AA Xover Modification

[John Warren]

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Edited December 17, 2013 by John Warren

[Q-Man]

I was going to stay away from here, but I have to add in my 2 cents.

For the sake of this discussion lets say that the K55, K400, and the K77 are junk. They may very well be, but they are the best junk that Klipsch has to offer. They make the rest of the Klipsch line sound lame and make the Heritage line a very nice sounding speaker for the money. We must believe that, after all that's what got us all here to begin with. Some of us just took it to the next level, somewhere where Paul and now Klipsch refuses to go. Better drivers and horns became available for Paul, he was into upgrading them in his early years and then he stopped. I believe he became comfortabe with the sound at a bang for your buck level and wanted to keep the speakers within a certain price range. I don't think any of us mean or imply any disrespect for Paul's designs. I just find it odd that Paul didn't have a tweaked out pair of Klipschorns for his own use. Better drivers, horns, and networks make the basshorn heart of this speaker sound so much better.

I also have a feeling that the new Klipsch company allowed Paul to play with the home version of the Jubilee with no intention of ever mass marketing it. It was a kind way to pacify an old man who they all admired and knew that he didn't have long to live. There are drivers and horns that can be used with this bass horn. Klipsch is afraid to enter the high end speaker market with a fully loaded horn speaker.

To over simplify it the Jubilee is a LaScala folded again and or a modified JBL Hartsfield cabinet. I'm kind of curious what this basshorn sounds like compared to the Klipschorn. If anyone would like to get involved in a new Jubilee project, I may be willing to build the basshorn to see what it sounds like. I think it should be a 3 way speaker. There are many more choices for a nice midrange driver and horn if you use a tweeter. The Jubilees basshorn also goes higher then the Klipschorn so this too will make the search for a midrange driver and horn easier.

I can tell by the lack of responses to some of the modified Klipschorn post that many on this forum take offence to what is said or what is being done to the Klipschorn. Maybe I'm wrong. There just might not be many out there that care to improve on this speaker in this manner. So maybe this makes Klipschs opinion of marketing and design right.

[Randy Bey]

John,

as compelling as your argument is I am oddly unconvinced. I will let my own 40+ years of experience with hifi be my guiding light. Go ahead and make your own mistakes; I'll make my own.

[Deang]

Bump.

Old thread with some good stuff in it.

[st. patrick]

i sure miss lynn. patrick

[Audio Flynn]

I was going to stay away from here, but I have to add in my 2 cents.

For the sake of this discussion lets say that the K55, K400, and the K77 are junk. They may very well be, but they are the best junk that Klipsch has to offer. They make the rest of the Klipsch line sound lame and make the Heritage line a very nice sounding speaker for the money. We must believe that, after all that's what got us all here to begin with. Some of us just took it to the next level, somewhere where Paul and now Klipsch refuses to go. Better drivers and horns became available for Paul, he was into upgrading them in his early years and then he stopped. I believe he became comfortabe with the sound at a bang for your buck level and wanted to keep the speakers within a certain price range. I don't think any of us mean or imply any disrespect for Paul's designs. I just find it odd that Paul didn't have a tweaked out pair of Klipschorns for his own use. Better drivers, horns, and networks make the basshorn heart of this speaker sound so much better.

I also have a feeling that the new Klipsch company allowed Paul to play with the home version of the Jubilee with no intention of ever mass marketing it. It was a kind way to pacify an old man who they all admired and knew that he didn't have long to live. There are drivers and horns that can be used with this bass horn. Klipsch is afraid to enter the high end speaker market with a fully loaded horn speaker.

To over simplify it the Jubilee is a LaScala folded again and or a modified JBL Hartsfield cabinet. I'm kind of curious what this basshorn sounds like compared to the Klipschorn. If anyone would like to get involved in a new Jubilee project, I may be willing to build the basshorn to see what it sounds like. I think it should be a 3 way speaker. There are many more choices for a nice midrange driver and horn if you use a tweeter. The Jubilees basshorn also goes higher then the Klipschorn so this too will make the search for a midrange driver and horn easier.

I can tell by the lack of responses to some of the modified Klipschorn post that many on this forum take offence to what is said or what is being done to the Klipschorn. Maybe I'm wrong. There just might not be many out there that care to improve on this speaker in this manner. So maybe this makes Klipschs opinion of marketing and design right.

Trachorn is certainly a positive enhancment that would have added cost to a K Horn.

And the stock networks in my Chorus IIs were definitely built to a price point. Chorus II sounded nice stock but realism was noticibly better with network upgrades.

[Erik Mandaville]

I had begun some research on something Shawn also suggested, or rather asked about -- a low-order series rather than parallel network. Maybe that would be worth looking into a little more. They are not nearly as common as parallel types, but there are some -- I.M. Fried being one -- who thought they had certain advantages. I made one in the past for another pair of speakers, and it was very good when used with some power in front of it (IOWs, SET amps should probably not apply). In fact, low-power single ended amps do not IMO do very well in general with higher-order network with larger insertion losses. Lots of coils and capacitors can look pretty impressive, but for certain amplifiers they are not ideal. When using the series network speakers with 2A3 amps, the results were poor. I completely rebuilt those networks, this time first-order parallel, and had much better results, however the series design was more complex, with more of those big coils of wire.

I also really don't care for the swamping resistor, regardless of what its function is (which I understand). Just my opinion after listening comparisons with and without them.

Erik

[Erik Mandaville]

The parts I have on hand would set the upper and lower limits of a first order series network at 500 and 4k Hz. This is the the series coil and capacitor across the woofer and tweeter. I am using Bob's new tweeter, already crossed at the lower point, but I need to adjust some of these values and impedance variations to get what would work as a sort of ballpark network that could give me a general idea of the sound characteristics between a first order parallel and first order series design. The other issue here is the need for an inductor with a very low DCR, which in this case would probably best as a good quality iron core. I have one in our Heresies, but I'm going to resist the temptation to take that out for this experiment.

I will need to order the series coil and cap for the tweeter/midrange branch.

The nice thing about this type of network is that they are much less 'fussy' about slight variations of capacitance and inductance, and are easier to modify, depending on the type of amplifier used, for a more inductive or capacitive load.

Erik

[Erik Mandaville]

I completely forgot about these (network in the right in the photo). I think I may have what's needed for a series network, and can use the higher crossover point for the tweeter if needed.