blue72
Active Member
Four months ago I stumbled across a minty pair of Klipsch KG 5.5 towers in light oak at a local thrift store. I hadn't ever seen any Klipsch gear in this area before, and I knew I had to have them. One hundred and one smackers later, I loaded them (and a vintage gray felt Stetson fedora in my size, beautiful thing) into a shopping cart and out the door. The speakers had an initial workout in my front room, and everything was functioning perfectly. The only attention they needed was a wipe-down with a damp cloth and a quick application of oil before they looked like new once more.
My front room is in the middle of ongoing renovations, so it has bare wood floors and no drapes. Above a certain volume level, the horns sound really, really harsh and uncomfortable in this space. At lower volume levels though, they sound quite good. After much contemplation and back-and-forth, combined with the fact that they are a two-way design and don’t have a dedicated horn midrange, I decided that they would probably not replace my main stereo speakers in the furnished and better damped listening space. What to do with them instead? Well, I figured that if nothing else, they would work really well as home theatre mains. The only problem was that I didn’t happen to have a center speaker to match them. Further research ensued. I learned that the big, bad boy center of this era in the Klipsch world is the KLF-C7, which came out with the successor KLF series of speakers. A 1” compression driver/horn and two 8” woofers makes for a big box, big sound, but also a big price tag. It would have taken me a long time to scrimp up the pocket change to buy a C7 outright (The most money I’d ever spent on a pair of speakers was to acquire this 5.5 set in the first place). I resigned myself to the fact that it would be a nice long time before I could get a decently close counterpart for my KG 5.5 speakers.
Eventually, the thought occurred to me, “what if I had an exact match for the center channel instead?” Frequency response from 34 Hz - 20 kHz, +/- 3dB out of the center sounded tantalizing. Hmm, how much would it cost to buy just the guts of one KG 5.5? More than I wanted to spend again, at least based on the stuff that was on the ‘bay or online classifieds at that point in time. I’d also have had to buy different components from multiple sellers just to get a full set. Buying another pair of KG 5.5 was out of the question too, based on cost and distances involved. Weeks went by, but the idea of having the front three speakers as an exact match was stuck in my head and going nowhere. I’ve had a Boston Acoustics 525V center (¾” dome tweeter, single 5.25” woofer, 5.25” passive radiator) paired with their HD10 mains, and while the center was admirable for most things, it just seemed to color certain voices. I’ve also tried a Bose 301 series IV bookshelf acting as the center channel (single 8” woofer, 2” and 3” tweeters pointed at 45 degree angles) paired with Bose 10.2 towers as my home theatre fronts, and while a number of the internal components are fairly close to each other, the inability of the center channel to keep up with the full scope and range of the main L&R speakers still gets to me. If I was ever to upgrade my center channel, I wanted something with parts that were entirely and exactly the same. Trying to combine the premise of minimal compromises and a strict budget is tricky.
Well, the other week I was finally able to make the confluence of spare cash and a willing seller happen. Shipped to my door were a crossover, complete horn, and two woofers that had been rescued from a KG 5.5 with a trashed cabinet in California. Last week I bought my first ever sheet of ¾” MDF and started a cuttin’.
The plan is to keep the same dimensions and construction technique as the original KG 5.5, but arrange the components D'Appolito style and lay the box on its side. I’d have loved to just build another upright tower, but space constraints will not allow for that. Most likely it will be placed below the TV, and pointed up at the listener's ears. By locating the horn as high as possible on the front panel, I hope to eliminate as much of the height difference as I can between the center and L/R speakers.
The only other concern of mine was off-axis issues for people who aren’t seated directly in front of the center speaker. I know that it is a major sore spot people have with MTM designs. I’ve calculated that with a 30-degree spread, it’ll give me a 4-5’ wide spot on the couch where everyone should hear things just fine without much if any lobing from the woofers. Sounds like a decent enough acquiescence. I did consider other arrangements, like a nearly square box with the two woofers vertically stacked one one side and the horn on the other. I could even have cut and angled the front baffle inward a little on each side for greater dispersion, but I don’t think those will really be necessary. Plus, I didn’t want to mess with calculating new box dimensions.
Here's how things were shaping up on Thursday morning. I had just finished the 4” hole for the port with my fancy-dancy homemade circle cutting jig before heading off for work.
My front room is in the middle of ongoing renovations, so it has bare wood floors and no drapes. Above a certain volume level, the horns sound really, really harsh and uncomfortable in this space. At lower volume levels though, they sound quite good. After much contemplation and back-and-forth, combined with the fact that they are a two-way design and don’t have a dedicated horn midrange, I decided that they would probably not replace my main stereo speakers in the furnished and better damped listening space. What to do with them instead? Well, I figured that if nothing else, they would work really well as home theatre mains. The only problem was that I didn’t happen to have a center speaker to match them. Further research ensued. I learned that the big, bad boy center of this era in the Klipsch world is the KLF-C7, which came out with the successor KLF series of speakers. A 1” compression driver/horn and two 8” woofers makes for a big box, big sound, but also a big price tag. It would have taken me a long time to scrimp up the pocket change to buy a C7 outright (The most money I’d ever spent on a pair of speakers was to acquire this 5.5 set in the first place). I resigned myself to the fact that it would be a nice long time before I could get a decently close counterpart for my KG 5.5 speakers.
Eventually, the thought occurred to me, “what if I had an exact match for the center channel instead?” Frequency response from 34 Hz - 20 kHz, +/- 3dB out of the center sounded tantalizing. Hmm, how much would it cost to buy just the guts of one KG 5.5? More than I wanted to spend again, at least based on the stuff that was on the ‘bay or online classifieds at that point in time. I’d also have had to buy different components from multiple sellers just to get a full set. Buying another pair of KG 5.5 was out of the question too, based on cost and distances involved. Weeks went by, but the idea of having the front three speakers as an exact match was stuck in my head and going nowhere. I’ve had a Boston Acoustics 525V center (¾” dome tweeter, single 5.25” woofer, 5.25” passive radiator) paired with their HD10 mains, and while the center was admirable for most things, it just seemed to color certain voices. I’ve also tried a Bose 301 series IV bookshelf acting as the center channel (single 8” woofer, 2” and 3” tweeters pointed at 45 degree angles) paired with Bose 10.2 towers as my home theatre fronts, and while a number of the internal components are fairly close to each other, the inability of the center channel to keep up with the full scope and range of the main L&R speakers still gets to me. If I was ever to upgrade my center channel, I wanted something with parts that were entirely and exactly the same. Trying to combine the premise of minimal compromises and a strict budget is tricky.
Well, the other week I was finally able to make the confluence of spare cash and a willing seller happen. Shipped to my door were a crossover, complete horn, and two woofers that had been rescued from a KG 5.5 with a trashed cabinet in California. Last week I bought my first ever sheet of ¾” MDF and started a cuttin’.
The plan is to keep the same dimensions and construction technique as the original KG 5.5, but arrange the components D'Appolito style and lay the box on its side. I’d have loved to just build another upright tower, but space constraints will not allow for that. Most likely it will be placed below the TV, and pointed up at the listener's ears. By locating the horn as high as possible on the front panel, I hope to eliminate as much of the height difference as I can between the center and L/R speakers.
The only other concern of mine was off-axis issues for people who aren’t seated directly in front of the center speaker. I know that it is a major sore spot people have with MTM designs. I’ve calculated that with a 30-degree spread, it’ll give me a 4-5’ wide spot on the couch where everyone should hear things just fine without much if any lobing from the woofers. Sounds like a decent enough acquiescence. I did consider other arrangements, like a nearly square box with the two woofers vertically stacked one one side and the horn on the other. I could even have cut and angled the front baffle inward a little on each side for greater dispersion, but I don’t think those will really be necessary. Plus, I didn’t want to mess with calculating new box dimensions.
Here's how things were shaping up on Thursday morning. I had just finished the 4” hole for the port with my fancy-dancy homemade circle cutting jig before heading off for work.
