Vintage Heresy speakers, a bargain?*

Not taking sides here but S&G has a point. I know he has been a proponent of a particular crossover brand/engineer. Michael if you have experience in this subject please share. As you correctly state it’s no contest. Just to be clear I think the stock factory crossover is just fine. PWK was a genius in my opinion.

 

I think all of this is quite true, since I own a pair of Vintage Wharfedale W70's, which do have some substantial bass.

I have driven them to really loud SPL's with newly acquired, early 60's, Scott 222C integrated amplifier, whose 7189 output tubes are in the EL84 family, but are able to take a higher plate current than the regular EL84's.

Now, I acquired them while searching out their larger W90's (which I also acquired, along with a pair of the W60's).

I have acquired them with the specific intent of putting together a forth system in my listening room, one with all vintage components, for a true vintage sound, with a Dual 1219 and a Shure V15 Type IV as an exclusive analog source, no digital allowed (for now, anyway).

But, I had a seven year old over, that I was watching at the time and her mother stopped by, while we were playing with the Scott and the W70's, they were dancing around and playing.

Here they are shortly after their arrival. I didn't have any more floor space, so I stacked them on top of each other. This was back in the fall of 2016 so I had extra water on hand for the hurricane.



I was expecting to use them with music from the early to mid 60's like pop music, Christmas music, Jazz, acoustic and vocal's, that sort of thing.

When I get something new, I like to try out different music with them, other what what I necessarily listen to.

So, while my guests were here, I was playing all sorts of different kinks of music on Pandora.

What I really was not expecting, was listening to a "New Age Beat's" station. This had all kinds of sounds and plenty of synth instrumental's, some with pretty powerful bass! By that, I mean pounding bass!

Now, the Altec A7's are horn loaded, so naturally they are efficient, but I was not expecting much from these older cabinets, without any horns, just direct radiators. But, as you mention, they really rock when it comes to bass and since they have a conventional paper cone tweeter, they are not harsh either. The little 22-Watt Scott drove them to some substantial SPL's and I never thought to turn the 222C's volume all the way up.

You don't come by these everyday, now do you come by the Heresy's everyday either and to find any vintage speaker in pristine condition, is always something of a celebration, in itself. To get a deal like the OP did on them, is reason enough to jump all over them.

True, they are a bit shy in the bass department, have a tendency to be a bit on the bright side. But they also have a real nice midrange, do not take up that much space, so they are better suited for smaller rooms, but they are very efficient and very lifelike and match well with tubes.

I did finally figure out something to do with the W70's. The coffee service fell apart, so I kept the top and made a new coffee service.

 

Probably the coffee service with the highest audio potential in the entire world.

 

$350 is a fair price for buyer and seller, not great for either.

Run them as is with your Sansui 8080, mess around with speaker placement height and distance from you and between speakers.
After you've lived with them for who knows how long you may wish to consider service, then upgrades. New capacitors in a set of '84 speakers will be noticeable.

Regarding your Scott gear, if you are unaware of their condition and aren't familiar with steps to getting them going, please refer to a qualified tech. (don't turn them on)

 

I need to know where you are finding Cornwalls for $800. All I see is $1,500 - $2000

 

Yeah, I've already a plan to send off the Scott equipment for service/evaluation.

 

Apples, oranges and about 10 other variables to consider like room size and related equipment
Can't really recommend Cornwalls without first knowing where the system will be
Regardless of money

 

Depends on where you live
Last pair I bought 2 years ago were Walnut verticals and I paid $700
Guy was asking a Grand and I offered him the 700
I listened to them for a month, didn't like them, re-capped them, still didn't like them and sold them for the $700 I paid plus what I had spent on the caps
You can get them for between 500 and 700, in good to great shape if you are patient
People don't like shipping speakers that big and not a ginormous market in Asia like there is for heritage model JBL and Altec
Problem too is that original owners or their children getting rid of them are rarely into vintage speakers so they often times don't even wind up in local classifieds
It's also good to hit flea markets and container/storage locker/estate sales
I never pay retail or get into bidding wars unless it is something really extraordinary

 

Got my Cornwall IIs for $500. Got my Chorus IIs for $600. But that was almost 15 years ago. Happy hunting!

 

It doesn't matter who owned them; it's not just a function of how one utilizes them. Suspensions dry out, lose their elasticity, even rot. Environmental conditions are always a factor (hot, cold, relative humidity, etc). I'll give you that I am not familiar with the specific engineering of the Klipsch speakers being discussed, but to assume that the physical status of any loudspeaker remains unchanged (hence "perfect") over a period of 30-something years is pretty naive.

 

You got totally hosed and taken for a ride, but we'll be glad to tell you it's a steal so you can feel good, because that's what friend are for
Nah, just kidding, that seems like at least a very reasonable price. Lovely woodworking. Now ya gotta think about improving them heh heh.

A number of folks recommend crossovers by Bob Crites-or there was ALK mentioned in the thread. Why? I can say as a loudspeaker engineer who measured a number of horns that their impedance can be a mess, and factory crossovers *most likely* skimpy compared to what could be custom built due to cost and technology. Since the time of those original designs there have been huge strides in crossover simulation...like what ALK is using...making it possible to simply due a better job. The ultimate would be for someone to measure your exact units. Too expensive I think to ship yours to Maryland, but maybe someone local could do that for you and send the files.
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DIY Speakers and Subs - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews

Also consider adding internal bracing, stuffing, anti-vibration coating of the cabinet insides and the outside of the horn walls. I did this for one project and it made a tremendous difference, albeit on cheaper speakers than those Heresys. Then again, it's not too expensive to make these mods so why not?

Oh, I also second the Upscale/Prima Luna idea. Lovely amps. If I get near Denver I'll hit you up for a listening session

 

Bob Crites is a very knowledgeable source for products for legacy Klipsch, maybe the best overall source that there is.

As far as crossover's go, he has excellent crossover's, but... they are replacements for the Klipsch factory crossover's and not an upgrade.

ALK just builds crossover's for legacy Klipsch products only. Al Klappenberger, the owner is a retired microwave engineer. The reasons that is is in business, is because he makes crossover's that are upgrades to the stock Klipsch crossovers.

He does not make products for Altec Lansing, because they are no longer in business and most of their products were made for the pro-sound market.

But, because he make a -cycle crossover for legacy Klipsch speakers, I was able to use them for my A7's.

Think of all the subjects that are picked apart in this forum, cables of all kinds, stylus types, equipment stands, different tubes, the list goes on...

IMO, crossover's are the single most overlooked part of the entire audio chain. They also happen to be one of the most important parts of the entire audio chain. There is no such thing as the best speakers, without the best crossover's.

There are exceptions to this, such as single driver speakers and speaker's like Zu's, which run 10" full range driver's, with only a single capacitor on the tweeter to keep the bass frequencies out of the tweeter.

Why do they design their products this way? Because crossover's can be parasite's on a speaker and thus, are parasite's on the entire system.

You go through all this trouble, starting way upstream, and consider all of the expensive audio gear in your system. and just before the final step, the speaker driver(s), you come slam up against the crossover network. That is the one final most important component that make the connection between everything that you have upstream and the speaker.

Now tell me how important the crossover is?

Everybody here pays so much attention to just about anything that you can think of and just about everybody here simply ignores the crossover's.

One reason for this, is that there is only so much that people can do with their crossover's, which is to recap them. Most people can not replace them, as there are no simple replacements available for them.

If you do own Klipsch legacy speakers you can replace and upgrade your crossover's, same as I did with my Altec's.

A pair of commercial crossover's for the Altec's at 500 or 800 cycles are not inexpensive. We are talking about high quality commercial gear here.

While all of that is all well and good, I did not care for Altec crossover's in my first pair of A7's that I owned, back when I was seventeen.

The horns on a commercial two way speaker are more sensitive than the bass speaker, so there is an adjustment on the Altec crossover's which pad down the HF horn, so that it's output, better matches the output of the bass cabinet.

What it actually does is mess up the sound and make the HF sound muddy instead of clear. I would always set my crossover's at zero attenuation for that very reason. Today, commercial sound systems use electronic crossover's. I decided not to do that, because it was not the sound that I wanted to have in the home environment.

Ntotrar commented earlier;

And that is a true statement, "I think that the factory crossover is just fine", it is, but, upgraded crossover's are better.

If you have the right speakers and the right upgraded crossover's they can take your entire system to the next level. Not a teeny tiny little step but a huge gigantic leap.

Many of our member's have legacy Klipsch products like the K-Horn's and Cornwall's and they have ALK crossover's in their system's.

Al does not knock PWK, what he does is to improve on his original designs, a halt of a century later.

Here is a few words from Al, on his Q&A portion of the ALK web site.

"12 - Why is "constant impedance" necessary?

The short answer is It's not. Its simply an advantage.

Providing a stereo amplifier with a constant 8 Ohms load is not actually required. Very few crossover networks designed by others are constant impedance. The stock networks for Klipsch Heritage speakers is all over the place. Some cause 8 Ohms speakers to look more like 70 Ohms in the midrange! The actual merit of a constant impedance is that it is the mark of a properly designed filter. This is a lesson learned through years of experience designing filters a microwave frequencies. With stringent requirements on "return loss" at microwave frequencies you quickly learn to do it correctly. There is simply no good reason why a network should NOT have a constant impedance! The fact that good amplifiers with high damping factors can handle bad loads is no more a reasonable argument for poor designs then a highway engineer would claim that a road should have lots of curves and bumps simply because cars have steering wheels and shock-absorbers!

Another way to put it is that a network that provides a constant impedance will sound better, not just directly because it loads the amp with a constant impedance, but because it is a correctly designed network.

On the other hand, if you have an amplifier with poor damping factor, like a 5 Watt SET, It will operate much better if it sees a constant impedance load. The frequency response can actually follow the load impedance curve."

I can only make the suggestion to go the ALK website yourself and look over all the wealth of information that has been provided and make your own, hopefully more informed decisions.

I don't sell crossover's, I don't have a horse in this race. Only sharing information.

This is what I do. Please do what works best for your needs and your system.

 

Here is a little video that was just posted to the

The art/science of loudspeakers

thread, on post #41.

For some reason, I could not repost the video here, the system gave me an error message saying that it would not allow it?

But, give it a watch, it is about a really high end speaker build.

Pay attention of the speaker drivers that are used in the enclosure's that are shown in the video.

Also pay attention, to the external crossover network that is driving the speaker's (no, it is not an ALK, but something a bit more exotic!).

 

Amen! Amen! Good catch, I'd have to agree with this.

Here "sounds better" is a big statement, not sure I can agree as stated. Maybe! I'd have to think about that, it's an interesting statement. I would agree that it sure doesn't hurt anything..., well I'd have to think about that too. Regardless, hey, Richard Small says it will make your amplifier twice as powerful!* Definitely for high output impedance designs like tubes, it will keep the response flat.

What is a bigger concern to me is that the impedance of horns like the E-V tweeter Klipsch used to use was hugely messy with very sharp spikes due to reflections in the throat and horn and so on. Those do not get dealt with at all in conventional designs, nor were there tools to even attempt to do so unless maybe you were at KEF. So now I would hope you could get better horns and design better crossovers for them. I remember astounding one product manager when I insisted on making a horn round extending to oval in cross-section instead of the usual rectangular. I hired Roy Delgado** as a side job from Klipsch to do the hard number crunching. The product manager was astounded when the response and impedance were wildly better than rectangular designs, he then decided I was a genius. Thanks Roy!

*when I kidded him about this he abashedly said well it was a marketing thing and taken out of context somewhat. But actually for lesser amplifiers there is a real benefit to more gentle impedances, keeping them out of a variety of possible ugly and maybe even damaging behaviors at clipping.

**https://www.klipsch.com/blog/tag/roy-delgado leads to a wacky picture of PWK with a sombrero...and apparently used to have text including "January 27, 2015 - Chipotle shines when it comes to providing a distinctive atmosphere that complements its mouthwatering burritos..." Huh, I see Roy received a patent for a skewed horn. I would bet my project was the seed/genesis of that idea.

 

PWK had lots of good designs, but he was (how should I put this?), thrifty.

His bass speakers were fine, but his horns and driver's could not compete with the Quality of the Altec horn's and driver's, which were designed for more demanding commercial applications.

Interesting enough, legacy Klipsch speakers like my La Scala's, which are commercial versions in custom Baltic Birch enclosure's are still all original on the inside.

These are super efficient speakers, even more so than the A7's. They have a beautiful clarity about them at low volumes.

Turn up the volume and use them with SS amps and they will take the top of your head off!

 

They are out there but you have to search a 200 mile radius on Craig’s list every day for a long time. It’s really better to just bight the bullet and get a nice clean pair for $1,500. They are well worth the money. The great thing about Heresy is they can pass as mid century furniture if you have a wife that freaks out about speakers or you are in a smaller space. There is really no speaker that can fill a larger room with a low powered amp for less money. And they rock. It’s a punch you in the chest like your at a concert kind of speaker, it’s what it does well. I never felt listening to them at a mid or moderate volume let’s you in on what they do well.

If you have the space and the money, Cornwall’s are on a completely different level. They are also less tolerant of anything connected to them that has issues. For example, hook them to an AVR and you will quickly hear the benefit of having a proper stereo amp. Not really a big deal with Heresy but with Cornwall’s you will throw that AVR out a window after an hour.

 

So, our home was built two years ago as midcentury modern, and is furnished as such. So, I'm all good there! Paying $1,500 is okay, but I want to use whatever I buy as an addition to the Heresys!!

 

Now you’re just talking crazy.

I spend some time on a Klipsch board and there are those that use heritage speakers in their surround sound. It wouldn’t be my choice or the choice of most reasonable people but it has happened.

 

Just another Klipsch owner chiming in.
The photos look like you made a good deal.
You did not "steal" them, but you certainly did not over pay either.

I have two pair of Heresys. The newest pair is 1982.
Take time to play with placement, which includes tilt angle and height from the floor.
I have found this aspect of Heresys somewhat critical.

Heresys will teach you the meaning of "sweet spot". If you have not yet experienced the sweet spot you will when you get the placement just right.

If you have marginal source material the Heresys will let you know. This can be fun in a way as it really does showcase the benefits of better mastering and quality gear.

You will also hear many tell you they need tube gear. While tube gear does sound good with Heresys my McIntosh SS gear (C32, 2125) Marantz SS (2250) gear and Yamaha SS (RXZ1) gear all work very well with these speakers.

 

Cornwall II with LM211IA (EL34 tube amp).

Op/Andrew has H.H. Scott tube gear waiting for a checkup/tuneup, I can't think of a better vintage match. Cornwalls also do the Mid-Century vibe.

 

A lifelong friend from high school called me up and stopped by to see me on Saturday, when he was in town.

Several years back, he had a large house in upstate N.Y. and he put together a HT with five A7's, all powered by Phase linear SS amps!

Of course, he is a little bit "off kilter" like I am!

I actually bought an original pair of A7's from him after his move back down south.

I have another custom pair with walnut cabinets (not the "W"'s from Altec), in my storage area with his pair. I might be tempted to do the same, but I could have two center channel speakers.

But alas, I don't have the room to do that (yet!).

 

I agree, that you can. With Good solid state gear, you can get away with a lot. Still, I think that they sound much better with tubes, although they my not have the same "slam" factor as with SS.

But I do agree with @Dennis0675, you can get away with it with Heresy's but what you can get away with with heresy's, you can't get away with, with Cornwall's!

I have heard them with nice SS amps, like Mac's and I could live with them like I could live with really good SS amps on the A7's, but once you get into the tube groove, you really can't go back.

 

I remember seeing your photos, when you were first moving in and getting your room set up.

What a nice, simple, clean set-up!

I have a LM 211iA that I was using on the A7's until I got a hold of it's big brother, the 518iA.

But, I will tell you, that for a nice little integrated, the 211iA is a lot of what the class "A" amp is and for a whole lot less money and operating expenses.

I have a quad of KT77 tubes in my 211, they really sound nice!

I can tell that you are in a really nice room for the Cornwall's.

 

Thanks, the room dimensions are 30’ x 15’ x 8’ with the stereo on the short wall. I think that the K Horns would work in this room as well.

 

I believe they would!

But then I would go with a nice polite SET amp, like one based on 300B's.