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KEF owners thread

Hi idf.bts,

Thanks for your reply about the KEF Kubes and the fact that room placement can be used to solve issues. The issue I am reporting is likely repairable if I find the right technician and he/she can source the correct switch. However, that maybe an approach that may have unknown results, efforts, and costs. At least if I pursue the MiniDSP solution then I know I can work with it and it will function as intended if I put enough effort into creating the custom EQ file to match the original EQ curve of the K-UBE. An additional feature is that I can create and customize the curve to my room acoustics and store it for use and retrieval indefinitely. That is not a feature or option that I would have with a restored K-UBE.

Play with placement, its free.

If you want more bass, get closer to a corner. In my experience the 107 hates walls, I never had a setup where they were not at least 4 feet away from the wall. Its because of the woofer exit port, up-firing. Makes its very sensitive to placement.
 
Fellow KEF folks, I need help with a pair of Reference 105/3 that I'm restoring. It's the grilles. I got them as bare plastic frames, so there's nothing to save. I have some cloth from SimplySpeakers.com and already ruined a whole sheet of it.

I just can't figure out how to deal with the bunching-up of the material at top and bottom due to the trapezoidal shape. I had my son send photos of the grilles from his 104/2's and they seem to be a very different material, such as MDF because his are stapled. I can't even get staples in this crap, and it seems the cloth they used went around the shapes without any cuts or folds. I may have to find much thinner cloth too.

Anyone got any experience with grilles like these who can help??
Reference_105-3_grilles.jpg
 
Early 104/2s have a wooden frame grills holding on plastic pins. And later bi-wire speakers have plastic-framed grills holding with Neodyne magnets.

The material for grills is very specific and should be easily stretchable. I used those in the link, off Amazon, and it worked very well. I used metal clip to hold them in place before tacking them.

 
Early 104/2s have a wooden frame grills holding on plastic pins. And later bi-wire speakers have plastic-framed grills holding with Neodyne magnets.

The material for grills is very specific and should be easily stretchable. I used those in the link, off Amazon, and it worked very well. I used metal clip to hold them in place before tacking them.


Before tacking them...how? Are you referring to tacking the MDF frame of early 104/2's?

Did you ever do these plastic ones? I'm in the USA, so I can't buy from Amazon Canada.
 
Tacked on wooden frames. Glued on late plastic frames. Which is why yoiu need a bag pof those metal clips.
 

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Tacked on wooden frames. Glued on late plastic frames. Which is why yoiu need a bag pof those metal clips.

My son brought me a big container of probably 40 to 50 little spring clips, though I'm going to get the far stronger "office type" steel "paper bundle clip" type.

I also need to find a faster-setting glue!
 
Exactly what I plan on using. I do need to get some sturdy wooden or plastic strips too.

Still not sure what glue to use. I got some Gorilla Glue "Clear" but it's too slow to dry. I'll also have to buy thinner, more stretchable fabric because the bunching-up is no good.
 
It's a 3m product, "very high bond" pressure sensitive adhesive. It's not cheap for a roll, gotta look at it as an investment. I have partial rolls over 10 years old that are still just fine, it'll keep. Has wonderful grab, also used to hold truck bodies together. It doesn't fully harden, can be removed. Will yellow a hair in direct uv but I've used it to make acrylic boxes that are still solid and clear a decade later. And you can disassemble it.

There are two types, one is foam and one is clear. You want the clear, the foam sucks and immediately goes into the trash. It's not removable and the foam rips apart. The clear is solid adhesive with no backer tape. Has a red liner.

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b5005359003/ there are two other tapes in this series, the difference is in the thickness. You don't need or want that increased thickness unless your substrates are that uneven.

McMaster was my go to. Multiple thickness and widths available.
 
It's a 3m product, "very high bond" pressure sensitive adhesive. It's not cheap for a roll, gotta look at it as an investment. I have partial rolls over 10 years old that are still just fine, it'll keep. Has wonderful grab, also used to hold truck bodies together. It doesn't fully harden, can be removed. Will yellow a hair in direct uv but I've used it to make acrylic boxes that are still solid and clear a decade later. And you can disassemble it.

There are two types, one is foam and one is clear. You want the clear, the foam sucks and immediately goes into the trash. It's not removable and the foam rips apart. The clear is solid adhesive with no backer tape. Has a red liner.

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/b5005359003/ there are two other tapes in this series, the difference is in the thickness. You don't need or want that increased thickness unless your substrates are that uneven.

McMaster was my go to. Multiple thickness and widths available.

Gotcha! Thanks, I'll try that, looks like the 1/2" wide is the smallest they go, but tape is easy to trim with a razor.

My biggest problem is not adhesive/tape, it's the choice of US-available grill cloth that is more of a Lycra than polyester because that trapezoidal shape of the frame, it's height, seems to cause me headaches with bunching up with the "standard" grille cloth I got from Simply Speakers. As I started searching on Amazon, none seem specific about material content and/or thickness.

I've done grilles on AR speakers and some other more "standard" type grilles, and it was reasonably easy to notch the cloth as it came around the corner. These are a different animal.
 
So does anyone have a source for black speaker grille cloth that's extra stretchy so I don't have to create origami at 8 corners?
 
So does anyone have a source for black speaker grille cloth that's extra stretchy so I don't have to create origami at 8 corners?

So, for your lazy .ss, reposting the same link as yesterday, but for the US Amazon page... LOL

 
So, for your lazy .ss, reposting the same link as yesterday, but for the US Amazon page... LOL


Well that was rather insulting. I had simply said that I can't buy from the Canada Amazon and all the stuff I found myself didn't specify thickness or if it was very stretchy. I tried looking twice, and that didn't come up so I must have not used the best word or phrase for the search. I'm not lazy, I'm human.

Thanks for the link though. I do appreciate that.
 
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