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My Klipschorns Decorators’ Style D To Style B DIY Transformation Restoration


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On 6/27/2021 at 3:51 AM, Peter P. said:

All I can say is, whoa...

 

Any pictures of the original Style D's before you disassembled them?

 

I unfortunately didn’t take any photos of them in the condition I bought them in around the first months of 2005. I really wish I had. They were in somewhat plain and rough looking condition, so I didn’t bother taking photos of them. They were the basic Klipschorn decorators’ with not so good of looking plywood top cabinets and fronts of their bass cabinets. They looked like someone lacquered them and the lacquer was all cracked up from age. Their plywood grain patterns fronts of their bass cabinets didn’t match either, so refinishing them wasn’t an option anyway. New veneer was needed. 
 
I did take a couple after I did a little initial restoration on them right after I got them, but those photos might be on an old camera or computer long gone with me not being able to retrieve them anymore. Someone had also smeared red stain very messily all over their backs and one of the high horns diaphragms was no good due to a bad voice coil, so I replaced it, built tops and sides for their top cabinets, because decorators don’t come with them, and put them in false corners all done with 3/4” MDF painted flat black which looked and worked good enough, until I did my actual first restoration on them in December of that year. Link to that restoration below this. I had sent a photo of it to Bob Crites, because I bought crossovers from him for that restoration and he then started a thread on it that he titled Nice K-horn Restoration. Click on it below this if you want to see it.

 

 

I still have their original top cabinets fronts, so I took this below photo of them for you. You can see I started to sand them to refinish them during my first restoration, but discovered it best for me to build new ones instead which I did in my first restoration seen in the above provided link. You can see in the below photo when I bought them they were in rough condition and their fronts on their bass cabinets were in the same bad condition, aged and dried out. I had restoring to do then and did and then a second time now to put them like factory built.

 

 

02BB93FA-A47E-4668-87F1-B448AB02A441.jpeg

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2 hours ago, rockhound said:

I love it when forum members restore these old speakers instead of selling them off or throwing them out. Very nicely done, congrats!

 

I love it too and seeing the restorations and upgrades which inspired me to do mine and to share it with this thread for others. Thank you.

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  • 2 months later...
On 6/26/2021 at 11:53 PM, soundbound said:

This is my recent second restoration of them. I wanted them to look more like factory Style B version also shown below, except for a few small differences I wanted, so I transformed mine that were like Fig. 11 to Fig. 9.

 

Lot of work and effort involved. You did good, your Klipschorns look very nice.

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On 6/27/2021 at 3:22 AM, soundbound said:

The grill cloth is attached with a narrow line of glue along the back edges of its wood frames that’s more than enough to stretch and hold it, but easy enough to remove if another cloth is preferred later. 

 

Magnets are under the top cabinets fronts wood veneer and attracting magnets in their grill cloth board frames, so no grill cloth covers connectors are visible on speakers top cabinets with grills off.

 

Velcro holds lower bass cabinets grill cloth covers in place.

 

just Plain ........wow  ........amazing ,,,,,,,,fantastic ..............perfect ........impressive and I can go on and  on , this is the way PWK would have made them , Decorators were plain Jane given they were more affordable to those who could not afford the more expensive dolled up  version - looks like you just did exactly that the same way the factory would have made them -

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On 9/14/2021 at 11:52 AM, RandyH said:

just Plain ........wow  ........amazing ,,,,,,,,fantastic ..............perfect ........impressive and I can go on and  on , this is the way PWK would have made them , Decorators were plain Jane given they were more affordable to those who could not afford the more expensive dolled up  version - looks like you just did exactly that the same way the factory would have made them -

 

Thank you, that really means a lot to me, because that’s what I was going for. I wanted them to look like they were built in 1978 as Style B, except I did want removable grills and thought they’d look better with matching wood veneer around the top horns with their grills off too, but with their grills on I wanted them to look as close to 1978 factory Style B as I could do them.

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