Back to the future

Sonus Faber Cremona had to go in favour of those "little" beaties


after changing the tweeter to JBL 2404H they sound great !!!



After a second thought it's more like "Forward to the past" :MILD:

 

They look great. Try to find some 2405 alnico's. Better still!

 

I'm intrigued, as I've got a pair of La Scalas. What does the horizontal piece of pale wood do? Are the things on top supertweeters? What sort of difference did they make?

More details, sir! (I think I may have contracted a severe case upgrade-itis).

 

the wood is to brace the bass bin.

after i replaced xover caps with a fresh ones mid bass resonanses have reduced a lot.

moving to a-type xover improved every aspect of the sound.

the tweeter is instead of original (the original is disconnected).
finally it allows Lascalas to go all the way up to the 20 KHz:MILD:

 

What a mess!

 

What mess? Looks great, real HiFi. More importantly how does it sound Croc?

 

My wife would kill me and the dogs would probably eat them.
Wouldn't mind giving them a go though

 

Richard, that is still better than getting the silent treatment. IME.

 

Croc,

Looking good. I've got 'speaker envy. Again.

Regards,

Stuart.

 

A case for divorce, and that does not sound good
Hope you enjoy them though

 

woah, proper speakers. Didn't expect that!

my advice (unasked for, but here it is anyway!)

1) get them off the floor, ears midway between the mid-horn and bass driver.

2) looks like some toe in would use, check it out with cara http://www.cara.de/ there is a free trial version.

3) have you replaced the original caps? they are almost certainly farked.

4) done anything to damp the horn yet?

 

oh, and are you going to stain that piece of pine? it does stand out a bit...

 

Sir Galahad,
you're not far from the truth........

i've got those about 2 years ago.
i've heard that they're for sale and called a friend that had a klipschorn then.
he told "just go and take them".

so i went to hear them and they were kinda "nice".
the seller asked a bit too much IMO so i asked my wife to come and to make a scene about how big they are and she doesn't want them - all this in order to make a seller to drop a price.

biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake............
after she saw them he took me aside ant told quitely "you're not buying them - and i mean it!!!".
after some arguments the seller aproached and asked me to give up the deal since a piece in family is more important..........

it seems that i really wanted them because somehow i talked her in..........
one of the conditions was that they never will see our living room - which means theye were stored in some back room for a quite some time..........

about 10 months ago we moved to the new appartment so i have a dedicated listening room now - so they have a romm to play.........

Bottleneck ,
yes, the caps were replaced by new oil caps.
they do have a little toe in.

why do you say to get them up? right now the tweeter is a bit above ear height.............

horn dumping - i'm not convinced that this really neccessary at "normal" listening levels.

after some time i found myself not listening to Cremonas anymore - so i decided to release them

now i've got a nice SE pentode amp - after some time whith it i've got this SET bug.

the sound is very good - huge, deep, very dynamic (this is vere high efficiency sepakers win big time), detailed ect ect.
the most important things that the music sounds very real and i find myself listen to the discs from the begining to the end whithout a nervosa to hit NEXT TRACK button.......

for me this is says it all.

these days when i hear a modern "audiophile" speakers i see how different they are - very impressive but they IMO just don;t play music.......

 

You should not need to damp a horn speaker ....the sound wave is propogated parallel to the panels, rather than at 90 degrees and bouncing off as in a normal box type.

You may get a bit of defraction of the brace if your not careful.....but I bet they sound effortless !

 

not the bass, the midband horn flare - which appears to be made of metal.

Yes, it makes a substantial, easily noticeable 'why didn't I do this before?' kind of difference.

Its easy, cheap, quick.

Just get some dynamat extreme from a car body shop, unscrew the metal horn, and plaster it out of sight round the back of the midrange metal horn.

The whole things will only cost you about £30-£40.

This isn't some hog-wash audiophile tweakery nonsense difference - I'm not the kind of guy to give credence to such things.

I'd put the difference roughly on par with whipping out the 30 year old caps and replacing them. If you did that yourself, you will know where I am coming from.

Yeah, ear height between the midrange horn and bass. You will lose the lumpy thumpy aspect of the bass, and things will get clean.

Easy to try with some large piles of books or stools or something. You have to listen and live with the difference for a while.

At first you will say ' where has my bass gone' ? - then you will come to think of what you have lost as a reflection from the floor, and when you go back it will sound wrong - like a car stereo with the bass whacked up to 10.


Try it!

I'm not one for bull**** tweaks that don't work - and I have tried similar things with a not altogether different speaker.

 

Got you !

I'd agree with all that.............

 

Croc,
As Bottleneck has already observed, your horns look like older models which were made of metal. Last I looked into this issue on the Klipsch forum the consensus (IIRC) was that some damping of the metal horns was A Good Thing. Not tried on my Heresy's as they are more modern units with plastic/composite horns. Search the Klipsch forum for opinion and look for an easily reversibly method you can try risk free as it were.

Hope you get much enjoyment from these 'speakers. I almost pulled the trigger on a pair of Klipschorns a couple of weeks ago, but sanity prevailed as purchase would have killed my holiday budget. Also missed out on a nice pair of Cornwalls last week as well. I am, however, contemplating adding one of those Velodyne DD subs later in the year…

Regards,

Stuart.