Coral/Klipsch Heresy Horn Loudspeakers
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery(LOTS TO READ HERE!)
These are the result of what I think has been a nice project toward having a nice pair of horn loudspeakers without investing lots of $. I’ve long liked the “bigness” of a good-sized pair of horn loudspeakers, but I’ve never cared for the edginess and excessive resonances I’ve heard in so many pairs, even those of pricey modern designs. To me, these now easily outdistance most of the horn speakers I’ve heard.
SOME INFO
--I bought these beauties (Coral BX-53) with the Heresy midrange and crossover already installed.
--I kept the Coral horn tweeter and the Coral cone tweeter. (To my ears the horn tweeter is very good, especially noticeable after I made the crossover mods that I describe below.)
--I replaced the original 12” Coral woofers with a pair of vintage Wharfdale woofers that have paper cones, cloth surrounds, and cast frames.
--The front grills look great, in excellent shape and nicely retro.
OTHER MODS/TWEAKS TO THESE SPEAKERS:
1. Damped the midrange and the horn tweeter (Notice the black rope caulking, which is sold by PartsExpress.)
2. Stiffened the cabinet with glued & screwed 1x2s.
3. Damped the box with vinyl sheets (PartsExpress 268-035). Then with wedge foam (I don’t remember the manufacturer, but it’s good material that I’ve for room acoustical treatments)
4. Variously used polyester batting and Acousta-Stuff (PartsExpress 260-317).
The cabinet stiffening and addition of the vinyl sheeting makes a big improvement in reducing low frequency resonance. The damping of the midrange and cone tweeter bodies got rid of the edginess that had been present. The overall sound is warm enough, but with good low and high frequency content. The midrange is still the strong point, but it doesn’t dominate the way it had. Much better balance overall.
5. CROSSOVER:
(a) The crossover already had a Solen crossover in series with the tweeter pair, so I left kept that. (The tweeters are connected in parallel with each other.)
(b) I also kept the autoformer.
(c) I replaced the iron-core coil on the Woofer with a heavier gauge air-core inductor, which improved the bass response.
(d) I replaced oil-filled cap, which goes between the + speaker terminal and the autoformer, with a combination of a good polypropylene in parallel with a good, small value oil-filled cap. This makes a huge difference in the sound of the mids and highs… unmuddies them and makes the highs more noticeable. (Of course, this is even more noticeable when the tweeter and midrange bodies are damped.)
6. Currently I have more polyester batting and Acousta-stuff in the cabinet that appears in the photos, which helps to tighten the bass. To soften the bass a bit, you could just remove some of the material.
7. Rewired with Teflon-insulated wire
8. Replaced old binding posts with much nicer ones.
DRIVING THESE SPEAKERS
I’ve driven these speakers with a tweaked Jolida 1301 integrated, which is rated at 30 wpc, but in my opinion is more of a nice 15 wpc amp. The 1301 isn’t enough amp to drive these speakers—bass is lacking. But my 15 wpc EL-84 tube amp, built by a friend of mine, does a great job…. Big sound, sweet mids and highs, and plenty of bass—pretty much everything I was looking for from these speakers.
I’m not sure about the efficiency of these speakers… maybe 100 dB, but as I’ve found with other high-efficiency speakers, they are best driven with a substantial amp even if it has a low power rating.
WHY I’M SELLING THESE
I’ve decided to sell these speakers, since they’re too big for my small listening room and not especially welcome in the living room since we redecorated, and I don’t otherwise have a big enough room in which to put them, unless I use the basement--in which case the speakers would share space with the ping pong table, and, well, it’s quite a pain to move these speakers out of the way. (Get the idea?) Anyway, I’d like to find a a good home for these.
These are big speakers. 19” D, 31” H 24.5”W, too be to ship practically, so they’re PICKUP ONLY. I’m in Allentown, PA, which is within a couple hours of many places, including NYC, NJ, Eastern PA, Philadelphia, Northern MD and DE. You'd probably need an SUV/Van/Hatchback or other good-sized car to haul these, though I actually fit them into my '96 Saab 900S hatchback.
$350.
