Heideana Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 Over the summer, I test drove a few Reference models courtesty Goodguys and finally ended up with RF-7's trying to get the same bass I was getting out of my old KG'3's. Complicating things is that I'd purchased a Rogue T-II to drive the system I was building and couldn't A/B it with the old Carver HR-722 I was driving the KG's with because of back surgery. For awhile I couldn't even get decent bass out of the RF-7's and wasn't understanding why Klipsch Tech thought I was way underpowering them given their rated sensitivity, until someone on the forum finally told me to change the impedence to 4 ohms and they opened up. Thanks to all who put up with questions during that experiment, I really learned a lot from you all! So I just had to ship my T-II back to Rogue for repair and finally had the opportunity to run the RF-7's with the Carver HR-722 that I'd been running my old KG's with. The HR was put in storage when I replaced it with a Denon 2805 for bedroom HT and I'd sort of forgot about it. Wow, was I surprised at the how differently it reacts with the RF's compared to the Rogue! The HR is rated at 90 watts at 4 ohms and has bit tighter bass/definition then the Rogue, but on the other hand the upper range sounds like ice picks, is really fatiguing and lacks any real gut punch on the mid-range. Also, the protection circuit kicks in at decent volume bass passages, which I assume is the RF's ohm drop in the bass register I keep reading about and why they were so happy to see 4-ohms from the Rogue? The T-II is rated at 120 watts in ultralinear and about 60 in triode. The bass is a bit looser, but not that much looser when in triode mode, guitars/pianos and particularily drums gave the gut punch, and there's no ice picks in the ears. I'm assuming that this is because the KT-88's are a bit more forgiving to source material then silicon and do better with the impedence dips, but puzzled why it has more gut punch in the mid-to-upper range? Also, subjectively it sounds a bit louder then the Carver even in triode mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMcGoo Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 A solid state amp that puts 90 watts into 4 ohms will clip on the RF-7s and give that harsh sound. Negative feedback can also cause problems on horns. A good 200 watt solid state amp will help the bass and will clip less. The tube amp clips in a different manner; it is called soft clipping for a reason. DeanG can take much of the higher frequency harshness out of the RF-7 with his crossover mod. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heideana Posted September 16, 2005 Author Share Posted September 16, 2005 Thanks! The other wow is how much more detail I'm hearing on the RF-7's compared to the KG-3's even thru the harshness. Makes me really happy that I endedup with them, as I'd been suffering from tone anxiety and feeling sad that I didn't have the space for full-blown k-horns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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