moray james Posted December 28, 2012 Share Posted December 28, 2012 I expect that you may be hearing the horns vibrating/ It is simple to remove the horns and you can have some solid struts of hardwood moulding cut to fit the sides I would used three on the top and bottom and one strut on the sides then use dynamat on the rest of the horn. You can glue the struts onto the horn with plastic epoxy. you may have to do a little file work to make the struts sit nicely on the horn For that matter you could have internal brace parts cut up for you at the Home Depot and install then one at a time. Yes that's a little slow but you get the job done and you only have to d it once. I would also recommend that you use dynamat to damp you K63KN drivers as well all over. I also add a layer of dynamat on the pole piece and then a two layers of F-11 felt. As far as the Harbeth HL5 go yes thay ahve a nice laid back sound but I am absolutely not a believer in the BBC floppy box design concept. That said the HL5 are ok but they only make limited bass and benefit by extending the vent to about 6 inches IIRC. biamping is about making your amp happier and it works and it sounds better. I have a pair of tiny Yulong (2x40 watts) stereo amps runnng my modified H3 and they sound excellent. These belong to a friend (who owns the Harbeth's) who is not using them so I asked to borrow them to set them up so he could hear them (he is coming over tonight with his Jungson integrated amp). There is no contest. I guess that if you wanted to lower the level of the horn as was discussed earlier you could horizontally biampand use the level control to lower the horn a little on the CF3 bu as I mentioned before I don't think that is the problem at all. I think that Roy nailed this speaker the first time so lok to other issues of resonance in the cabinet and the thin walled horn. Best regards Moray James. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gagelle Posted December 29, 2012 Share Posted December 29, 2012 Well, my son went nuts last night and moved the CF-3s out of his room replaced them with some Forte1s that I was using as rear speakers in my 5.1 media system. He wants to see if the Fortes lack that piercing sound. I'm going to hook up the CF3 to another receiver and try some of the damping solutions that you suggested, Morey. On the Harbeth, I was referring to the 7ES-3. (I should have clarified.) But this isn't the place to discuss other speaker brands, so I'll just save my opinion for another forum. I recently went totally digital and am playing everything from my MacBook Pro. I can only say that I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gagelle Posted December 29, 2012 Share Posted December 29, 2012 Update: Forte 1s sound fantastic with no piercing high end. These are stock. They will soon be given the full Crites treatment and are easy to upgrade through the opening for the passive woofer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted December 30, 2012 Share Posted December 30, 2012 post as you have results. Looking forward to hearing back. Best regards Moray James. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted December 30, 2012 Share Posted December 30, 2012 you have some issue find it and fix it the CF3 eats a Forte so there has to be a problem. Good luck and best regards Moray James. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ka7niq Posted December 30, 2012 Author Share Posted December 30, 2012 Well, my son went nuts last night and moved the CF-3s out of his room replaced them with some Forte1s that I was using as rear speakers in my 5.1 media system. He wants to see if the Fortes lack that piercing sound. I'm going to hook up the CF3 to another receiver and try some of the damping solutions that you suggested, Morey. On the Harbeth, I was referring to the 7ES-3. (I should have clarified.) But this isn't the place to discuss other speaker brands, so I'll just save my opinion for another forum. I recently went totally digital and am playing everything from my MacBook Pro. I can only say that I am thoroughly enjoying myself. I am getting a Bit confused in this thread. ARE you biamping the CF 3's, or not ? The other guy in this thread NinaBeemer took my advice about the CF 3's and biamped them. He seems like a very happy camper. I have owned many pairs and version of CF 3 and CF 4. The speakers are capable of a warm rich musical sound w/o harshness, IF you biamp them. This is the sound the other guy is experiencing, since he implemented my suggestions for them. I have also owned Original Fortes. I enjoyed them too. They have more LOW Bass then the CF 3's, and will shake a room. I found them in my room to be brighter then the CF 3's. Not hard and bright, just more "vivid". I can not live with Stock CF 3's, unless they are biamped. The original Forte's really want, and like, a Tube amplifier. I used a Jolida Integrated Tube Amp, and a Dared pair of monoblocks, with the little Dared tube pre amp on them, and a Tube DAC. I also re did the capacitors in the crossovers. They really liked The Blue Clarity Caps I tried the best out of several different capacitors. Tell me, have you biamped the CF 3's yet, and if not, why ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gagelle Posted December 30, 2012 Share Posted December 30, 2012 No, I haven't biamped because I don't have any amps with volume controls. My son is using a restored Sansui 9090DB with the Fortes. This combination sounds terrific. I just gave him an Onkyo CD player and connected a used Cambridge Audio DAC. The DAC sounded mediocre until I bought a Pangea power supply to replace the original one. What a difference! It sounds like a another DAC. I never thought a better power supply could have such a radical affect on a DAC's sound quality. He's now playing WAV files directly from his computer and they sound fantastic. My son likes the Fortes so much that he wants to eventually restore them with Crites upgrades. (When he gets the money.) To tell you the truth, my CF3s used to sound great when I owned a house and they were in a large room. The trouble started when I had to move to an apartment and put them in my son's small bedroom. As my son complained numerous times, "I can't take it, I'm sitting three feet from those horns." While biamping may have solved the problem, I'm probably moving into even smaller quarters soon. Right now, I'm in downsizing mode and will unfortunarely have to sell off many of my large speakers and other equipment that I collected over the years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted December 30, 2012 Share Posted December 30, 2012 having level control on each channel is a plus but not a necessit. Why don't you add some diffraction to the horn? A 40 mm diametre ball inserted into the throat of the horn so you have about 1/2" cleareance on either side (horizontal)will smooth ot the response and make very even the disperssion. If your CF3 sound irritatin then they may have capacitor issues. Worst case you might have diaphragm issues but that is not very likely. I just don't buy into the "these are too big" argument. The foot print of a CF3 and a Forte are almost identical in size with the Forte presenting then wider frontal surface. If you have room for one then you have room for the other. Best regards Moray James. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted December 30, 2012 Share Posted December 30, 2012 Re the Cf3 biamping yes but right now I have set up a pair of biamped H3 and am working on my KLF20, I only have so much room and gear. I understand that biamping helps that's not the issue I simply believe that the horns have physical resonance issues which if not dealt with will not go away no matter what else you do. I have not swapped out any of my CF3 crossover parts yet but I am organizing to do that soon as I want to get the two ways up and running. I have to admit to preferring a two way over a three in smaller quarters. You are right the Forte extend 5 - 6 Hz lower than the CF3 but you can play with the vent length to help some in that respect. I have owned both Forte and Forte ll as well as two sets of KLF20 and the CF3 a pair of late Heresy and the Heresy3 most of which have been heavily modified. The plan now is to use the KLF20 woofers with a new horn along with the CF3 crossovers to build a new set of two ways. Best regards Moray James. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talmadge Posted January 6, 2013 Share Posted January 6, 2013 Recently bought a pair of CF 3's. They are version 3. I can't stress enough to follow the advice of ka7niq and biamp them with level controls. It makes a huge difference! I thought I had made a mistake with my purchase until I biamped and turned down the tweeter level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ka7niq Posted January 6, 2013 Author Share Posted January 6, 2013 IF you ever come across a pair of CF 4's, any BUT the series 3's, at a sensible price, Grab them! The CF 4 series 1 is the one of choice, of course, but a CF 4 series 2 can quite easily made a Series 1, by simply buying the longer ports from Klipsch. But in the series 3, Klipsch changed the woofers! And, according to Roy Delgado, NOT for the better either! Being a long time Klipsch owner, of many different models of Klipsch, I did all the "required mods" to all the CF 3's and CF 4;s I have owned. You know what they say "Hang around a Barbershop long enough, and you will get a haircut"! This forum is full of tweakers, hang around here long enough, you will wind up tweaking! I tried Rope Caulk on the horns, and even went into the compression driver to experiment with felt pads under the dome. Hell, I even applied damping to the woofers cast frames! However, once I was able to lower the level of the horns, I found all that chit to be totally not needed, and in the case of the rope caulk on the horns, it actually HURT the sound! I did use thin gage solid core wire for the Horns/Amp connection, and good old 12 gage Home Depot wire on the woofers. I was planning to update the crossover capacitors, and use Solen or Blue Clarity Caps in the crossover one day, but to be honest, they sounded so good I just enjoyed them, once they were biamped. I also planned to try some silver litz wire on the horn to amp connection, but the solid core wire I used sounded good, and felt no pressing need to do so. Oh, I forgot to add, I also listened to them non biamped, and swapped each of the compression drivers to the other speaker. Then, I listened some more, being VERY careful to watch the volume. This is an easy to do tweak I almost "automatically" do to many speakers I own, soon after I buy them. It costs nothing, and great improvements can often be had, just by doing this. These drivers VARY. You may have a compression driver that is .5 db hot. If this driver is left in a speaker that also has a woofer .5 db or more Hot, the result is often a hard bright sound. If anyone wants to do this, be sure and listen to the speakers w/o the horns level lowered, so you can clearly hear the differences in each compression driver. OH, and before I forget, be careful! I was told years ago Klipsch was nearly OUT of CF 3 woofers, so if you Pop one, you are basically screwed! Same with the compression drivers, they are not cheap! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 Damping works, if you achieve poor result damping it does not mean that damping does not work it only means you did not damp properly or effectively. This is aside from bi amping and level adjustments. If you have a speaker cabinet for example and you install a lengthwise brace of suitable size to divide the panel into two equal sections then the new resonant frequency of the panel is now raised by one octave, not possibly not maybe but raised by an octave. Adding stiffening raises the resonant frequency of the panel being stiffened up to a higher frequency and a higher frequency resonance means a lower Q resonance and that means the resonance can be more easily and effectively damped. It does not matter if we are discussing a loudspeaker cabinet panel or the thin wall of a horn lens same deal. The horn in a CF3 or CF4 is a large thin walled horn lens. If you stiffen it and damp it then you will realize the benefits of cleaner sound and lower distortion no matter how you choose to drive your speaker. I hope that cleaner sound is of interest and it can be achieved with simple modification techniques and easy to obtain materials. Best regards Moray James. PS: there are many other areas which can be damped mechanically and acoustically to avhieve improvements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jarrod2750 Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Moray, I have cf3's ver 1. Do you have any recommendations on how I add the bracing and dampening materials. Do I remove the woofer or do you have another suggestion? Would anyone have pictures of these mods? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 You can take a look at two cabinets I worked on in the link attached. one is a very fast rough job on a set of KLF20 the other a very nice no rush job on a set of Quartet loudspeakers. You can also see the high density fiberglass damping used in the Quartets. All the work will have to be done through the woofer openings unless you want to remove a baffle. In a Cf3 I would suggest at least four solid side to side braces and at least three front to back braces and a brace on the top of the cabinet. I would also install a 3/4" x 2.5" horizontal brace above and below each driver and each horn to make rigid the front baffle. Best regards Moray James. http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=372783&highlight=KLF20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jarrod2750 Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 Thank you. This is very helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moray james Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 you are most welcome. I hope that this stimulate some interest in modifying this speaker and provides some ideas. Please keep us posted here as to what course of action that you take and post some pictures if you go forward. You would be surprised at the impact that your project can have.Best regards Moray James. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kapsnb01 Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 After talking to Klipsch to confirm that my newly acquired Epic CF3s were indeed version 2s, they sent me the following. Not sure if this will help anyone out in the future, but thought I'd at least post it for reference. As for me, time to take a look at the wiring...I think mine are definitely borderline 2 or 3...but at the center of the horn, it's gray...so, here's hoping, but the color of the wires will be the tell-tale sign... EPIC Series Production versions – Rev.1, Rev.2, Rev.3 Rev.1 – Start of Production in Spring of 1994 These models had 5" long port tubes Networks used OFC (monster cable looking) clear jacket wiring. Horns in these models were gray in color. Rev.2 – Fall of 1994 These models had shorter 2.5" long port tubes (to raise the box tuning) Networks had a component / value change to correct for the new ports. (The network wire was still the OFC used in Rev.1.) Rev.3 – Summer of 1995 to end of production in 1996 These models had new lighter cone woofers (new vendor) (these cones aren’t nearly as stiff as the originals and can be deformed much easier by pressing on them) Networks were changed to compensate for the new woofers Change in network wiring to colored 16ga. like what is used in Legend KLF networks New horn material that was 20% glass and was painted black. Serial number decoding for EPIC Series models (or any Klipsch model made from 1990-1997(?)) Production Years Description Example 1990-1997(?) DOY Y2Y1 # # # # (135791234) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ka7niq Posted February 14, 2013 Author Share Posted February 14, 2013 Good Post Brian! It is hard to believe this thread is still going, since I started it some years ago! The info you posted might keep someone from buying a pair of the dreaded version 3 speakers ? Ray Delgado of Klipsch kind of warned me that the Version 3 of the CF 4 and CF 3 had different woofers in them from another vendor, and were not as good. One must remember that the twin woofers in both the CF 3 and CF 4 also reproduce a good amount of the midrange! I do have to wonder though, about the new horn material in the Version 3 ? I wounder IF it is better then the Gray Horns in the version one > IF it is, then version one owners could simply buy the newer horns from Klipch, and possibly improve their speakers ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kapsnb01 Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 Yeah, it's not very specific on the dates, but it'll at least give you pause if, like mine, the serial number puts you into the summer of '95. Your point on the horn is interesting. I did ask whether they had any tubes for the Epics around. The comment back was that Klipsch had "moved on" from the Epics and really had no parts for those speakers. I thought that somewhat interesting... I know you don't have yours any more, but do you remember if the outer part of your horn was a gray color, or was it just around the center? My horns are almost a steel gray inside the center part of the horn, but a charcoal/black color on the outside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ka7niq Posted February 14, 2013 Author Share Posted February 14, 2013 Yeah, it's not very specific on the dates, but it'll at least give you pause if, like mine, the serial number puts you into the summer of '95. Your point on the horn is interesting. I did ask whether they had any tubes for the Epics around. The comment back was that Klipsch had "moved on" from the Epics and really had no parts for those speakers. I thought that somewhat interesting... I know you don't have yours any more, but do you remember if the outer part of your horn was a gray color, or was it just around the center? My horns are almost a steel gray inside the center part of the horn, but a charcoal/black color on the outside. I don't remember what color my Horns were. I sold all my CF 3 and CF 4 series speakers awhile ago. Honestly, I wish I had the CF 4 back! When biamped, the CF 4 series 1 or even the series 2 (it can have the longer ports put in it) CF 4's are one of my all time favorite speakers. You know how us audiophiles are, we sell perfectly good speakers, in hopes of buying a better sound. This does not always work out. LOL, there are a pair of the little CF 2's for sale on Ocala Florida Craigslist (I am down in Tampa) for only 250,00. They are Black too! I never owned CF 2's, I wonder how they sound ? I think they have a different compression driver in them ? I JUST missed a pair of CF 4's here llocally, but I always keep my eyes out for them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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