamics and zip for distortion. Klipschorns need only low powered amps to drive them. I have two 35-40 watt amps. These cost about $1400. Part of the money I spent buying a high efficiency system I saved in not buying big expensive amps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lammers Posted January 4, 2000 Share Posted January 4, 2000 Sounds great, who helped with the journey? In other words did you decide on the JBL mod's yourself? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filmofreddy Posted January 8, 2000 Share Posted January 8, 2000 Dear antelope,R.E. "such casual,careless designs" Paul W. Klipsch ?????? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Warren Posted January 8, 2000 Share Posted January 8, 2000 (edited) I predict this thread will start a revolution! Edited September 5, 2014 by John Warren 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 8, 2000 Author Share Posted January 8, 2000 quote: Originally posted by lammers: Sounds great, who helped with the journey? In other words did you decide on the JBL mod's yourself? ****** My local JBL PRO dealer advised me about this mod. He's not afraid of horns because they are part and parcel of his business. I doubt a home-audio store would steer anyone toward JBL PRO horns? I guess this is a basic piece of advice: If you want help with a horn system, go to a horn dealer! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 9, 2000 Author Share Posted January 9, 2000 quote: Originally posted by John Warren: Antelope, What did the JBL horns and CO cost? John About $3,000. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 9, 2000 Author Share Posted January 9, 2000 quote: Originally posted by filmofreddy: Dear antelope,R.E. "such casual,careless designs" Paul W. Klipsch ?????? As Jimmy Durante often said: "Ev-er-y-bod-y's a critic!" One independent critic of the Klipschorn was the late Richard Hayser of Audio magazine. In the November, 1986 issue he expertly reviewed the Khorn and found many nice things to say, except that he found the midrange response to be "jagged". My Khorns were jagged too! - its nice to agree with an expert! By jagged I mean there were audible gaps (holes, suckouts) in the midrange response. I found these suckouts annoying in the extreme. What bothered me the most was an apparent casualness about the upper cabinet design (including the crossover) as compared with the woofer. It appears that most of the design effort went into the magnificent woofer while little attention was paid to the actual performance of the midrange and tweeter. Hayser found this. I found this. Many people I spoke to in the HiFi community (Klipsch dealers and customers) found this too. There are 4 problems with the midrange horn in the Khorn system. The first is the throat of the horn is too narrow. If I remember correctly, the throat is about .75in. in diameter. The JBL horn that replaced it in my system has a 1.5in diameter. So, .44 inches² vs 1.77 inches². Four times the area. The second problem is the OEM driver output is WAY too narrow: only .5 inches (.2 inches²). The third problem is the mis-match between the driver diameter and the horn throat diameter. To "fix" this mis-match an orange rubber washer was placed in front of the driver output. It didn't work too well! The fourth problem is the design and materials used in the horn are not optimal. This in turn causes nasty honky ringing which has, I think, discouraged many people from buying horns. I became frustrated with the Khorn myself. After listening to them for 2 years I bought a pair of Studio Monitors from Paradigm. These are nice speakers but they put me to sleep (87 dB sensitivity) so I had to persevere with the Khorns (nobody would buy them anyway!) JBL claims their horns are optimized as to size, shape and materials. I think they are the best horns available. Much of the science that goes into the shape of the JBL horn was, I'm told, known in the 1930s. They certainly have improved my listening. I've run out of complaints about my horn system. Has everyone else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pzannucci Posted January 9, 2000 Share Posted January 9, 2000 Parts Express has some nice JBL Pro Bi-radial horns and Titanium drivers. A wee bit expensive but... If you visit the JBLPro site, you will see the response of those drivers drops off with in the very high frequencies with the Bi-Radial horns. If you wanted to have have a nice two way system without the shimmering highs, which I have a hard time handling, those would probably work out very nicely. Some might opt for equalization though. Peter Z. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filmofreddy Posted January 9, 2000 Share Posted January 9, 2000 Dear Antelope, While I have no Quarrel with your Mod( We know JBL horns also as sound system designers and dealers)My critic if you will is in your assesment of Klipschs' engineering choices. You have 1977 horns with AA xover & K55V mid. In late 1979 Klipsch himself re-designed the phase plug architecture to address this "roughness" in response. This smoothed them considerably,unfortunatly Atlas the oem manufacturer of this driver redesigned the driver to use a crappy ceramic magnet and they lost their quality hence a change to an EV driver which was not as good as the Klipsch modified atlas driver. ALL 1 3/8 inch screw on drivers use a gasket to get a tight seal between horn throat and driver. Your JBLs' have a larger throat because they have a larger internal diaphram and are designed for a much higher maximum output than one inch drivers. Remember the Klipschorn is a home speaker and should not be held to the standards of sound reinforcement loudspeakers. As to your JBLs' being better I think they are pretty Damn fine also but, you paid $3000.00 for your top end and I believe using the Klipsch top end with some judicious mods you could have accomplished your goals in a much more economical fashion. I have Heysers' article also and his only complaint was the roughness in upper midrange response at the xover to the tweeter(which can easily be fixed electronicaly)Paul Klipsch spent MANY more years on the development of the top end than on the woofer. You obviously don't think he got it right, I think it needs help also, But Klipsch made excellent design choices 40 years ago when he designed the K400 mid horn and, with some electronic help, I'll put the Klipsch top end up against ANY JBL in the home(and have)and come out a winner. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Q-Man Posted January 9, 2000 Share Posted January 9, 2000 Filmofreddy, Just wanted to let you know, that I like reading all your post. Q Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 9, 2000 Author Share Posted January 9, 2000 quote: Originally posted by filmofreddy: Dear Antelope, While I have no Quarrel with your Mod( We know JBL horns also as sound system designers and dealers)My critic if you will is in your assesment of Klipschs' engineering choices. You have 1977 horns with AA xover & K55V mid. In late 1979 Klipsch himself re-designed the phase plug architecture to address this "roughness" in response. This smoothed them considerably,unfortunatly Atlas the oem manufacturer of this driver redesigned the driver to use a crappy ceramic magnet and they lost their quality hence a change to an EV driver which was not as good as the Klipsch modified atlas driver. ALL 1 3/8 inch screw on drivers use a gasket to get a tight seal between horn throat and driver. Your JBLs' have a larger throat because they have a larger internal diaphram and are designed for a much higher maximum output than one inch drivers. Remember the Klipschorn is a home speaker and should not be held to the standards of sound reinforcement loudspeakers. As to your JBLs' being better I think they are pretty Damn fine also but, you paid $3000.00 for your top end and I believe using the Klipsch top end with some judicious mods you could have accomplished your goals in a much more economical fashion. I have Heysers' article also and his only complaint was the roughness in upper midrange response at the xover to the tweeter(which can easily be fixed electronicaly)Paul Klipsch spent MANY more years on the development of the top end than on the woofer. You obviously don't think he got it right, I think it needs help also, But Klipsch made excellent design choices 40 years ago when he designed the K400 mid horn and, with some electronic help, I'll put the Klipsch top end up against ANY JBL in the home(and have)and come out a winner. ******** Describing the shortcomings of ATLAS and EV drivers doesn't make me feel any better. Your point about the driver/horn-throat diameter is silly. The ugly resonances caused by the Klipsch design have nothing to do with whether it's driven at 90dB in a home or 140dB in an auditorium. Good design works, bad design doesn't. We seem to agree that the midrange response of the Khorn "needs help also". If Mr. Klipsch kept trying to improve the midrange, that midrange must have been flawed. Richard Hayser seemed to agree too. The truth is Klipsch sold thousands of Khorns with jagged midrange response. I suspect many people were unhappy with the sound of their Khorns because of this. They agreed without understanding why. I bought my Khorns from a former Klipsch factory representative! He couldn't stand them anymore. He agrees to this day. The present management at Klipsch is working on improving the Khorn. Hence the Jubilee prototype/experiment last year, which used an optimized tractrix (fibreglass?) mid/tweet horn. I guess we all agree now! Perhaps I've spent too much money on my speakers, but on the other hand it's impossible for a stereo system to sound too good! I feel I've bought a $20,000 sound and paid a total of $5,000 for it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 9, 2000 Author Share Posted January 9, 2000 quote: Originally posted by pzannucci: Parts Express has some nice JBL Pro Bi-radial horns and Titanium drivers. A wee bit expensive but... If you visit the JBLPro site, you will see the response of those drivers drops off with in the very high frequencies with the Bi-Radial horns. If you wanted to have have a nice two way system without the shimmering highs, which I have a hard time handling, those would probably work out very nicely. Some might opt for equalization though. Peter Z. I haven't noticed any deficiency in treble response sans tweeter. A 3 or 4 dB boost in the EQ flatens things out nicely. Alternatively, one can always buy a modern horn tweeter. JBL has 2 or 3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 9, 2000 Author Share Posted January 9, 2000 quote: Originally posted by filmofreddy: Dear Antelope, While I have no Quarrel with your Mod( We know JBL horns also as sound system designers and dealers)My critic if you will is in your assesment of Klipschs' engineering choices. You have 1977 horns with AA xover & K55V mid. In late 1979 Klipsch himself re-designed the phase plug architecture to address this "roughness" in response. This smoothed them considerably,unfortunatly Atlas the oem manufacturer of this driver redesigned the driver to use a crappy ceramic magnet and they lost their quality hence a change to an EV driver which was not as good as the Klipsch modified atlas driver. ALL 1 3/8 inch screw on drivers use a gasket to get a tight seal between horn throat and driver. Your JBLs' have a larger throat because they have a larger internal diaphram and are designed for a much higher maximum output than one inch drivers. Remember the Klipschorn is a home speaker and should not be held to the standards of sound reinforcement loudspeakers. As to your JBLs' being better I think they are pretty Damn fine also but, you paid $3000.00 for your top end and I believe using the Klipsch top end with some judicious mods you could have accomplished your goals in a much more economical fashion. I have Heysers' article also and his only complaint was the roughness in upper midrange response at the xover to the tweeter(which can easily be fixed electronicaly)Paul Klipsch spent MANY more years on the development of the top end than on the woofer. You obviously don't think he got it right, I think it needs help also, But Klipsch made excellent design choices 40 years ago when he designed the K400 mid horn and, with some electronic help, I'll put the Klipsch top end up against ANY JBL in the home(and have)and come out a winner. **** Another point: My troubled Khorns were vintage 1977, but the set Hayser tested were from the troubled 1986 era. Improvements without much improvement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filmofreddy Posted January 9, 2000 Share Posted January 9, 2000 Dear antelope, my "silly" throat explanation was used as an over simplification for our audience who may or may not know what the heck we are talking about. Just for academic purposes you may want to re-measure your K400s' throat/gasket/and "actual" working area off the K55s' phasing plug behind the protective screen, I think you'll find no mis-match. I used a micrometer long ago on these units when modifiying the K 400 to take Altec & JBL 1" drivers. And again your update approach is certainly a viable(albeit)expensive approach to the problem. My only problem is again that rather flippant attack on Klipschs' engineering choices. You hate them,cool. I think they can improve in their present state, cool. But their are others who have much grander credentials then ours who consider them outstanding examples of the horn makers art. Regarding the jubilee. The only thing it shares in common with the Klipschorn is that its a corner horn and it suppossidly can be used against a wall ala JBL Hartsfield. Its' bass horn contains 2 12" drivers crossed over at 800cps to a Tractrix horn with I believe a 1.5 in. throat. The original K-horns were 2 ways back in the 40s'and Paul Klipsch has worked to eventually wind back up with a 2 way at $15000.00 a pair. One parting shot regarding correctly designed horns. The proper damping from a horn is imparted by its correctly designed flare rate and geometry not by the particular materials used in construction. I've heard dreadful as well as sublime JBL horns in wood,cast aluminum,and fiberglass and the same from other manufacturers. Most are now made from plastic(ugh) for cost reasons alone. If you plan on keeping your K-horn bottoms and hate the tops so much sell me those KKK(Kasual,Kareless,Klipsch)400 midrange horns and drivers, tweeters and xovers too. I'll give you $50.00! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 10, 2000 Author Share Posted January 10, 2000 quote: Originally posted by filmofreddy: Dear antelope, my "silly" throat explanation was used as an over simplification for our audience who may or may not know what the heck we are talking about. Just for academic purposes you may want to re-measure your K400s' throat/gasket/and "actual" working area off the K55s' phasing plug behind the protective screen, I think you'll find no mis-match. I used a micrometer long ago on these units when modifiying the K 400 to take Altec & JBL 1" drivers. And again your update approach is certainly a viable(albeit)expensive approach to the problem. My only problem is again that rather flippant attack on Klipschs' engineering choices. You hate them,cool. I think they can improve in their present state, cool. But their are others who have much grander credentials then ours who consider them outstanding examples of the horn makers art. Regarding the jubilee. The only thing it shares in common with the Klipschorn is that its a corner horn and it suppossidly can be used against a wall ala JBL Hartsfield. Its' bass horn contains 2 12" drivers crossed over at 800cps to a Tractrix horn with I believe a 1.5 in. throat. The original K-horns were 2 ways back in the 40s'and Paul Klipsch has worked to eventually wind back up with a 2 way at $15000.00 a pair. One parting shot regarding correctly designed horns. The proper damping from a horn is imparted by its correctly designed flare rate and geometry not by the particular materials used in construction. I've heard dreadful as well as sublime JBL horns in wood,cast aluminum,and fiberglass and the same from other manufacturers. Most are now made from plastic(ugh) for cost reasons alone. If you plan on keeping your K-horn bottoms and hate the tops so much sell me those KKK(Kasual,Kareless,Klipsch)400 midrange horns and drivers, tweeters and xovers too. I'll give you $50.00! You say the modern Klipsch tractrix horns use a 1.5in. throat! Once again we (indirectly) are in agreement: the optimized JBL horns use the same throat size. My main point is the Khorn midrange horn is poorly designed. That particular equine is defunct, flogging may now cease! The Klipsch engineers must agree because they've designed the tractrix to come closer to the modern JBL optimized horns, and no one but you has anything favorable about the old design. My mod sounds great! The stock design sounded bad! Finis. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antelope Posted January 10, 2000 Author Share Posted January 10, 2000 quote: Originally posted by antelope: You say the modern Klipsch tractrix horns use a 1.5in. throat! Once again we (indirectly) are in agreement: the optimized JBL horns use the same throat size. My main point is the Khorn midrange horn is poorly designed. That particular equine is defunct, flogging may now cease! The Klipsch engineers must agree because they've designed the tractrix to come closer to the modern JBL optimized horns, and no one but you has anything favorable about the old design. My mod sounds great! The stock design sounded bad! Finis. ****** Another point. You have offered me fifty bucks for my midrange horns, tweeters and crossovers. The world can see how highly you value these careless designed components! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
filmofreddy Posted January 11, 2000 Share Posted January 11, 2000 Dear Antelope, I value Klipsh Designs highly, But with your hate of said designs and your low opinion of them I thought you'd take the fifty bucks and run like a thief. Then your loss would have been my gain! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnA Posted January 11, 2000 Share Posted January 11, 2000 I'll give you $200 for both of you retired K-horn uppers; if they're relatively unmolested. Seriously! I have a rear channel design in mind. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pzannucci Posted January 11, 2000 Share Posted January 11, 2000 Four years ago, I paid $60 a pop for new diaphrams for my K55-V drivers. Two-hundred dollars, this could start a bidding war. Peter Z. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oosting Posted January 12, 2000 Share Posted January 12, 2000 Let's see. I paid $1000 for my '78 LaScalas used. $30 worth of new Caps. $15 in refinishing materials. Can I do this upgrade to my LaScalas? That's only 3X what I paid for them! Put the spare parts up on Ebay and let the bidding war begin! I bet you can get $500 for the lot! Ed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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