thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Share Posted April 5, 2008 Hi, Plenty of pics below if you don't want to read the preamble [] Just thought I would share a new project I took on basically out of just lust and accidentally falling back into the "Hi power, Hi end" Itch glitch.I have Modified and owned Cornwalls, K-horns, RF3's, Several klipsch Bookshelfs, and RF7's.I have in the past primarily run Cary tube amps, and heard a few others on the Family of klipsch speakers. Going up the chain I have found, Dynamicap, Sonic caps, and of course Mundorfs move up far more but at a very fast increasing price per level as well. Hovland caps are horrifying on Klipsch speakers by the way, big mistake I took on a pair of cornwalls a few years back.I have found that Goertz alpha core inductors are very nice used here, and of course are still pretty pricey, and slightly harder to work with physically, but the Klipsch is worth it if you do outboard crossovers, however these inductors and the caps above will just not fit in any original cabinet design anyway, without taking up critical air volume or being placed way to close to woofers pumping out a ton of vibration. Mills resistors and Eagles are both great.. Probably Mills gets the nod but at 3 times the cost. However now I have found my Favorite caps, sound, and price are the Jantzen Superior caps used in this design.. But very very pricey still and yes the crossovers you see here will in general cost far more than the speakers themselves in the end! A close second in caps are the Clarity cap S.A I have liked in the past, I needed one for this application, and was a good price and the right value for this .... Of course applications will vary so some speakers may respond better to each cap depending on your needs. Anyway bringing me to my point, I use to sell klipsch a few years back during my early years in college, I started right around the Reference series speakers coming out, Caught the Tail end of the KLF Legend series. To say the least KLF cabinets were in fact the WORSE executed and assembled Cabinets in the history of this company, I know this as we would literally get in new boxes with the KLF 10's , 20's , and the 30's which would just fall apart sometimes when you take them out of the box. Notorius for the baffles just coming un-glued. However the good thing was they used a really good design, and had excellent CNC work, just very bad Q.C. issues for final assembly and adheasive issues. The reference series corrected most of the cabinet issues, and were a step up in finish period, and hardware used, Drivers were very different but not superior to the KLF series. I always loved the KLF 10's from the direct A-B testing on our in Store 50 pair digital speaker selector switch, I could just hit a button and go between all models including the new Reference series and always found the KLF 20's a bit middle harsh, 30's very top heavy, and the 10's were just dead on smooth and slightly relaxed, but yes somewhat recessed in the midrange, also always the best bass. To me this worked especially well for the ROCK and roll reputation the KLF series got, because they would work better with the mid fi amps, not like the 20's and 30's needing a much more finess filled amp, and they could go louder without piercing the ears and losing bass quality like its bigger siblings. So I ran across a pair of KLF 10's finally 10 years later, baffles had fallen off the cabinets, they were all ding'ed up, but the drivers were MINT condition, and even with the detached baffles still sounded excellent, probably could have made them rattle, but I did not care. I re-finished the cabinets of course with some wood fillers, and dissasembling them each panel in order to use superior adheasive and bracing to the original. You can see in the pics the raw state of this.. New Solid oak dowels would now attach the Front baffle tieing it to the back internally totally eliminating all the resonance especially from upper midrange, and the strength is of course 10 times what it was. Also leaving the original stock shelf braces proved to use up only a Half of Percent ( .5%) more cabinet volume than the originals.. going from what I measured at 3.25 cubic ft, to 3.22 cubic ft.. I also damped all internal panels with a thin but heavy dynamat to knock out all reflections.. Believe it or not, the Pressed MDF in these are actually very hard grade compared to others I have worked with, seems klipsch had the right materials and design, but really bad adheasive and assembly lines. Then I put on some custom solid wood footers to hold the metal thread inserts and spike hardware on the bottom of cabinet. To add in the end a final touch of rock hard structure the cabinets then got 3 coats of Duratex which is a very strong and solid roll on paint over the cheap original Klipsch black veneer. They look great see pics! Final touches, yes full on outboard crossovers with 13 gauge silver coated copper cables all the way, custom jumpers using neutrik locking connections, far better than having to bi wire and deal with all the extra spade connections etc.. and binding posts mounting. Modified the original Klipsch binding plate to bolt in a sealed neutrik 1000 watt power terminal feeding all drivers with 4 pole design separately. About 3 days work from a very dedicated, educated, and able soul :-) It was a lot of fun, the second best to these so far has been the RF3's which were about the same treatment for a friend of mine years ago, The K-horns might remain the absolute ultimate, but at a cost and not that much better.. Forte's, cornwalls, Chorus very good, but seem to not put out the full fledged bass of these suckers with excellent balance, and just the slimmer more modern cabinets really fit the bill better, have less issues in room placement, and are less amplifier picky than the heritage series. My RF7's were just Nose bleed and ear bleed! So these KLF 10's and the modded RF3's I believe easily from my experiments can compete on a level of 8,000 to 15,000 without a sweat at very low cost level! Thanks for checking this out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 Pic.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 Crossover complete in enclosure hooked to amp on one side, just a 10" jumper hooked up, than a 5 foot neutrik custom bi wire cable out the back of the crossover feeding the speaker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 more... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 New internals.. bracing etc... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 and so on.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 $$$ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 You got your choice of using the spikes, or un-screwing them and you have wood footers still on the unit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 *** Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 ^^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 Getting bored yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 5, 2008 Author Share Posted April 5, 2008 Last but not least, oh and any pics that look like they have hairline scratches or spots on the grills etc.. are just from the fibers on the cleaning cloth, and or the Flash of the camera.. These are pretty much 9 out of 10 with no marks on them now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbsl Posted April 5, 2008 Share Posted April 5, 2008 Very nice work! I enjoyed my KLF 20s when I had them. Never had a chance to hear the 10s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundbound Posted April 6, 2008 Share Posted April 6, 2008 Way nice! Thanks for sharing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SET12 Posted April 6, 2008 Share Posted April 6, 2008 Great Work! As I to can attest to modifying and getting fantastic results! I find modifying greatly rewarding in sound and personal satisfaction! And I concur the performance can be worth many times what you spend! SET12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 6, 2008 Author Share Posted April 6, 2008 Thanks guys! Yeah you can do some real damage to the hi end market [H] if you have the patience and some skill Funny thing is always these things ending up costing me like 100 bucks more than it should with that last trip to the hardware store! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 6, 2008 Author Share Posted April 6, 2008 Yeah the 30's were some monsters, probably would have benefitted greatly from some extra damping and bracing for sure. I found the KLF 10's to be the perfect sized cabinet, cabinet is reasonably short and stout, but big internal volume still.. Anyway its all about the sound, so make them work is what I say now, most klipsch products have the right idea, just gotta do some of your own magic to make them really all they can be, plus piece of mind back then being they were having some definite Q.C. issues, always though Klipsch has been priced right, Heritage series are a bit arguable on new prices of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vman71 Posted April 7, 2008 Share Posted April 7, 2008 Fantastic work! I'm sure those are some killer sounding KLF-10's! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thirdeye Posted April 7, 2008 Author Share Posted April 7, 2008 Thanks vman [6] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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