How was Klipshorn conceived?

[edwinr]

I like your humour, fini.

[edwinr]

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On 1/2/2005 10:56:33 AM NOSValves wrote:

Lack of birth control

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Does this mean the Belle and the La Scala are the illegitimate offspring of that grand old lady, the Klipschorn? But who was the father?

[LarryC]

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I think I've read here that PWK felt the midrange was the most important component of the speaker?? ... is it fair to say he started with a midrange and designed the tweeter/woofer around it?

Did he perhaps, design the bass bin to his acceptable (or ideal) criteria, and then design the squawker/tweeter around the bass bin??

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Uh, to answer your question, from what I've seen, much of his early focus seemed to be on developing the bass horn rather than on upper-range horns. The above-cited 1951 article said that he developed a system to "cover the tonal range down to the 16-ft. organ pitch," the lowest note of which is a 32.7-Hz "C". The 16 ft. reference suggests that he saw reaching that bottom pitch as the greater challenge that he had to surmount.

Larry

[WMcD]

This is an invitation to do some reverse engineering of a man's inspiration and primary interests. We'll really never know for certain. Reconstruction of events and thoughts is always armchair philosophy. That sort of thing can lead thoughts along any path.

It seems to me that it is unfair to presume that either the treble or bass were his first interests. They go hand in hand.

We should consider the technology of the times in which he grew up and consider the course of events.

There were some comments indicating that he and his family discovered that the family Victrola record player sounded better in a corner. That was most likely a wind-up unit with a morning glory horn. No bass and treble distinction in construction.

PWK often cited to Wente and Thuras. Particularly he was taken by the Bell Lab project to place microphones at the orchestra in one hall and transmit it, by wire, to a hall in another city. The reproduction system used bass horns and treble horns. Equal attention was paid to both by Bell Labs.

Looking at those days, talking pictures were the high art (and money makers) and they were using bass and treble horns. Remember that talkies started in about 1929. He built his prototypes in the mid 1940's. So the use of basshorns and treble horns were widespread in theaters for more than a decade.

However, the bass units were too big for home use. People listened to the radio via direct drivers which were displacing the early horns used on radios. You see photos of early units which look like folks would take the earphone from crystal radio sets, and put them in place of the mechanical pickup used on wind up Victrolas. Direct drivers by Rice made these a bit obsolete.

Flash forward to his primary work while at the Army base in Hope.

There are photos of the prototypes of the K-Horn. There is the familiar bass unit but also the X- type treble horn. It is a prelimiarly to the K-5. Looking at it, he is very much into directional control by the use of a straight sided final flare. To some extent, a built in corner for the treble.

He had commented that he spend more man years on the treble than the bass. In the article on the K-5 he discussed some problems and disappointments with results of earlier experiments.

My conclusion is that he held both as equally important. All his heros did. Yet getting the treble correct was more of a problem, and took more time.

Probably he achieved good results from the bass horn first. He chose to publish those and patent the design. And you can see some pictures of the use of the K-Horn bass in the Fairfield house with a multicellular horn. It looks like the one from Wente and Thuras.

My guess is that once the bass horn was nailed down, he was able to focus his attention to the problematic treble project. This was not a matter of which was more important or a first love, but rather a more difficult project. I get the strong impression it was by no means an afterthought.

It is interesting to contemplate the Jubilee project. One of the goals was to get the bass unit working up high enough to allow the use of single treble horn (there is limited bandwidth) without a tweeter.

So here we have bass horn design for the purpose of freeing up design constrains on the treble. Arguably, the overall goal was not the low bass at all. Rather, as you imply, the bass horn was always there as a companion to the midrange, which was the primary interest. Maybe so. But the Jubilee does have better low bass, and it is cited for that merit.

Unfortunately, we don't know what PWK had in mind for the treble part of the Jubilee system. There is a photo with him, the bass horn, and a treble horn. We've not heard the latter. It is probably that his health problems overtook his abliblty to work on it.

History may have repeated itself in his later life. The improved bass horn came to fruition with Delgato's assistance. The treble horn would have taken more work . . . but PWK ran out of time.

Best,

From the armchair philosopher.

[edwinr]

Great post, Gil. It really is hard to imagine the impact that the Klipschorn must have had on an unsuspecting public back in the late '40's and early '50's. Even now, with the competition from scores of high end manufacturers using the latest technology, the Klipschorn still holds it's own. PWK had a vision. Just because that vision is 50 years old, doesn't detract from it's relevance in both historical and contemporary terms.