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Just purchased Cornwalls, need education


wkimbrel

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I think I got a pretty good deal, $475 for older looking pair in good condition. Can anyone tell me the appox. year. Serial #4c58 & #4c59. Walnut finish with recessed front. Speaker cloth seems to be wrapped completly around the speaker mounting face board. Do I need to take the whole thing apart to redo this or does someone know a better way? This pair also has the vertical horns. What are the advantages or disadvantages of this configuration? Are there mods that I should be considering right away. They sound very nice as they are but a persons is allways curious. The only spare amp I had available last night to enjoy them with was a Carver TFM15b, sounds nice but of course I bought these with the intention of going with SET. How many watts do I really need. I've always been a believer in a little extra head room. Thanks in advance for any info that you can share ....

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wkimbrel,

Greetings and welcome to the forum.

Your Cornwalls were made in 1964, that was a good year.1.gif

A lot of members here use SET tube amps with their Cornwalls, but I use a vintage Fisher 800C tube receiver which is a push pull amp with about 30 watts per channel. It will get extremely loud with that power.

I would also like to try SET but they will have to wait for a while $$.

As for your grill questions, HDBRbuilder here on the forum used to work at Klipsch, he has built a few pair of these and he can help you with that question.

Regards,

Greg

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Wow, if these things are meant for the cabinet to be in the horizonal postion doesn't that put the horns pretty low to the floor. Much to big to put on the bookshelf. I suppose vertical postioning will narrow the sweet spot in a larger room but still may be the way to go to keep the horns at a resonable height. How are other people orientating theirs.

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Like most of what are now called Heritage speakers, the Cornwall was originally designed by PWK to be voiced like a Klipschorn but not need a corner. Indeed, the Cornwall is ported to the front so it can be mounted flush against a wall. All of the horns were meant to be horizontal... so indeed, the "vertical" horned cabinets were designed to be on their "side" to create a low profile between the left and right channels. As I recall, elongated risers were available to make these "vertical" horns horizontal.

Mr. Paul was very big on three channel stereo (as invented at Bell Labs) and his first wife, Belle Klipsch, was very big on having little or no center channel. In fact, the Heritage Belle Klipsch is her namesake and includes some expensive extra cabinetry to meet Mrs. Klipsch's aesthetic requirements. See, even if you are a world famous patent holder, the WAF remains the key to one's quality of life... at least at home. PWK had three channel stereo in his home the day he died (a pair of Klipschorns with false corners with a Belle in the middle. =HornEd

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The earlier versions of both the mitered-corner Cornwall and the Heresy had grille cloth attached directly to the motorboard...wrapped around its edges...then the motorboard was nailed on. This always bugged PWK...because of the problem of providing a good seal to the cabinet for the motorboard. Eventually the motorboards were installed using glue and fasteners...and the grille-cloth was mounted to masonite panels and secured to the motorboard instead....generally AFTER the advent of VELCRO!! which allowed the grille cloth panels to be removeable and interchangeable. To provide a better seal for YOUR cornwalls, though is a two-fold problem. First you need to remove the motorboard...then take the grille cloth off of it...then remount the motorboard using glue and fasteners...now the second part...you gotta MAKE some grille cloth panels outta masonite, cover those panels with grille cloth, then mount them to the motorboards with velcro. Only a very few of the Cornwall II version such as you have(with "vertical" horns...ever had grille cloth panels instead of grille cloth mounted directly to the motorboard...so there was no routing form ever made for those particular panels with "vertical" horn cut-outs...which means you would have to use the motorboard itself as a pattern for making the panels for the cloth....should you decide to do this. Because of the EARLINESS of your Cornwall II in manufacture....my suggestion would be to leave them "as is"...

Yes...the Cornwall II such as yours were designed to lay on their side...AS a single center-channel speaker between two k-horns...but sold as pairs, they could be positioned either way...standing tall OR on their side....if truly sold as a pair, then one of the speakers should be a mirror image of the other as far as the positioning of its horn lenses goes on their motorboards...and the side they would lay on would have the tweeter in the uppermost position on BOTH of them, with the ports to the far outside ends...IOW..."head to head"...with ports to far outside position...and tweeters up high. In the vertical position...facing the speakers...the tweeter would be towards the center for each speaker...this tells you which one was supposed to be the left, and which was supposed to be the right in a stereo set-up.

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Thanks to everyone for your replys. 1964s, thats even older than I had imagined. Valuable info on the grill cloth to motor board delemia. Perhaps I will make a panel to mount over the motor board and leave the original cloth intact. The original cloth has some staining that is forcing me to take some action. Also thanks for the explanations about horn orentation, very helpful.

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