3 Pairs of La Scalas

3 Pairs of Klipsch La Scalas

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I put another coat of paint inside the bass bins where the woofers go.

The Crites woofers are just a little too big to fit inside the La Scala bass bins, so they need to be trimmed a little. I wrapped each in a plastic bag and exposed the area to be cut.

I used a grinder to grind about an 1/8" of material off the flange of each side of the woofers.

The woofers are installed and wired into new binding posts. The covers used for the woofer access panels are 1/2" thick Lexan. I milled them to fit the routed-out openings and drilled them for the bolts that hold them on. The bolts are copper colored alan-head that screw into T-nuts imbedded in the wood blocks that I installed around the woofer access opening.

My past experience with these woofers is that they need to be broken in. So they got a 12 hour workout trying to keep up with the MCM's!

Little brothers usually look up to their big brothers.

The tweeters are front mounted without using the Z-brackets. I rebuilt them with new diaphragms and assembled them right onto the motorboards.

Woofer wire.

K-55V midrange drivers.

I'm using danish oil finish. The first coat was applied lightly and wiped dry. Before the second coat was applied, I used wood filler to fill in the numerous small cracks in the veneer. I mixed different colors and used them to match into the color of the grain as best I could. Then I applied more oil and used a very fine sanding pad to dissolve the wood filler, mixed it into the oil and wet sanded the finish. This filled in any little cracks and gave the veneer a nice hand rubbed shine after wiping it with a dry cloth.

I've got about 10 hours in on the finish and I'm about half done.

The ALK Universal crossover networks are just beautiful! Every time I order something from ALK the items are nicer than I expect. These are definately worth an extra $500. I can't wait to hear how they sound.

Making grills for the bass bins.

Sorry, not the greatest pictures, my listening room is very dark right now. I have these set up in a small room that I use for listening at my shop.

They are singing now, and wow, what a sound. La Scalas are the first Klipsch speakers I ever listened to and ever owned when I was just 14 years old, but I've never heard any sound this good. I'm using a tube-fired CD player, and a pair of Dynaco Mark III's (40 wpc) and in this small room, they are making very low bass. The mids are a little too laid back for me, but so smooth. The new owner can adjust the mids on the crossovers.

One more wipe down with oil and a final cleaning and they'll be ready for packing.

I've discovered something surprising with these speakers. When I started this project a few years ago, and made the decision to split the tops off the bass bins, I thought I might like to try turning the bass bins into the corners of a room to see if they would corner load, sort of like a Klipschorn. Well I tried it, and I am very impressed with the results.

Here they are in my little listening room of my shop with the bass bins turned into the corners.

The spacing to the wall is critical. I tried them farther out and closer in and this is where they sound the best. Note the odd angle. This is where I got the best center imaging. The mid horns are actually turned out so they are not pointed towards me, and in my sitting position, the saxaphone player is right in front of me, slightly higher than the midrange horn!

Please note how the grain of the wood flows down from the front of the top horn section to the front (back!) of the bass bins. Just to show that I really did think of turning the bass bins around when I was veneering them. I cannot believe how good these speakers sound in this room. With the bass bins turned into the corners, I'm actually getting more low bass AND more mid-bass too! What I thought would happen is that the mids and tweets would be too loud compared to the bass, and I also thought the upper bass would suffer. But that's not the case at all! Very surprising! The mid-bass frequencies are making it around into the mix with ease, perhaps even better than when the bass bins are pointed right straight out. Instead of the mid horns being too loud, the mix is actually balanced more to the bass, which is to my liking anyway. Couple that with the fine sound quality of the ALK crossovers with the mids set back in the mix a little, and this is a powerful and smooth sounding system. I'm getting this HUGE low bass, which frankly, La Scalas have no business making. This is obviously the room making this very low bass.

One interesting thing is that the midrange horns seem even clearer and more detailed, I think maybe because they are not competing with the midrange coming out of the bass bins. So here we have it. I've stumbled on a combination of things that are working so well together, that this is truly one of the best sounding systems I've ever heard, and I don't say things like that lightly.

I moved the speakers to my living room at my house, which is a much larger room really made for Khorns, and they didn't sound the same at all. They sounded very good, but they didn't load up the room with deep bass like back in the smaller room of my shop. What I hit on at the shop with these modified La Scalas, the Dynaco tube amps, the tube CD source, the room, was really something special.