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Older K horn cosmetic upgrade


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I can see why John would say they're SpeakerLab SK's. The SK had the tweeter at the side in a vertical position. One of the tweeters, I'm told, looked like a plastic T35 or K77.

On the other hand, the top of the SK was not tall enough to have the tweeter at the top in a horizontal position, which this one does. Also, the SK plan and pre cut stuff did not have a bottom board on the top enclosure, which this one seems to.

I can't quite make out what is going on, on the sides of the upper enclosure. It certainly doesn't look like the SK plan where the side piece comes up flush to the top and bottom boards.

It may be that this is a home made conversion of a decorator K-Horn to something close to the C model (?) the one without the collar.

Why anyone would want a side mounted tweeter, I can't say.

Regarding multiple images. I've been pretty much been made of fool of with even a single image. The technique is to upload one image to the Klipsch BBS and use html to paste that in to the post. It is not above us to use multiple posts to put in a series of images.

I believe that when there have been multiple images in one post, this is because the image file is available at someones home page, and they make multiple html inserts to those. Others may have better advice.

Please do give us more pictures. I'm sure your happy and proud of your new units and we'd love to see more.

Best,

Gil

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Yes, I relocated the tweeter to the side vertical mount. I considered placing it above the mid horn but felt the cabinet would be to tall and the tweeter too high. My guess is these speakers are an old version. They are made of plywood and had remnants of the "cane" grille cloth. I have numerous pictures which I can post; there is one depicting a finished version on this post. I hope my placing the tweeter adjacent to the mid was not a huge tactical error. They sound pretty dang good! Any help from you guys is very appreciated.

post-13066-13819248864136_thumb.jpg

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First !! 10.gif

Nice job - The first pic makes it clear that your old beauties were likely in worse shape than mine when you started and they look lovely now.

Second :

I recommend that you return the tweeters to their original locations as the side mount vertical placement will degrade the soundstage. The original Klipsch tweeter horns were not designed for placement in that orientation . In addition that setup will not be likely to provide satisfactory staging unless the tweeters are set up as a mirror image as shown below:

Tweeter Mid Mid Tweeter

(left speaker) ( right speaker)

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Aww, come on 'Gator. You've got a real nice restoration project going and you're not sharing it with us.

We'd all like to know how you came by these units, where you'd like to go with with them, and what progress is being made.

I'm a home builder so I don't have any real advice on getting them back to factory spec. Still, there are other fine people here who can help.

Gil

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I think the ev t35 (k77) sound much better mounted vetical .

one reason the vertical cornwalls are are so much in demand.

EV designed this horn for vertical use and the orig khorns used them vertical up to the smaller

mid horn came out in the early 60,s.

Klipsch mounted the orig khorns with the tweeters vetical inside the mid horns but the latter mid horn was to short for this and it was mounted above horizontal to keep cabnet s the same size as org.

I think your mod might even image better this way. as long as you keep the tweeters on the out side.

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Actually, Bill, I fully wish to share the results of my appearance upgrade of the K horns with members of this forum. My design was not flawless, but it turned out ok. I still have to rub tung oil on the stained mahogany veneer I used.

If I remember your questions, I bought them from an ad in the paper for $500. (Oddly, the seller advertised they were in "excellent condition!" As you can see from the picture I posted, that "EC" was a bit of a stretch. Secondly, I am not going anywhere with the speakers; they weigh to much. Seriously, I am pretty happy with them right now. I did just tonight move the tweeters back to their original location above the mids, as Mr. Olson suggested. I have read it may be beneficial to stuff the upper enclosure with something. Why. I don't know. Anyway, thanks for your interest. I'll post some more pics shortly.

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I moved them back to horizontal tonight to see what they sound like. It's rather easy to move them back to vertical. One slight faux pas...I didn't mirror image the cutouts. Also, my version has the EV tweeters back mounted, ie, the plywood thickness is in front of the tweeter edges. Possible refraction issues...maybe??

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That's good enough for me. Who am I to question Mr. Klipsch, a flat-out American icon.

Frankly, I can say I have never really ascertained a "defraction" problem with any speaker I have built or heard. One time, however, I placed a felt ring around a Dynaudio tweeter and it made the imaging sound smeared. My point being, just because someone says it's so doesn't necessarily mean it's true. In Mr. Klipsch's case, it probably is!

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