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New Cornwall owner!! Part 1


JCturboT

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Well guys...I finally did it.I became one of you,a Klipsch speaker owner! I had to drive 750 miles round trip to Philadelphia to get them but they're all mine.

They are 1984 vintage Cornwalls,oiled oak finish with brown grills.Purchased them from the original owner in excellent condition besides a water stain on top of one of them from a plant being overwatered.The owner even had the original shipping boxes and sales receipt.They have never had the backs off them and the owner had told me he only had the grills off twice in the last 16 years,once to inspect them and once to answer my questions about the driver mounting.He took very good care of them and he actually seemed sad to let them go but he was downsizing his system.Well,I don't know if any of you have been following the Cornwall/Cornwall II & Cornwall vs Cornwall II posts about the differences between these two models so the first thing I did when I got home was remove the back cover and inspect the drivers which are...

K33E woofer

K57K squawker

K77M tweeter

Type B3 crossover

So these seem to be a hybrid of sorts,the woofer and tweeter from the original Cornwalls with the crossover and squawker from the model IIs.They have the 3 bass ports on the front panel and the speaker connection located on top of the rear panel.The first thing I noticed when I got them home was their size...they just don't make speakers like this anymore especially the width.I am giving them their oil bath right now and will be doing some A-B speaker testing so stay tuned.

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welcome to the club!

you will now have less room in your living room than ever before, you will hear things on CDs you never heard before, great front-end equipment will sound better than ever before, drums, pianos, horns and cymbals will actually sound real, you are on the first step toawrds becoming a tweaking audiophile ... and nobody will be able to outplay your big old horns!

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Thanks for the support guys!

To answer Joes questions...

I am running all Yamaha components which I purchased brand new in 1987 at the age of 20 when I first got into hi-fi.They include...

M85 Auto Class A 260 watt per channel amp

T85 digital am-fm tuner

GE60 10 band spectrum equalizer with +/- 15 db boost

K1020 3 head dolby dbx cassette deck

I updated my cd player in 1998 with a CDC-765 5 disc carousel model and most recently added an 1990 model CX1000u preamp with 18 bit filtering and 8 times oversampling.It has a bypass switch which bypass the tone control & subsonic filter giving the purest possibe sound.I use the digital optical output to the cd player.I like the older Yamaha equiptment as it it built like a tank and is geared toward hi-fi and not home theater which I have no interest in.

I mainly listen to hard rock/heavy metal which mostly includes 80s bands but like a lot of the new stuff as well including Bush,Offspring,Static X,Disturbed.My taste (distaste? wink.gif) don't end there as I do have a soft side and listen to Bill Joel,Journey,and my favorite band Survivor.My wife is into Country so that is also played around my house as well as Classical for my newborn daughter (suppose to be good for her-puts dad to sleep)so at any given day just about anything might be playing in our house. I started out with Polk SDA 2s ($1800.00) in '87 which lasted about 1 full hour in my house, excellent imaging but no dynamics or volume output to speak of.I tried several speakers not really happy with any of them till I bought my Cerwin Vegas model #380SE in late '87.These have 15" woofers,2-7" midrange drivers,and 1" dome tweeter.I liked these so much I purchased 4-yes 4 of them and they have lasted me all through the last 14 years with not so much as one problem.I recently got back into the hobby and wanted something different so I started looking into Klipsch,specifically the older models as I have really liked the Cornwall so I dug out my old issues of Stereo Review & older Klipsch literature sent to me in the late 80s,went on www.audioreview.com to read what owners had said about the Cornwall,and last but not least came aboard the Bulletin Board and just started reading past forums and asking questions...all you people have been a big help to me in my search for information and I wish to Thank all who helped.Sorry to be so long winded but I'm really happy to be back into the hobby.Stay tuned for my review on the speakers,I'll be posting in a couple days...It will be good as I will be comparing not only these beforementioned speakers but my friend recent purchase of his KLF20s with the same equiptment,same room,same day,same recorded material so there will be no excuses!

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OK guys-here it is, my speaker test,first the parameters...

Room size 13x17. Speakers are on long side of wall about 7 feet apart-1 foot out from wall.Room is heavly carpeted.Speakers are in the middle of the room away from the corners.The living room is open to the kitchen which is 14x18 so I can judge sound from on the couch about 8 feet from the speakers and from the kichen about 18 feet away.

Speakers being tested 1. Cerwing Vega 380SEs 1987 vintage

2.Klipsch Cornwalls 1984 vintage

3.Klipsch KLF20 2000 vintage just purchased the following day by my best friend.

Stereo equiptment I went over earlier.All controls on preamp set to flat,equalizer set to off.I am using 14 guage speaker wire in about 20 foot lenghts.

Test cds include Billy Joel- greatest hits Vol. 3 Disturbed- The Sickness Steve Windwood -Back in the High Life Third eye blind Skid Row-Slave to the grind. I choose most of these because they are good recordings that I am familiar with.

I first compared the Cornwalls to the KLF20s by playing about 30 seconds worth of material then switching off to the other speaker and playing back the same 30 seconds then by switching back and forth between the two while the cd was playing. I had 3 other people there besides myself 2 of whom new a great deal about stereo equiptment to who were just there to see my new Cornwalls.

The outcome...

The Cornwalls were full and rich sounding,robust on the bottom end,some recorded material sounded harsh to me on the upper end.Some of my older cds actually sounded quite frail from what I was used to.Most of the newer recordings were quite good especially the Disturbed cd.

The KLF20s actually suprised me and my friend,almost a mirror image of the Cornwalls with a smoother top end and much better dispersion.With the Cornwalls the sweet spot was quite "narrow",the furter back you were the better the sound-with the KLF20 you could move side to side and not lose the sound quite as easy.Sometime I had to look at the power amp to see what speakers were actually playing...thats how close the sound actually is!

I decided to turn on the equalizer and try some adjustments and thats when the Cornwalls came alive.Boosted the 60hz and 120 hz by 5db and the Cornwalls now had a deeper bass response then the KLF20s-probably due to cabinet size and driver dimension.

All in all a close test.I will report on the Cerwin Vega vs.Cornwall test soon as well as my personal thoughts on this matter in the following days.Any thoughts guys?

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JCturbo, Try putting the Cornwalls in the corners toed in toward your listening area I think you will be surprised how different the low end sounds. Congratulations on your purchase. You do have a unique pair in that you share the same midrange that my 1989 models have but you have the K-77 tweeter where mine have the K-79-K tweeter. As Paul would say "Keep in Clean" Dan

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ditto on both the use of corner walls and a certain type of amplification,

big old Cornwalls need corners and walls to create a realistic sound stage,

if you can use the room as a square, there was a site somewhere in the WWW that showed how to set up speakers in a room diagonally, with the sweet spot near the middle and the center directly in a the front corner, speakers are aimed at the listener from about 10 and 2 o'clock, the listener sits in the middle of the line between 7 and 5 o'clock, so the sound stage is formed in the corner in between the two speakers ...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello to all you lucky listeners. I'm going to demo some Cornwalls tomorrow here in Montreal. The people who own them won't let me take them home to audition so I am taking my amp to do the demo. I have a Phase Linear 400 built in 1974 and running very well. I'm not an expert so maybe you guys can help me out on this one. Will this amp be too much for these speakers? Any comments will be appreciated. Thanks.

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I don't know if it's *too much amp...clearly you don't need that much power for these speakers. The problem is, this is the wrong *kind of amp for these speakers. I had the same amp paired with my Klipschorns and the results were awful. Hard, hard sound. Any idea what they have to demo it with? A mid powered Japanese receiver will sound much better on these speakers than the Phase Linear.

My opinion, of course.

Oh, buy the speakers!

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oh, I don't know, the old Phase Limnear might sound pretty good, I am frequently reminded that many people do not share the love of mellow music that I have, they just like the big wall banging and the Cornwalls can certainly do that ...

oh, and buy the speakers!

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