Attention Horn Owners

@toddalin 

Best they have ever heard?

They haven’t heard mine, 😂!

Then again, I’d never make such a claim about a particular component, only about a system.  Each component functions within the context of the system within which it resides. Weakest link rules. 

See the about page theaudioatticvinylsundays.com

I like the Klipsch heritage speakers even though they don't come close to some custom systems using truly great vintage compression drivers.  Drivers of this quality haven't been made since the 1960's.  Klipsch makes do with what one can find of modern drivers at modest prices.  Likewise Volti, and I like what Volti does even more with modern drivers. 

But, for my taste, a truly great horn has to use some of the old compression drivers and horns.  This weekend, I heard a just finished custom speaker that utilizes a Western Electric 713A driver and a Japanese horn from the 1950-60 era.  The woofers and tweeter are modern, the crossover is new, but filled with vintage parts.  The internal wiring is, I believe 1940-50 Western Electric wire.  The crossover point is lower than the original Western Electric specification, but, the builder said that because this speaker is not being used as the sole speaker in a theater (original use of the driver), it can be pushed down a little.  The sound was fantastic--a surprising amount of detail and texture to instrumental sounds came through without the sound being thin and harsh like some other "detailed" speaker.  It had all of the other characteristics of a good horn, except for the enormous sense of "scale" that one only gets with truly enormous speakers (these were quite compact by horn speaker standards); still they are better than most in this respect as well.  

Makes me wonder if replacing some of the internal driver wire in the Cornwall's with some vintage "Western Electric" wire might be interesting. 

The only way to know is to do a trial.  Any change in sound could be for better or worse, depending on one's taste and the set of other components.  If you are really able to get vintage Western Electric are, you are looking for old, multi-strand wire with cloth insulation.  I know a builder who, when he finds the stuff he likes, will pay well north of $10k for a 6" spool of the stuff.  This builder generally builds with Western Electric or Audio Note speaker wire, and both options are very expensive.  

@sns wrote:

With the modded Khorns hard pinned info really extends into room, but at the same time I have a wonderfully deep center sound stage which can also extend out into room. I’ve had narrow baffle box loudspeakers in the past which made speaker disappear, with the large Khorns this really not possible. One of the great benefits of my mods is that I’ve been able to achieve much better time alignment of drivers. With the free standing mid horn and tweeter I can set tweeter baffle back from front face of speaker, result is high freq much more in balance with mids, when Khorns were stock sound stage was much more in your face and hot. I can also toe in or out both mid driver and tweeter without disturbing the corner placement/seal which is required for the folded horn to perform best.

What you describe confirms what I’ve expected, that the performance of the Khorns can be seriously "elevated" upgrading the midrange horn/driver and tweeter ditto - incl. of course the crossover. I previously owned a pair of Simon Mears Audio Uccello’s, which are an homage to the Klipsch Belle speakers built completely from ground up with CNC-machined stacked plywood Tractrix horns, B&C midrange (DCM50) and tweeter (DE10) drivers, the cast frame 15" Crites woofer (1526C) and (modified) ALK crossovers. Lovely speakers and beautiful craftsmanship. They produced some of the best midrange I’ve ever heard and that tuneful front horn-loaded bass that’s a treat, but eventually the truncated bass horn resulted in upper bass colorations (and the lack of proper physical height of the speakers made for a fairly low acoustic center), which - initially just as an experiment - made me seek another, actively configured main speaker option. However, modified Khorns would be another great path to pursue, though I’d go with active config. that also offers delay settings and minute frequency response corrections/notches and other PEQ’s.

No doubt horn material matters greatly, far more natural sounding vs. plastic or the metal mid my Khorns originally had. Shape of horn also matters in that it directs the sound, tractrix far superior to exponential. 

Solid wood is one of the best choices of material for horns, for sure. Apart from the horn profile, as mentioned earlier, its size (in relation to the profile) is also an important sonic determinant and factor and what it means for proper power response and energy coherency, not least in the vital crossover region centered in the lower to central mids. 

Finally, in order to achieve a more refined or natural sound quality from horns a quality crossover is required, using quality caps, inductors, resistors if used and wire can go a long way in achieving this. 

In addition to ways to tweak the overall nature or gestalt of the sound with the filter components and cables used and their own, specific sonic particularities. 

As for amps, pre’s, I think SET is great match for most high efficiency horns although push pulls can be very nice as well. SET may be more immediate/up front but the lovely 300B with no negative feedback and it’s even order harmonic distortion is sublime.

The 300B’s were a great combo with the passively configured Uccello’s mentioned above. With my current, actively config. high eff. speaker setup I prefer topologically similar (though power differentiated) class A/B SS amplification by MC² Audio from the top all the way down into the subs.