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Who made the Drivers for the Speakerlab K's


Frzninvt

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On 4/28/2005 8:23:48 AM Marvel wrote:

The original owner certainly did a nice job building them. ... I had a friend who had gotten a pair. Plain plywood.

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I agree... much better build / veneer quality than most you see poping up. I guess the previous owner bought / built them fully optionned... 2.gif

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Hey, Gil - That's D-MAN, not Q-man! He lives in Florida, and I live in Washington state. Well, I guess that's what I get for using a letter for a moniker...

Just making a point, not arguing.9.gif

The ONLY thing that I have to disagree with you (and it's really just an opinion - no facts involved) is with Edgar.

Does the guy EVER have anything GOOD to say about anything?! Is it just me or what?! Could be I'm wrong about it, but why does his name come up when somebody wants to bad-mouth something or other? Food for thought.

I've heard stock SK's in a large living room (lots of brick) and they literally blew my socks off. Unbelievable bass output. Rattled the dishes out of the cupboards in the kitchen. Never, ever, heard Khorns do that.

Don't get me wrong, I PREFER the K33E for other reasons (including the fact that you can still buy them new)

than its raw bass producing capabilities, which we can all agree that for that there are certainly better choices for that purpose available. Also the SK's can be a very good source of used EV and Atlas drivers, circa late 70's.

But by no means discount the 15" Speakerlab drivers - they are definitely HOT and will certainly light up any Heritage horn.

Well, Speakerlab supplied my first homemade horn drivers way back when I was in high school. I have a soft spot for them. Don't like people to be saying negative things about stuff that I know better of.

DM2.gif

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Uh Oh D-Man don't get me thinking! I was already thinking about swapping the tweeters now you make me wonder what the woofers would sound like in the Klipschorn bass bin, where's that screwdriver?

Photo of one with the grill on.

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I think the problem here is just what PWK was concerned about. When you (the company) aren't building them, you don't know just what the quality is.

I am remembering a poster here who had a bunch of drivers and wanted to build some LS cabinets to see how the LS would sound. Excuse me, but as soon as you use different components than Klipsch, you still don't knwo what it should sound like. That would be like me showing off my Dynaco ST-70, now with a new driver board, different power supply and a different power transformer. It is no longer a Dynaco, so the listener doesn't know what a genuine ST-70 is like.

Plus, it gets to be very subjective anyway. What was the phrase? If it sounds good, it is good.

Now... back to our regularly scheduled bickering.

Marvel

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Here is the other one, oh my god I just thought of something since these sound pretty potent without being fully corner loaded I am thinking center channel. My wife is gonna want to kill me, I am going to play I need to look at placement options.

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On 4/28/2005 3:47:42 PM Frzninvt wrote:

Here is the other one, oh my god I just thought of something since these sound pretty potent without being fully corner loaded I am thinking center channel. My wife is gonna want to kill me, I am going to play I need to look at placement options.

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Okay, take a deep breath, they're only speakers.

They're in place 24 hours per day. How many hours do you sleep?

Do you do the cooking?

Don't walk while carrying a knife.

Like a kid in a candy store. Nice to see that you're having fun.

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Yes, Marvel is entirely correct. I am only talking about the bass response, and that carries it's own problems when trying to balance with the mids and highs. I never said that the overall response of the SK was better than the Khorn. Only in the bass department - it was a hands-down kind of thing - no comparison BASS-WISE. The rest of the response is dependent on the drivers and especially the crossover. I don't really remember anything else about the listening session - only the bass which completely blew me away. It was "Takin it to the Streets" album by the Doobie Bros, even.

I fully believe that the stock Khorn has a better crossover, anyway. I also expect that the Khorn has a smoother response across the board. But the crossover probably has more effect on the overall listening experience anyway as PWK had many years of experience in balancing the respective drivers.

As far as horn cabinets, the SK is a clone of a Khorn. It depends on who built it, same with the Khorn as to its quality. However, the drivers are completely interchangable between the two, the slot is exactly the same size, etc.

DM2.gif

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I agree with D-Man in principle.

It is interesting to look at PWK's measurement of the SK in DfH, as contrasted to the measurement of the K-Horn in the Jubilee article, and contrast them to the responses in the French review of the K-Horn, and contrast them to the Audio magazine review, and contrast them to the limited response by Klipsch engineers in an Edgar article re the restriction at the throat.

They're not really controlled testing to each other as far as conditions and there is is plenty of room for interpretation, smoothing, blaming the the room, using the room, etc.

My guess is that at least one driver used by SpeakerLab has a higher Q and this gives some boost to lower bass at the cost of higher bass.

My buddy's SK's were particularly good on Living on the Fault Line.

Gil

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From the Speakerlab catalog dated:

Oct 01, 1979

Speakerlab W1508S T/S

Re = 6.8 ohms

Fs = 23.9 Hz

Mms = 76.6

Cms = .58

Vas = 612 litres

Rms = 5.06

Bl = 14.9 T-m

Qms = 2.27

Qes = .354

Qts = .306

Sd = .086 m2

REF SPL = 98.8 dB

I would not think a driver with a huge Vas would work well in the small back-chamber horn but what do I know!

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The K33 is about 10.5 cubic feet. That's pretty large as well, but only about half of the Speakerlab woofer. There is more to it than that.

Fs is way lower.

Nothing matches up woth the K33. Maybe that's why it works.9.gif

Marvel

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I built a pair of the Speakerlab khorns starting back in 1984. I finished them in 2002. After much research I found that the woofers were made in house. Speakerlab published a lot of different specs for these speakers. I have four different sets with Vas (M3) of 0.125 to 0.612. The best figure I could find was 0.312 which is very close to the K33 of 0.343. I made a hornresp (horn analysis software) model of the two woofers. The main difference is the Speakerlab woofer starts to roll off at about 375hz. This is what Bruce Edgar complained about. Stuffing the back chamber with some fiberglass seems to have solved this problem. From all my research and experience the Speakerlab woofer is a pretty good copy of the K33. The midrange used the atas pd-5vh same as Klipsch. They offered serveral tweeters. The EV versions were the t-35 and and t-350. They had a wave aperature model where they put their own horn on a t-35 driver. I had these, the best thing I did was to get a set of EV t-35 horns from Ebay.

The main problem I had was with the Speakerlab crossover. It was a poor desing at best. When I put in a set of ALK crossovers these speakers began to sing. I am running them with a Fisher 500C amp. They are as good as any Klipsch I have heard. (I can't speak to the latest offerings, the newest pair I have heard was circa 1980.) Other corrections I made were removing the "ferrofluid" from the tweeter and midrange (I can't get to it in the woofer). Wraping the midrange in rope caulk and adding pipe insulation to the tailboard for corner sealing.

post-6780-13819264414974_thumb.jpg

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Thanks for the info Drew! Yours look real nice! I see you put a riser in there to really give them the Khorn look.

Ditto on the crossover network! El Cheapo, I bet with a good quality network in them they would sound significantly better, but they sound pretty damn good bone stock. The model on my crossover network is the XK.

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Hi Marvel,

The ST70 has been rebuilt with good poly caps and an SDS cap board. The cap board really beefed up the bass. I use it now with a set of restored set of AR 2ax's. The short wall was added to hide ducting for the HVAC system. I added it myself so I know the before and after. The loss is minimal, nothing compared to the importance of a good tailboard seal. Since I put in the corner myself I was able to pay extra attention to the squareness and plumb of the coe rner. This, along with some pipe insulation allowed me to make a tight seal. There is another thread going on here that shows a poor seal creates a 250hz hole. I can verify this.

Attached is a picture of the room looking away from the speakers.

post-6780-13819264416814_thumb.jpg

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My Formerly ST-70 cleaned up nicely with all the mods I did (PS board, driver board, power tranny). Made the bass a lot tighter. I think I'll call it an FD-70 from now on, as in Formerly Dynaco 70 9.gif)

Beautiful room. Thanks for the pics.

Marvel

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