One Simple Change to the Stereo System Makes the Klipsch Speakers Sing!

September 13, 2018

#274

Gentle reader,

As you probably know I belong to a number of FaceBook groups dedicated to vintage and classic stereo equipment. There are MANY folks with a world of knowledge and experience in this fascinating hobby. One of them suggested something I should do with my 1985 Klipsch KG4 speakers.*

I first introduced you to them last year when I found them at a thrift store called SAVERS: 32 Year-Old Klipsch KG4 speakers found for $9.99! 

I raised them up a bit and secured them which helped a lot in treble response: Earthquake Proof your speakers! Amazing "Reusable Adhesive" will hold my Klipsch KG4 speakers firm! 

I chose to show this photo for two reasons. Firstly is to show my initial answer to raising the tweeters, you can read about it in the first article. (Yes, firstly is a real word.) Secondly is so that you can clearly see the convoluted foam I placed in the corners to prevent bass notes from being too powerful due to the reinforcement placing speakers on the floor and in corners. They are backed by corrugated carton material which stiffens them. So they are convoluted and corrugated. Both fun words to say. That their use makes any changes to the sound is frankly not known. It seemed like a good idea to try them out.

This is the room as of a few minutes ago. Aside from the component changes and smaller Baby Advent II speakers atop the Klipsch, the "bass traps" are gone.

* Bill G. of one the FaceBook groups told me: "You don’t hear it (bass) behind them. It has to react with the wall behind it, and you hear it in the room. Klipsch Speakers with rear passives are very sensitive to placement. I learned this the hard way with my Forte IIs. My ex used to have KG4 so I’ve lived with them as well." And, "Klipsch rears need to react and usually need 12-24” from wall or corner and toe in to optimize."

Klipsch KG4s have 12 inch passive radiators, of which Bill spoke, on the back which help reinforce the bass without using a port or vent to release the bass music from rearward movement of the woofers. 

Once I removed the foam "traps", I measured the left speaker's distances from the corner and side walls. I then adjusted the right speaker's placeent to match.

I chose the greatest source for testing bass response ever produced: Recording of October 1979: The Telarc 1812 Overture | Stereophile.com 

I was a longtime subscriber to Stereophile magazine as well as The Absolute Sound and before their death or transformation to another name or format, Stereo Review and Audio. But, as even the least expensive components the first two magazines reviewed and had advertisements for, were still beyond my humble means, I let the subscriptions finally lapse.

I bought the LP in 1979. It came with a microscopic photograph of the grooves containing the cannon shots. They widely swing back and forth. All but one of the times I played the record, the last cannon shot always skipped. 

Then one day, I saw what I thought was a CD version of it on eBay. I bought it and when it arrived, I saw it was an SACD. My first encounter with one, and it started me on another journey..... 

Anyway, I put the SACD in my OPPO universal player and turned the bass down on the Dynaco PAT-6. I began rearranging CDs to make room for a new one, and sensing the cannons about to appear, I sat down. WOW! The shots equaled what my Cerwin-Vega LS-12s reproduced. Those have 12 inch woofers with two enormous reflex ports on the back of them and like the KG4s are very efficient. That means it takes little amplifier power to play them loudly.

Now, I know the corners now helped the bass, but how much? The KG4s sit 22 inches in front of them. I suspect it was the removal of the foam that had softened and dispersed the bass radiating from the rear of the speakers. But, I am no audio expert, I just love music and want to hear it played as realistically as my budget will allow.

Not knowing what to do with the foam, I placed them on the side walls adjacent to the speaker's front corners. Will that do any good or ill? LEFT is above and RIGHT is below.

Below is a photo of the grille off of one of the KG4s so that you can see the twin 8 inch woofers. 

The cones are made from some sort of poly-carbonate. Plus, they have rubber surrounds not foam which will eventually rot. I read a contemporary review (when these were new to the market) about the KG4s and the reviewer was shocked when he pried (they have strong magnets holding them on) the grille off one to see a horn tweeter. "So much for the 'horn' sound." he wrote. Horn drivers have been poo-pooed by some as a cheap way to reproduce treble. Klipsch proved them wrong.







While I have you, I bought a pair of Radio Shacks last "Gold Series" audio interconnect cables via eBay merely out of curiosity. I had written about their original top-of-the-line models of the same name which can be seen here:
Audio Interconnect Cables, Does Size Really Matter?
I have not tried them yet, I do not have the ability to do an A/B test anyway. But I wanted to show you comparison photos of new verses old:

Not quite as thick and no ferules either.

While the insulators on the new models at first appear to be metal that has been crimped on the cables, it is an illusion. Simple plastic.

Above is the sheet that explains it all and below, the cables themselves are imprinted with some of the same information.

Here, you can clearly see that they are molded plastic sleeves. As I said, I have not tried them yet. They may be fine. 

Sadly, Radio Shack has gone the way of so many "brick and mortar" electronics chains. I used to love to visit them and was always excited when their new catalog arrived in the mail. 

So, there you have it, I'm even more convinced that after 40+ years of pursuit of "The Absolute Sound" in my stereo that I have most probably achieved the best music reproduction. My wife is no doubt laughing right now as she read that.

Again, thank you so much for reading my humble words and viewing my photographs. It is a labor of joy putting these articles together. But it is your reading them and your kind words that make it all worthwhile.

Scott
September 13, 2018
#274

Repurposing an Old Typrewriter Table.

September 11, 2017

#273

Gentle reader,

Before I start on today's subject, let us all pause to remember the 21st Century's "Day which will live in infamy", September 11, 2001.

My wife's work location is closing down and they are shedding all kinds of things. She brought home two old typewriter tables. Lest you not know to which I refer, here is a photo of the other one she brought home. It sits in her home office. It is smaller in every way to the one I have repurposed. In fact, so narrow, at 14 inches, as to make us wonder whose legs could fit in there to type.

This one is years, perhaps decades, newer than the one I am presenting to you. 

Now, some of you may wonder what is a: Typewriter, and why is there a table for it?

Since typewriters used to be something an office worker might only use occasionally, it made no sense to have one plunked on their desk where it would have to be moved to do other work. Plus the larger typewriters were very heavy.

Thus, someone invented the typewriter table. They put casters on them for easy sharing of a typewriter between workers. They also thought to add two folding shelves to hold the work one was typing from. Quite brilliant, really.

Prior to meeting and marrying Nancy, I was perfectly happy with the Olivetti portable typewriter that I had been using for years. Here is a photo of one just like it, which I borrowed from the Internet:

It has no correction capabilities, if one typed the wrong letter, one pulled out the paper, threw it away and started over again. This was before Wite-out. Also WAY before personal computers and word processing and all the modern conveniences we take for granted now. 

A quick DuckDuckGo search also yielded number of photos of typewriters on tables. This one I also borrowed. It is from a time between the two we have. Note the metal shields around the casters (wheels). It is fancier than either of ours, having a drawer.

Side Note: Nancy had an old 286 PC when we got married. An older friend would give her his old one when he upgraded. Thus she received a Gateway 2000 386 PC soon after we wed. It had a 40 megabyte (yes: megabyte) hard drive, 4 megs of ram and ran at a blistering 16 kilobytes per second! Heady times those were. At the time, we had also never heard of the Internet. Oh, sure, AOL was in business, sending out CD-Rom discs with free hours, but we were not sure what "on-line" meant.

So, with the groundwork laid, we used the one in her office for the grandkids to eat from when we watched them. We found the surfaces too small for that task. So, looking at the decrepit condition of the all-gray one, I decided it was a candidate for overhaul and improvement. Here is what the top of it looked like:

 It is plywood with the top layer being engineered wood. The small holes you see in the bigger piece are from me drilling the mounting holes all the way through so that I could mark the locations on the new top by tapping a small screwdriver through each hole with a light hammer.

As you can see, not a surface anyone would want to use. It must have sat in a storage room for many years.

And here it is after I completed the work. 

As you can see, I have been remodeling the house since I retired. One thing we had done is the carpeting ripped out and new flooring laid in the common areas on the main floor. A first for me. Every place I have lived as an adult had wall-to-wall carpeting. We chose Acacia wood, as we have two Acacia trees which I planted in our backyard. They are such pretty trees with fern-like leaves and feathery blossoms.

Pretty, yes? That's a shot I made, one of many. I have another shot on my National Geographic page:
Scott Robb Photographer Profile -- National Geographic Your Shot

But, I digress. Back to the remodeling. I came home one day to find Nancy had de-carpeted the stairs from the foyer to both floors. Surprised, to say the least, she said we should replace the pine treads with oak ones. No going back now, and it is something we'd decided upon.

Here is the result of a LOT of work and time. That piece of carpet runner at the bottom (going down) is all that is left of the runner we found at a Habitat Restore. Talk about perfect!
 
I tried to get a stain that was close to the look of the new floors, choosing red mahogany. I finished the treads in two coats of Spar Urethane, which is used on wooden sailboats.
We also hand stripped the multiple layers of paint from the wrought-iron railing and repainted it in a gloss black.

There's a reason I tell you this, we wanted this table to match all that and match another table which now stands in our foyer.

My wife finds the most interesting things, she found this old wrought-iron table frame, top long gone. We decided to redo it to match the stairs. She bought a stair tread a little thinner than the ones we used for the stairs themselves, so it would not overpower the delicate look of the metal framework.

Although it doesn't look it in this photo, it matches the stairs exactly and the frame matches the railing.

We chose a piece of wood for this table that measures 36 inches long and twenty inches deep. This piece of wood is made up of many pieces which are glued together. It also resembles flooring which was another thing about it that we liked about it.

The photo below shows a lever pointing down. This indicates that the feet are lowered by raising the casters inside the metal cups. And the table cannot be moved. At least not easily.

The legs were painted gray at the factory, all except the mechanism which raises and lowers the castors. They are unpainted steel, seen below.

Lever up (above) means wheels are down and the table can be easily rolled around.

Here are a couple of closer looks at this neat mechanism. Movable, above and locked, below.

Unseen under decades of dirt and skin oil: PRESS was revealed when I cleaned the lever.

A look inside one of the cups. You can see the original color of the framework. Rubber rings are on the bottom which keeps the table where you want it very nicely.

Now, a few final words on the process. Since the top is pine and the other woods used are oak, I wasn't sure how well it would match. It does, very well. 

If you ever want to stain some wood, do NOT buy the stain-and-finish-in-one products. While they work, the results never look good. At least when I used the stuff, they did not.

Buy stain, which is oil-based, and if water containing objects may be placed upon your project, Spar Urethane. It too is oil based. Apply the stain and wipe off the excess and let dry exactly as the directions indicate. That is vital. Apply a coat of urethane, let dry at least 24 hours and use fine sandpaper or 0000 steel wool to smooth any imperfections. Completely remove all dust and apply a second coat. Tack cloth or other very fine lint-free cloth is good for that. I used the small paint rollers which come in 3 inch and 6 inch widths, (not for the stain) and are used in painting trim, cabinet doors and other wood that will be glossy, to apply the urethane. There have a fine nap and the urethane smooths out very nicely as a result. No need to clean the roller, simply wrap a rag around it and pull it off, placing it in the trash.

I'm very pleased with how it looks. A real depth to it. Nancy is not home yet, I can't wait to see her response to another project being completed. With spar urethane, we don't have to worry about spilled juice or milk, simply wipe it up.

With it having casters, we can easily move it out of the way when not in use. Plenty of room for the little ones to eat and not be crowded when doing so.

Thanks once again for taking the time to read my words and view my photos. The pageviews have exceeded 185,000 the last time I checked. It humbles me that so many people like what I write.

Scott
September 11, 2018
#273