I’m one month in on my KLH model 5’s. I often can’t wait to get home from work and get to listening and find I don’t have enough time with my hi-fi now. Not much more I can ask for than that.
I have two pairs of the original 5's. One is awaiting repairs. The other is in my bedroom system. My experience with audio goes back to home audio goes back to 1956, and includes virtually every AR and KLH model. All I can say is that I am contemplating replacing the Thiel Model CS-2.2's in my second system with the 5's (which are now in my second system). I cannot think of another 60's-70's-80's speaker I would consider capable of doing that, other than the KLH 5 or 12.
I'm with you on that 100%. I was really interested until I saw the made in China marking. Come on guys, a thousand bucks each and made in China?
When I picked up my restored KLH Model 5s from my speaker guru, I asked if he had seen the new ones. He hadn't but was curious so he brought up the product page, and in about five seconds he says, "Cheap f---ing Chinese garbage drivers in decent looking cabinets with pointless silver rings around the baffles to make them look like they're expensive and worth the grand price tag. Do 10k Wilsons put such eye candy on their speakers?" I tried to defend them by saying people seem to think they sound good, but he assured me they would not sound good. Kind of prejudiced but he does know his speakers.
So random guy who has never heard said speakers deems them crappy sounding based on his own biases. Next….
He's not any more random than some guy on a music forum. He has repaired thousands of speakers over the last twenty years and builds his own high-end speakers. He is not anti-Chinese since he has purchased many high quality cabinets from China. So when he told me the drivers are cheap and of poor quality, I passed that along for those potential buyers who may be hesitating because of the 2k price tag. I can't remember what he said (I will follow up), but he speculated that the drivers cost less than $200.
So if he’s a) never heard of the new Model 5’s and b) all of the components have been engineered and designed specifically by KLH for this speaker, what position is he in to give any kind of view on whether the drivers are ‘cheap f***ing Chinese garbage’? Think I’ll pay more attention to the views of people who’ve actually used and experienced these speakers than some bloke who’s looked at pictures on the internet for 5 seconds.
Well… they certainly don’t look, feel, or sound like “cheap ****ing chinese garbage” to me. But what the hell do I know, I only own and listen to them everyday. I’m not a “speaker guru” who can divine the sound quality of a product from an internet picture.
They would be $2000 each if made in USA! There is some quite expensive quality product coming out of China these days. Might be a good time to buy it before there is a trade war or worse.
For a $2K mass-market speaker, it is very likely, almost certain, the total cost of the drivers is <$200. But that would apply to almost any mass-market $2K/pair speakers. Wilson charges $30K for speakers employing off-the-shelf Scanspeak drivers. The Revelator midrange drivers they use cost $200 each. Total cost of a Wilson driver compliment is probably ~$1500 at most, or 5%. Had this friend of yours gone to business school he might understand that the end-user market ultimately determines the value of a product. If the audiophile market deems a speaker an uncommonly good value in its price bracket, one could argue that the speakers, and therefore, the drivers, are underpriced. It is likely that KLH’s parent company is producing these drivers in-house by the same maker of Klipsch drivers. If Wilson made all their drivers in-house, they’d have to charge either more or less per speaker, depending on the amortized costs of the required investment. It’s likely they’d eventually produce better drivers for less cost than buying decent off-shelf units. That’s what Wharfedale, Spendor and a few others do (though some brands don’t manage this feat successfully). In short, you shouldn’t assume anything about a driver’s quality based on nothing other than pics of the cones.
So this genius can tell from a photo and without hearing them. You get $200 drivers in some very pricey models made in Europe and N. America. Since retail is about 5 to 7 times production cost, $200 on just the drivers would seem pretty reasonable. I'm sure he would be astounded how little each driver costs in a $50K set of Wilsons relative to the selling price.
Maybe I am stating the obvious, but Kevin Deal is not a reviewer. As his name implies, he is a dealer
i would love to hear them. hopefully they will be at axpona this october.. it would also be interesting to see some frequency response plots. 10 in sealed woofer has a chance to dig deep.
What a touchy lot you guys are. All these defensive comments are hilarious considering that I've been reading similar things over the years about a lot of gear coming out of China. I'd be a rich person if I got a dime for every negative comment about some new turntable coming on the market that looks like a nice alternative to a Technics SL-1200, for example, and some "random" guy on the forum says, "same cheap Hanpin Technics knockoff," or the like. People then come to the turntable's defense on grounds that it "sound's good to [them]." And back and forth it goes. I appreciate such debate because it makes me aware of the tradeoffs if I were to buy such a table: it may sound good but the quality and therefore long-term durability may not be there. Of course, with this specific example there are also a lot of reports of loose bearings, warped platters, etc. As of now, the number of people who actually own these speakers are relatively few. In the case of the Model 5's, I reported what I heard from someone who knows more about speakers than anyone on this thread, someone who has restored Quad ESL-57's and Magnepan electrostatics and complicated speakers like Thiel and Vandersteen, whose electronics are buried inside cavernous voids. I was looking over his shoulder when he brought up the KLH product page. Those images say nothing about "made in China", and like I said, within five seconds he said "Cheap f---ing Chinese garbage drivers." Again, one man's opinion. But I also reported that he thought the silver rings were there strictly for eye-candy purposes, which is something he said Wilson does not do with their speakers. That was the substance of his critique: why dress up speakers with such bling and decent wood cabinets if the drivers themselves are cheap? I think that is a valid critique at this early stage of thread.
I mean we could just go in circles. But why not ask the engineers why they have the silver rings? It’s clearly not for “bling” since they are covered up by a grille which is part of the speakers aesthetic. And why compare modern KLH to Wilson, which are Uber brand speakers with stratospheric prices? Doesn’t make much sense to me no matter how many “cavernous voids” you’ve been in.
Did you look at the Kevin Deal video? Drivers don't look cheap and $200 dollars on drivers in that price of speaker are more than some manufacturers spend wherever they are made. The silver rings or any trim is pretty common whatever speaker you buy these days. These don't appear to be just there to cover the bolts. People like speakers to look good these days. The originals like most 70s speakers look a fairly untidy with grills removed. I don't remember many using speakers without grills so much in those days so maybe manufacturers expected them to be used with grills on? A few pence spent on a bit of silver paint does not make them bad. Also note there is a difference between Chinese brands and factories run by US and European brands in China (though some Chinese brands actually make great product). Chinese manufacture does not necessarily relate to shoddy design and quality. Even that TT that had some reported issues is more than decent if it was the PLX 1000. Had one and the arm bearings were fine.
Yeah, unfortunately, there are many ignorant folk out there, even some who can manage repair of vintage speakers.
I'm out of here. As Han Solo says after he blows up the com panel in Star Wars, "boring conversation anyway." It's more than a little ironic that people condemn one person's opinion of the drivers being cheap without direct autopsy while at the same time declaring their own opinion of their high quality sight unseen is. As I said in my original comment, I personally thought he was too dismissive but passed the judgment along anyway to counterbalance the gushers on Youtube, which many people here find a little too uncritical these days. And as I also stated upthread, he builds and sells his own speakers and has used Chinese parts in his own gear. But keep on maligning someone just because his opinion is at variance with your own ignorant opinion.
