32 Year-Old Klipsch KG4 speakers found for $9.99!

Gentle reader,

I've been into quality-sounding stereo components since 1976. I've researched many and owned a number, OK hundreds, of components of all stripes. But I've never owned Klipsch speakers. Oh, I've come across the more mainstream, budget versions of Klipsch from time to time, but nothing I wanted to spend my money on.

Since I've retired, I have become sort of a house-husband. My wife, eight and a half years younger than I still works and I've always enjoyed being home. With three dogs that hate to be crated, I don't get out much. So, Friday nite, I said, "We're going out tomorrow, somewhere, you and me." She was happy to comply.

After decades of prowling thrift stores, yard sales and flea markets, I chose to leave that life. I decided 2,099 LP records was enough. Plus, there is so little quality audio or camera stuff being donated anymore. Seems those that had all the vintage stuff have all died and their leavings have been picked clean. Plus, as retirement neared, I knew we needed to spend less and stay in that mode until we could see if we could make it financially.

Saturday morning rolled around, dogs unhappily went into their crates and off we went. First stop: Goodwill. Again, just as I suspected. Nothing good audio or camera-wise at all.  Just DVD players and such. Although they did have a pristine HP 23" widescreen monitor with HDMI, not DVI input for $25, so I bought that. Against my better judgement, I even looked through the less than 100 LPs they had and all the DVDs and Blu Rays and even CDs. Came away with nothing.

Next stop was Savers. I usually don't find anything of interest there. Nonetheless, I made a beeline to the electronics departments. I spied two large floor-standing speakers with oak veneer. At first, I was puzzled. The weird thing was, they seemed to have were 12" woofers. Then I realized they were placed facing each other. I separated them and saw: Klipsch on the grill. Once I figured out that the grills were held on with magnets and pried them off, I saw they had two 6" poly-cone woofers and oddly, a horn tweeter. Thus, I deduced what was on the back were 12" passive radiators.

They were marked $24.99. I had my "test kit" which comprises a good working cassette tape, a four foot pair of RCA cables and two ten foot long pairs of speaker wires. The ONE receiver they had, a low budget Radio Shack unit had no output. But they had an all-in-one stereo with matching speakers. I tried it, found it worked and tried each speaker with FM hiss. All drivers worked. I was getting excited. 

I muscled each into a shopping cart which entailed one being atop the cart and covering the handle bar. I normalized the compact stereo and began to look elsewhere in the store. Having decided to look at their music I found six nice Classical LPs. One is the SUPER RARE Turnabout VOX Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid and Rodeo played by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The cover is worn, but the record is mint! Also, an Italian LP of Nino Rota "musiche da film" and a mint 10" EP record of Glenn Miller! In case you want to look that one up, it is RCA LPT-3067. Mono of course. Looks to have been play maybe twice. But I digress.

Back to the Klipsch. Turns out all furniture was 50% off, plus if you bought $100, you got 20% off! My wife did the math and came up with $9.99 for those speakers!

My 2002 Orion Audio Blue Book lists the Klipsch KG-4 as having been made from 1985 to 1992. The retailed for $672 a pair. Which is $1,560 in today's money.

I've been experimenting with using my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 camera with it's fantastic Leica lens and built-in flash, instead of my older Nikon DSLR with add-on multiple-function flash and Nikon 18-55mm lens for shots like all these you see today. 

As you can see, I like the grills off my speakers. The grandkids know not to come in this room without me, so no speakers get poked. Here is a closer view of the components on the front.

Above is the back of one showing the passive radiator which acts like an active bass reflex port. When the woofer(s) move backwards, that rear wave of music pushes the radiator outward and that wave is supposed to be audible and reinforce the music coming out of the front.

The only flaw I saw on either speaker was a cut in the rubber surround of one radiator. Years ago, I had come up with the idea of preserving the foam in foam woofer surrounds by carefully coating each side of it with RTV silicone rubber glue. This seals the foam from whatever it is that makes it deteriorate and keeps it flexible. So, RTV to the rescue. I glued the cut closed and I coated the entire rubber outer surfaces of both radiators. That's why it looks a little weird. Since they are rubber, there was no need to coat the inside surface of the surrounds.

Rubberize your woofers!

These speakers came with bases that turn out to be only screwed on. Like this one. the black portion is the top of the bases. As you can see, the plastic brackets for this one were no longer glued to the base.

The speakers look better without their bases. One base was missing a big piece of oak veneer, real oak, no vinyl veneer on these speakers.  So I removed both bases. They look better without. Plus those now loose plastic brackets gave me and idea*

Each speaker has these labels attached with the date. These are from the first year of production but already they had made six revisions in the design. 

Proper three-way banana terminals on these speakers.

Here is the other base with the plastic brackets still glued on.

After 32 years, these cabinets and drivers were dirty. We had this marvelous product, called Cabinet Magic, designed to clean dirty wooden kitchen cabinets. It did a bang up job on these. Although there was no smell of smoke, these must have been owned by a smoker. I went through almost a whole roll of paper towels cleaning the gunk of the oak. Kept coming away brown. Yuck! They look fantastic now!

*Since these sit so low, I decided to screw two of the four brackets to the front of each, where they normally screw on. 

This perfectly tilts them upward aiming the tweeters at my ears. I also toed them in for the same reason.

I read several reviews on the Klipsch KG4 models and each and everyone agrees that they sound fantastic. I am playing five of the six Focal Speakers test CDs through them right now. I too agree, they sound fantastic! These are keepers. 

I found a period review of these speakers that warmed my heart. Klipsch kg4 Speaker System Review price specs - Hi-Fi Classic

Just for fun, I added this "before" photo, also taken with my Lumix DMC-LX3 camera. Very sharp photos. I love all three of my Lumix cameras. Here they are:

I carry the red one in my pocket as it is the most compact. The LX3 is in the middle. All three lenses start at 24mm wide angle 35mm equivalent. If you have never heard of Leica, will they are world renowned German cameras coveted world wide.

Thanks for looking,

Scott