Big difference between KLH 17 and KLH 5?

[Airjmax]

I've had Seventeens, Twenties, and Twenty Threes. The Seventeens are a great vocal/folk/jazz speaker when properly powered. The Twenty Threes do everything a little better - especially bass, and the cabinet design is gorgeous. The 4ohm Twenties are somewhere in the middle. My impressions of course, your mileage may vary. I'd love to hear the Fives. There is almost universal love for them here on AK.

 

[RxDx]

Models One, Two, Three, and Four also used the glued-in woofer.

 

[GD70]

The Five was designed to compete with the AR-3a. It's very close in performance on every level when restored and the surrounds are resealed .
The Twenty Three has the same woofer as the Five, but a two way like the Six, Seventeen and many others.
Lots of opinions regarding the Five vs. the Twenty Threes, which some prefer. I like the Fives better, sold my Twenty Threes, and also kept my Six's.
These are all a big step up from the Seventeen as noted here.
Here's a pic of the Five and 3a and 2 sets of Six's (1963 & 72), Seventeen's and AR-4x's, together for comparison.
Cheers, Glenn

 

[nitrous]

...a goodly number of people seem to prefer the Six to the Five.

Kloss said in interviews that the Six was the speaker that he got completely "right."

 

[spark1]

Kloss said in interviews that the Six was the speaker that he got completely "right."

I would not expect him to say otherwise, although there does seem to be some debate about this comment.

 

[MrRogers385]

17 vs 5 woofer

 

[FluxT]

I would not expect him to say otherwise, although there does seem to be some debate about this comment.

I tracked down the interview in question, from Audio Magazine in 1992. Kloss talked about the extensive research and development that went into designing and tuning the Model Six, which was the first all-KLH full-range speaker. Previous models were simple woofer-only cabinets meant to be paired with Janszen electrostatic tweeters, or used off-the-shelf ones from GE, but for the Six, Henry could fine-tune literally every aspect from tweeter design to woofer cone composition until he was satisfied. The result was a speaker that had “the most right sound of any speaker made up til then” (emphasis mine) in terms of octave-to-octave balance, transient response, and most importantly, price. It offered unheard-of accuracy for the price and size in 1958, and still sounds damn good in 2019. It was his first speaker that he felt that he got everything completely right, but by no means did he insinuate that it was his greatest ever achievement, or that further time and research did not yield better speakers.

Later on in the article, he bemoaned the fact that very few ever took the Smaller Advent seriously. He was very proud of the fact that he could make a smaller, cheaper speaker that sounded almost identical to its’ legendary big brother through careful cabinet design and sacrificing efficiency. Most tellingly, he says that he still listens to his Smaller Advents, and called them “a product of some importance”.

https://www.acmebass.com/archive_files/mag_articles/audio_magazine/Henry Kloss Interview 2_1992.pdf