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It's raining KLH speakers at my place

Tim D

Tim D

Super Member
I went on a road trip and did some CL speaker shopping. I came away with two pairs of KLH 17's and two pairs of KLH 32's. I'm figuring to restore them. About half don't have sound coming from the tweeters. I'll open them up to see if it the cap or capacitor in each one.

The 17's. (I have the grills.)

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The 32's.

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Usually with KLHs a dead tweeter is either the pot (if it has one) or those @#$%$ "Temple" e-caps, which do NOT age well. Hope that's the case in your situation.
 
I've got a buddy that has some interest in some of the bounty. He's ordered replacement caps from parts express and the surround sealant from Vintage AR.

I've hooked them up and tried them out. The ones with working tweeters sound pretty decent in comparison with the KLH Sixes I already have. Not as deep, but sounds pretty good.

One of the 17's has a silver terminal plate and a black tweeter. The other 17's have black terminal plates and silver tweeters. Seems that one kind or the other was a design change along the way.

I'll recap them. In doing some research it looks like the cross-over is almost identical to the KLH Six cross-over except for missing the inductor in the woofer circult. Seems the woofers run free in the 17's.

One pair have been painted along the way or at least they used a really red heavy stain. I will remove that and refinish the cabinets from the beginning. That pair is also missing the badges. I know where to get those.
 
N8Nagel said:
Usually with KLHs a dead tweeter is either the pot (if it has one) or those @#$%$ "Temple" e-caps, which do NOT age well. Hope that's the case in your situation.
Click to expand...

Yeah I hope it is those old temple caps too. Wish the speaker manufacturers had put better caps in the originals and some better protection too.

During this pickup I snagged a pair of Polk 7A's too. Those seem to be complete and functional, but I'll do a full upgrade on them.
 
I'll figure out what gives with the Model 32 tweeters. I hope it isn't the tweeters. Those look like a smaller size then I'm used to seeing. I imagine they are hard to find if I need them.
 
I have 2 pairs if those Thirty Twos, for their size, they are real nice sounding. I've had mine apart to recap and those tweeters are definitely smaller than the ones found in the larger KLHs. Someone here mentioned they might be CTS tweets, I haven't been able to find the post, however. You'll be surprised when you listen after your work is done.
 
Anyone have an any idea when the 17's changed from black to silver terminal plates? One of them is silver.
 

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The Seventeens stacked on Sixes sound quite nice. The sweet spot on the Seventeens is the mid-range for whatever reason, and they compliment the Sixes, based on my experience.
Nice haul!
 
alteclipsch said:
I have 2 pairs if those Thirty Twos, for their size, they are real nice sounding. I've had mine apart to recap and those tweeters are definitely smaller than the ones found in the larger KLHs. Someone here mentioned they might be CTS tweets, I haven't been able to find the post, however. You'll be surprised when you listen after your work is done.
Click to expand...

Interesting that they might be CTS tweeters in the 32's. We pulled one of them and it had an alnico magnet. If they are CTS that will narrow it down some.

Another point is that the tweeters are covered by a fiberglass pad held down with a circle of hardware cloth. Seems that KLH thought they were too bright perhaps and were trying a mechanical means (cheap) to tone it down. I would have expected some resistors in the tweeter circuit instead, but whatever.
 
c5corvette said:
The Seventeens stacked on Sixes sound quite nice. The sweet spot on the Seventeens is the mid-range for whatever reason, and they compliment the Sixes, based on my experience.
Nice haul!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've heard that more than once. I'll be able to enjoy that when we get a set updated. Looking forward to it.
 
Well, I managed to get the 17's opened up and they all have tweeters with around 4 ohms, so that is a relief. It just means we have something wrong elsewhere in the cross-over or switch; and that is solvable.

This weekend I'll open up the 32's and get an accounting of the tweeters in those speakers.
 
The parts haven't arrived. My buddy forgot to push "buy" for the parts, so I've started on the KLH 17 cabinets with the painted ones first. Yuck - I'm using chem stripper and it's coming off, but it's a lot of work. Why did anyone paint these beautiful cabinets? I'm wanting to restore them to the beauty of my KLH Sixes. I've stripped one of them but I haven't done anything else yet. I'll do the other painted one today.

I'd like to take the drivers and cross-over completely out to do this work and the cross-over refresh. Does anyone know how to remove the terminal plate without damaging it? Should I use a 1x1 length of wood and tap it into the cabinet to loosen the staples/glue or is there a better way?

Here are some pics. Notice the sloppy paint job that spilled onto the front baffle.

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Here are my Sixes. I think we can get the 17's looking as good. The veneer on these painted 17's is better than the veneer was when I started on my Sixes. (At least for the first one stripped.)

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The one you've stripped so far looks fantastic! (There, now you have some positive feedback to motivate you to go do the other.) Seriously, though, nice work. It's obvious from your Sixes you have the skills to do these right. Just think of the pride you'll feel looking at them and knowing what they once were. And what a great story to share over a beer and some tunes.
 
Does anyone know how to remove the terminal plate without damaging it? Should I use a 1x1 length of wood and tap it into the cabinet to loosen the staples/glue or is there a better way?
 
Another question.

I see that the cross-over for the 17 is similar to the cross-over for the Six except the 17 doesn't have an inductor for the woofer. Anyone think that it would be a good idea to add the inductor? Without it both the woofer and tweeter would overlap in the midrange band and that isn't normally a good thing.
 
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