As many of you know, I have been running an auction on ebay for a pair of "to-be-restored" Klipsch Klipschorn speakers for several weeks now, and I have received so many compliments on my work it's been overwhelming.   I want to thank everyone for that.  The virtual pat on the back keeps me going!

I'm a very detail oriented person, so this is a lengthy read, and I'll apologize ahead of time for it.  But the buyer of these Khorns is going to spend a lot of money with me, and I think it's important that you know a little bit about me, my capabilities, and exactly what you'll be getting for your money.  I won't spend a lot of time here describing what a Klipsch Klipschorn is, it's history, or what they sound like.  I assume that if you're reading this, you already know what these speakers are.   If you'd like to know more, please email me.

To send an email to Greg Roberts click here

My name is Greg Roberts and I live in Benton, Maine.  My wife Laurie (of 24 years) and I own a construction business building custom homes here in Maine.  In my spare time I enjoy doing many different things, like driving my 1993 Porsche 928GTS, woodworking, and playing around with all aspects of audio equipment, especially Klipsch speakers.

I recently and finally got my new shop on line and working.   When I'm working at my shop I feel like the luckiest man alive!   It's a great shop.  I mean a really great shop!  I'm very spoiled.  Here's a link to the shop webpage.
Monster Garage

So after a year and a half of not having a shop, I'm ready to get back into the swing of things.  Over the years, my audio hobby has been very expensive.   I really don't like using our household income for my hobby, so I've worked hard to make money by buying and selling gear, as well as the restoration of speakers, mostly Klipsch speakers.

I have found that I can buy audio equipment locally and sell it on ebay for quite a profit.  Yes, I'm an evil capitalist!  Mostly, I enjoy finding a beat up pair of Klipsch Heritage speakers and re-veneering and restoring them to be even better than new.  Here's a few photos of my work:

Custom Zebrawood Heresy restoration.

Custom Rosewood Khorns.

Custom Oak La Scalas.

Custom Zebrawood Cornwall II's.

Custom Quarter-sawn Sapele JBL L100's.

Without blowing my own horn too much, I have good references for my work from the people that I did these jobs for, I am very meticulous with details, I'm very honest and fair, and I'm a hard worker.  If you'd like to speak with any of my references, please email me.

To send an email to Greg Roberts click here

You'll find threads about some of my work at the Klipsch forums by searching my username "greg928gts", keyword "veneer".
The Klipsch forums are here, Klipsch

You might also like to see my 100% feedback rating and read some of the feedbacks on ebay here, Greg's ebay feedback

Klipsch is still building and selling new Heritage speakers,
like the famous Klipschorn


The Heresy III


The Cornwall III


And the La Scala II

The speakers that I pick up locally here in Maine are usually between 20 and 40 years old.   I work mostly with Klipschorns (Khorns) and La Scalas because I think they are the best sounding of the Heritage speakers, and they sell for more money, making my time spent restoring them more worthwhile.  Even though these are very old, they are still basically the same speakers as the new ones that Klipsch is selling today.  In fact, some would argue that with a few simple upgrades, including the crossover, one can obtain even better sound with the old speakers.  Since sound quality is a subjective evaluation, who's to argue?  One thing for sure, the price of a restored set of older Heritage speakers is far less than the new ones (new Khorns are about $6500).   If you enjoy looking at fine wood veneers like rosewood, zebrawood, sapele, ribbon stripe mahogany, etc..., there's just no comparison between a restored set and the new ones, which are very limited in their wood species offerings.

So let me get into the details of what I'm offering.  I have a pair of Khorns that are in need of cosmetic help!

These are in good solid condition overall.  I've noticed some water marking on the bottoms, meaning that they have seen a little bit of moisture somewhere along the way, but upon close inspection, the plywood has not delaminated at all, and everything seems o.k. to me.  The structure of the upper and lower cabinets is sound.  These are perfect candidates for a re-veneer job.

Everything works.  They have the preferred vintage round-magnet tweeters and the K-55V midrange.  They came with K-33V woofers, which I've never seen before.  I don't think these are original.   They look like K-43's in their construction, more of an industrial woofer with higher power capacity.  I am going to purchase new K-33 replacements.

They have the older style AA crossover networks which work fine but could probably benefit from an upgrade, which we'll talk about later.

The model as shown on the stickers is K-C-FR.  The "K" means Klipschorn, the "C" is the style of the cabinet (more on that later), and the "FR" means Fir Raw, which means they were made with Fir plywood with the top veneer layer being Fir and they were delivered to the customer without any finish on them.

The serial numbers are 5M680 and 5M681, consecutive.   The "M" in the serial numbers indicates that they were built in 1974.

When Klipsch delivered "Raw" speakers, they didn't finish the backs either.   When Klipsch finished speakers, they would paint the backs black, which really looked nice.  This is going to be done as part of this restoration.

The grill frames are in great shape, as is the grill cloth, although I think black grills will look the best with Santos Rosewood, so they will be changed to black

Here's some more pictures of these speakers in the "before" mode, including detailed shots of the bad spots.  Please do not be alarmed by the pictures of the chipped veneer and bad corners, this is all easily repairable with high quality fillers.   One of the most important jobs I do when restoring these speakers is to make sure the cabinets are completely sound before installing the veneer.  I spend hours carefully removing chips and any loose wood and filling those voids back in to make sure that the cabinets are as sound as possible before putting the veneer on.  The buyer of these speakers is getting a very detailed and complete restoration.  This is not a cheap, quickie job that is being done.

So, here's what I'll be doing to restore these speakers.

• Completely break down the speakers, take out all components and dismantle the various parts to prepare for the restoration.

• Check all structural elements of the individual cabinet pieces and repair where necessary.

• Check the tweeters and midrange drivers for proper operation and physical condition.

• Thoroughly clean and detail those components.

• Purchase two new replacement K33 woofers.

• Replace any stripped screws.

• Paint the midrange horns if necessary.

• Sand all wood parts in preparation for new veneer.  This includes checking for voids and filling, removing any loose veneer and filling, and basically prepping the wood parts so that all edges are re-squared and solid and ready for the new veneer.

• Make risers and new plywood pieces to turn these into "B" style cabinets (more on this below).

• Fix any hardware issues, like the connections of the top horn cabinets to the bass bins, or replace any missing feet on the bottoms of the bass bins, and replace the missing logo.

• Install new veneer, sand, detail.

• Install trim boards of solid Rosewood on the front bottoms of the bass bins, as Klipsch did on their finished "B" cabinets.

• Detail the backs of the speakers and install a primer and satin black paint to the backs of the bass bins and the insides of the upper horn cabinets.

• Apply several coats of Minwax Wipe-on Polyurethane.

• Install black grills.

• Re-install the tweeters, midrange horns and drivers, and the woofers.

• Clean all connection points and install new wiring for all drivers.

• Install new "A-type" crossovers built by Bob Crites.

• Do a final Fit and Finish of the assembled speakers.

• Test the speakers to make sure they are functioning correctly.

In addition to all the work listed above, I will be documenting the process from start to finish in a Photo-essay that will be added to this webpage as work progresses.

I will provide extra veneer in case repairs are needed down the road.

The speakers right now are the "C" style cabinets, which means the top horn cabinet sits directly on the bass bins. Here's a picture:

The "B" style cabinet has an extra riser, which lifts the top horn cabinet up off the bass bin by about one inch.  This is the preferred cabinet style made by Klipsch.

Here's a picture of the "B" style, which is what I propose we change these to:

See how the top horn section is lifted up with an extra spacer?

The speakers will be $3995.00 completely finished just like brand new.

Other costs you will need to consider, involve getting the speakers from me to you.  I can deliver these and help you set them up if you're within driving distance of me, we can meet in the middle somewhere, or we can have them shipped.

When I deliver speakers, I charge 40 cents per mile round trip, which covers my gas, vehicle usage, and my time.  So a 400 mile round trip (about the distance from my shop to Boston and back) would cost $160.  I'm willing to travel farther than that if need be, because the packing charge and shipping are a lot higher than my cost to deliver until the distance gets into the thousands of miles.  If you were to meet me half way, we can actually cover quite a lot of the Eastern half of the U.S.

My zip code is 04901.

If we have them shipped, there will be a charge of $250 for crating them up for the voyage, plus the cost of getting them to the trucking company terminal, plus the actual cost of shipping.  I've shipped large speakers by truck freight before, through Forward Air.   They seem to be very reasonably priced, although they are limited by terminal to terminal shipping at select cities, so unless you live in or near one of those cities, you'll have to travel there to pick them up.  I ship out of the Boston terminal, which is the closest to me, so I charge $160 to bring them there.

Here are the cities that Forward Air will ship to from the Boston terminal.   I've put some rough prices for shipping beside some of these cities.   Using those examples you can figure out pretty closely what the charges will be to other cities.  The shipping charges are figured from the Forward Air website.  I cannot take responsibility at this time for inaccurate information provided on that website, or for other charges that may apply but were not disclosed on the website.  When the time comes to figure the shipping exactly, I'll get an exact quote over the phone.  But this will give you an idea of what the costs for shipping will probably be.   Information entered into the website calculator are 600 lbs., crate by shipper (meaning me), crate size of 70" long, 40" wide, and 60" tall.  These measurements are probably greater than the actual crate will be, so the shipping may be a little less.