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Stereophile Review of Klipsch Forte


toddc

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Back around 1985 Stereophile magazine did a review of the original Klipsch Forte speakers. The review impressed me so favorably I bought the speakers sight unseen. I've still got them and still love them.

But I'd love to get a copy of that review. Any of you still got copies from way back then? I'd be happy to pay for a photo copy, online scan, or even better for tattered magazine. :)

Thanks for any leads!

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Okay, it looks like we're all going to be bidding against each other on ebay. Tell you what, if somebody has a copy of this and makes a good scan of the article for us I'll pay $5 for it.

Anyone else willing to chip in to whoever makes us a nice scan copy? It's way too hard to find reviews and info online about the original fortes and it would be nice to have a clean digital copy.

Anty-up folks...

PS - I'm really just too impatient to wait a week for the damn auction to end.

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From the review,

"Our pulsed power-handling measurements produced a rattle from the woofer cone at 100 Hz with an input of 415 watts into the speaker's 6ohm impedance. At 1,000 Hz, the amplifier's protection circuit tripped at about 715 watts into 19 ohms, before any waveform clipping could be seen. At 10,000 Hz the amplifier clipped while delivering 1,300 watts to the tweeter's 10.5 ohm impedance! Given the high sensitivity of the Forte, these inputs correspond to truly prodigious sound-pressure levels."

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Peace, Josh

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This forum is SOOOOOOOOO cool! Thanks for all the pointers. The Julian Hirsh review is the one I remembered reading that caused me to buy the forte. A few of his statements that really got me were:

"The room response of the Klipsh Forte was one of the widest and smoothest we have ever measured."

"The Forte's low-frequency distorition was by far the lowest we have ever measured from a speaker."

"Our pulsed power-handling measurements.... Given the high sensitivity of the Forte, these inputs correspond to truly prodigious sound-pressure levels."

"The Klipsch Forte is so outstanding in a number of its characteristics, and good or better in just about all the others, that we cannot pass it off as "just another good speaker.. For one thing, it sounded even better than it measured."

"It is not easy to be dispassionate about the Klipsch Forte. Its distortion and sensitivity measurements are so outstanding that comparison with most other speakers is impossible. In addition, these speakers just plain sound so good that... we hate to send them back! In absolute terms, and especially at its price, the Forte would be hard to match, let alone surpass."

I was sold.

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Wow, this is terrific... it was the Hirsh review that sold me, as well. I made a 300-mile round-trip jaunt just to audition them, and before I could order a pair, an authorized dealer (fortunately) opened up in town.

I must have read that review a dozen times back when it was first published, and still check it out every few years. The ironic thing is that, in retrospect, most of (the late) Julian Hirsh's reviews and comparisons, especially of power amps and cd players, seem to indicate that he was partially deaf, as he was unable to report that he could hear a difference between different cd players.

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I recall a few forum members dumping on ol' Mr. Hirsch in the last year or so as being, shall we say, less than capable of accurate hearing, which kind of took the wind out my sails on this review. But since I'm biased, I just refused to hear it - "MMMMM, I can't hear you, I can't hear you, LALALALALALALALALA."

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