djk Posted September 22, 2005 Share Posted September 22, 2005 "I have to agree on the 2446 and 2380a combo being a bit odd to the ear (seems to make your listening sweet spot smaller), however, the JBL 2446 is a darn fine driver that may need a different horn - Martinelli makes really pretty stuff that may work here. It should get low enough for a good Xover point." The 2380A has a much wider sweet spot than the K400 or a horn with the pattern that the Martinelli has. None of the JBL 2" titanium drivers sound good crossed at 500hz, 650hz is much better sounding for them. While I don't care for Radian in general, their 2" diaphragn for the JBL drivers sounds better than the JBLs do, as long as you're going to use a tweeter. Maron, have you heard a JBL 2435HPL yet? Just wondering how the JBL Be drivers sound vs the TAD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZAKO Posted September 22, 2005 Share Posted September 22, 2005 DJK......No I havent but I intend to before the year is out. The 3" diaphram units look interesting, Byrillium & aliminiun units aquaplased. The al. units are inexpensive and a good bang for the buck. Ide probably look at those first. RADIAN has a TAD 4001 killer its the new 950 driver 5 slit phase plug copy of TAD unit with aluminum diaphram. You can slip the Be. diaphram for compairison. All at a fraction of cost of full blown TAD. I dont know why Klipsch Co. hasnt snapped these up for a Super Klipschorn design. Klipsch keeps grinding out the old Atlas X driver it will never be any good. And that Xover as big as a barn door. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oscarsear Posted September 22, 2005 Author Share Posted September 22, 2005 Feel kinda like I opened up the proverbial can-o-worms. Read them all. Pioneer TAD seems to win the price contest although I've yet to price the Community or Radian products. Seems as though each of these look to have particular crossover frequencies for optimal performance of the entire speaker. As a matter of current usage which of these are tried and true and within Al K's steep crossover realm (keeping in mind the 2404's)I do appreciate everyones input. I gotta do this right the 1st time to work thru the Mrs. I think y'all understand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 22, 2005 Share Posted September 22, 2005 Are you prepared to remove the top hat of your Klipschorns and sit a big ugly beast of a horn on top of the bass bin? Might want to run that by the Mrs. too. If you're an excellent woodworker you can modify the top, but all the ones I have seen still look ugly as hell. The K-55 has better personality on the Trachorn -- I'm certainly enjoying my set up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djk Posted September 23, 2005 Share Posted September 23, 2005 "I've yet to price the Community " About $450 a pair from a distributor. http://www.northernsound.net/Sales/speakers/community/frame.html While the Community doesn't really measure much different than a K55V (it's within ±2dB of the K55V on a K400 in the 400hz~4Khz region) it sounds much cleaner. "The al. units are inexpensive and a good bang for the buck. Ide probably look at those first." The MSRP on the aluminum (2430) is only $246, but there have been a couple of pair of NOS Be (2434)units on eBay BIN for $500 a pair! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZAKO Posted September 24, 2005 Share Posted September 24, 2005 DJK...The JBL 2430 is a good buy. They have been doing frequency plots on this driver on Lansing heritage site. They also been talking about using different back cover sizes for this unit, and how it performs against the more expensive unit. (2435) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daddy Dee Posted September 24, 2005 Share Posted September 24, 2005 Last week Fini and I had a three hour plus listening session on Arkytype's Khorns. He has the full ALK treatment with ES crossovers and the trachorn and Beyma fitted motorboard. K-55 on the trachorn. I was amazed at the sound. All I have to say is that if you find something better than that... more power to you. The sound was smooth, full, and didn't break up at listening levels as loud as one wanted. Very good outcome, IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fini Posted September 24, 2005 Share Posted September 24, 2005 I agree with Dee. That was the best sound I'd heard all weekend. Lee's room treatments had something to do with it too, I'd suspect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daddy Dee Posted September 24, 2005 Share Posted September 24, 2005 The room treatments in Arkytype's man cave were cool. Also he has a Behringer EQ dialed in flat. Just outright food sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Mandaville Posted September 27, 2005 Share Posted September 27, 2005 Dean: "Are you prepared to remove the top hat of your Klipschorns and sit a big ugly beast of a horn on top of the bass bin?" Kevin (aka Cut-Throat) recently posted pictures of his K-horn bass bins with a large multi-cell horn from Altec plunked down on top. I thought it looked pretty cool, although I think you're right about the WAF. I've mentioned trying something like this to Marie, and she prefers the more 'finished' appearance of the stock top-hat. Shawn kindly sent a nice 511B Altec that really was good sounding on top of the La Sala, and I want to eventually get another. I will install them the way it's done in your picture above. Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 27, 2005 Share Posted September 27, 2005 I thought Kevin's Klipschorns looked cool too -- but you have the draw the line somewhere! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Mandaville Posted September 27, 2005 Share Posted September 27, 2005 Well, I think you are right about that. Any more than what was there might be a bit much, but I thought the result he had looked pretty sculptural. He says it sounds amazing, too. Dean: Can you point me out to a thread, if one exists, of your installation of the new ALK midrange horn? I'm interested in your impressions on that compared to the stock setup you had. It really looks nicely done and well-thought out. Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 27, 2005 Share Posted September 27, 2005 I'm so happy with the result Erik, it's wonderful. The sound is easy to describe -- simply imagine the sound of a Klipschorn with no midrange glare or harshness. It's open, clean, and effortless sounding. I did have to tweak my network a little, which amounts to nothing more than a kluge: a slightly modified Type AA tweeter circuit, the AK-3 woofer circuit, and an additional 1dB of attenuation for the squawker (attenuation setting for the AK-3 filter). The upper response of the Trachorn is so much cleaner than the K-401 that I was able to remove the inductor I was using to form the bandpass to roll off the squakwer's response. If you are still using the variable L-pads, you wouldn't have much trouble dialing it in. http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/1/575246/ShowPost.aspx#575246 This next thread might be of some interest as well: Trying to nail down my network after I changed out my K-77's for the Beyma CP-25's. The thread shows the results of dropping the crossover down to 300Hz. I've since reverted back to a 400Hz crossover. http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/595534/ShowPost.aspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Mandaville Posted September 28, 2005 Share Posted September 28, 2005 Dean: Very good info. there. The midrange horn is a part of the system I know many people have experimented with, and I could discern a difference for the better even with a single Altec on our borrowed La Scala center channel. So, this is something I also want to work with a bit. As accepting and patient as my wife has been with this audio craze of mine, she reminds me that it would be nice to also consider the overall look of the room in terms of not cluttering it up with a million wires and strange looking horns staring at us from all sides. As it is, I've honed things down with the big Lowther horns in my workroom, where I'm slowly and carefully trying to make a dedicated two-channel, analog only listening area. I don't want any changes I make to the Klipschorns to look haphazard and just plain lousy, and what Al has come up with, and what looks really good in your system, is something I think would work well here. There are also some other Altec installations I've seen that were integrated into the cabinet well. IOW, I thought Cut-Throats application to look pretty cool, but it might be on the extreme side for us. Marie also really respects PWK's work, and doesn't want to change that too much. She says the K-horns are the first speakers we've had that really sound like music -- the hair-trigger sensitivity and clean 'attack' -- are what we really thought was great about the Heresies we went to audition in the early 80s. I just couldn't afford them back then! Thanks for mentioning the small changes you made on your networks, too. The L-pads do make it easy to dial things in, but I might just resort to some sort of fixed attenuation once I know that that is. At least we have lots of options with this stuff! Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beaner-Bob Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 I'm using the TAD 2001s with ALK's steep-slope XOs and Tractrix horns. Best sounding K-horns on the planet! As a matter of current usage which of these are tried and true and within Al K's steep crossover realm (keeping in mind the 2404's) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oscarsear Posted October 28, 2005 Author Share Posted October 28, 2005 O.K.... Brought this back for an update........ I'm going to trial a cone loaded horn using the Fane Studio 8M driver. Wasn't going to try this route but I found a pair of NOS Fanes for $62.50 each and got mid-range horn kits for $25.00 each. So not a lot of investment for a good look see and listen. Attached is the Fane Studio 8M spec sheet. I've also located and purchased two JBL 2482 mid-range compression drivers. That's right the big heavy ones. They're like 25 lbs each. They were no deal but no more costly than many of the drivers we've discussed. They were designed to fit the frequency range without poor low end power. Aside from the elusive JBL 2480 (which I did find but at big $$$$) and the Ale ($$$ too) the 2482 seemed the ideal option. I would like some more feedback on the horn product to use with these JBLs. I know they won't fit onto Al K's modded tractix kit. I'm looking into constructing my own salad bowl wood mid-range tractix horns. If I do I expect to get a Boy Scout merit badge. So the pieces are starting to arrive which means I'll be sending more e-mails begging for more help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homemade Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 That 8m driver looks great for a midrange. It could even do duty as a center channel or front side channels in a home theatre setup! I thought my Audax PRM17's were the hot ticket but these look even better. Try them without a horn first and let us know how they sound compared to the K400 horn setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arash Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 (edited) IMO forget about some options: horns with high honkiness/coloration horns with exponential profile horns with narrow directiviry pattern you may want to use an uniform or constant directivity horn. take a look at Seos 22 (for 2" CDs) and Seos 24 (for 1.4" CDs) and add a good horn. CP-25 is the best IMO with that constant directivity horn he has. Khorns bassbin will perform well if placed good in corner and if you have good control over upper frequencies, you'll have a sweet spot as wide as your room! it' will be all sweet! you may also want to cinsider Volti Audio mid-horn which is a tractrix with wide radiation angel. I never heard Volti speakers but I'm sure they sound good as hell. Edited May 18, 2014 by Arash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodomo Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 I am using Volti Audio's tractix wooden horns with 2 inch BMS 4592ND-MID. The tophat stays intact if thats what you care about. It sounds very very good to me. I am using volti crossovers as well. They are nifty as you can adjust the midrange level and woofer cutoff with them according to your room.I just took off tweeters from the sides and put them on top of the speakers, as to my hearing it sounds better this way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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