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KLH 6 speakers?

yesshows77 said:
I have a local friend who likes stacking sets of bookshelf speakers with surprisingly excellent results. He has tried 2 pairs of Large Advents, Polk Monitor 10's, Boston Acoustics A100's, ADS L810's, Dynaco XL40's and Boston Acoustics A70's (which were simply amazing). I'm intending to take my KLH Fives over to his place so we can stack them on his pair and try them out. Seems to me that the 2-way systems usually have better results when stacking. I at least want to find a decent pair of Six's to see how they compare to the Fives side by side. Maybe some KLH 23's as well. So many speakers...so little time.
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The Six's and Twenty Threes sound pretty much the same, the Twenty Threes can take more power as they have the same the woofer as the Fives.
The Fives have a fuller mid range being a three way.
Any of these stacked will sound terrific. You may already know this, but make sure to flip the speaker on top upside down so the tweeters are closer together.
Have fun!
 
GD70 said:
The Six's and Twenty Threes sound pretty much the same, the Twenty Threes can take more power as they have the same the woofer as the Fives.
The Fives have a fuller mid range being a three way.
Any of these stacked will sound terrific. You may already know this, but make sure to flip the speaker on top upside down so the tweeters are closer together. Have fun!
Click to expand...

Now I'm intrigued. I have two pairs of KLH Fives. Have you tried that?
 
I stacked fives and 23's laid on their sides. Best result was woofer on top of woofer, tweeter on top of tweeter. Tried other combinations but that by far was the best. Used my big Onkyo A-10 amp and it was a wonder to behold until the cops showed up! I've had a couple sets of 6's, oh sooo smooth. The 23's are 6's just on steroids. FYI, the 6's were used as monitors at CBS for at least a couple of decades.
 
Over the weekend, my audio friend brought over his KLH Fives and we stacked them with mine (top set inverted). This sounded amazing and was a huge difference over playing either set by itself. I hope to try some KLH Six's in the near future. I would recommend to anyone who is a fan of vintage bookshelf speakers to try stacking 2 pair if possible, as the results will impress you. Obviously, stacking 4 ohm rated models should generally be avoided, as not many vintage amps will handle the combined load if these are connected in parallel. My current favorite stack is an unlikely combination of EPI 180's on the bottom and Magnat All Ribbon 4's on top (inverted).
 
I have an old pair of KLH Sixes. The grill is very different than what they later came to look like. They have nice wood cabinets, although the wood is slightly different on each. I don't know if the original owner got them together or one at a time. The serial # on one of them is #28881 and on the other it is #24193. The wood is a slightly lighter color on the latter, and the handle is on the bottom of the speaker, instead of the top. The badge is up in the right hand corner of that speaker too, and I'm trying to remember, if that's where it originally was, and I just flipped it over, or I put it up there. It was weird, because, if you were picking both speakers up by the handles to transport them, the latter speaker's woofer would have been on the top, while the tweeter would have been on the bottom.

Anyway, they have a nice open sound. I don't know if they would benefit from a recapping, in that they are older and they have those oil caps that may not need to be changed out anyway. I play them with a Fisher 800B.

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yesshows77 said:
Over the weekend, my audio friend brought over his KLH Fives and we stacked them with mine (top set inverted). This sounded amazing and was a huge difference over playing either set by itself. I hope to try some KLH Six's in the near future. I would recommend to anyone who is a fan of vintage bookshelf speakers to try stacking 2 pair if possible, as the results will impress you. Obviously, stacking 4 ohm rated models should generally be avoided, as not many vintage amps will handle the combined load if these are connected in parallel. My current favorite stack is an unlikely combination of EPI 180's on the bottom and Magnat All Ribbon 4's on top (inverted).
Click to expand...
Connecting in series puts less load on the amp.
 
jgannon said:
I have an old pair of KLH Sixes. The grill is very different than what they later came to look like. They have nice wood cabinets, although the wood is slightly different on each. I don't know if the original owner got them together or one at a time. The serial # on one of them is #28881 and on the other it is #24193. The wood is a slightly lighter color on the latter, and the handle is on the bottom of the speaker, instead of the top. The badge is up in the right hand corner of that speaker too, and I'm trying to remember, if that's where it originally was, and I just flipped it over, or I put it up there. It was weird, because, if you were picking both speakers up by the handles to transport them, the latter speaker's woofer would have been on the top, while the tweeter would have been on the bottom.

Anyway, they have a nice open sound. I don't know if they would benefit from a recapping, in that they are older and they have those oil caps that may not need to be changed out anyway. I play them with a Fisher 800B.

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Your grills and handles are not original. I'd guess someone cut out the original grill cloth (which was glued to the front baffles) for some reason, and made those replacements.
If they have the oil caps I'd leave them, but I'd check the woofer surrounds and make sure they are resealed for proper bass response. If you gently push in the woofer cone, and it springs back immediately, they must be resealed. If the return is slower, 1-2 seconds, then the seal is good.
 
GD70 said:
Your grills and handles are not original. I'd guess someone cut out the original grill cloth (which was glued to the front baffles) for some reason, and made those replacements.
If they have the oil caps I'd leave them, but I'd check the woofer surrounds and make sure they are resealed for proper bass response. If you gently push in the woofer cone, and it springs back immediately, they must be resealed. If the return is slower, 1-2 seconds, then the seal is good.
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Wow, interesting about the grills. The only way to get at them I guess, would be to rip out this inner beveled kind of frame that was nailed in with little nails?

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jgannon said:
Wow, interesting about the grills. The only way to get at them I guess, would be to rip out this inner beveled kind of frame that was nailed in with little nails?

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Yes, remove the nails. Original removable grills from later Six's show up once in a while on fleabay, that's where I got mine for my early Six's.
Glenn
 
GD70 said:
Yes, remove the nails. Original removable grills from later Six's show up once in a while on fleabay, that's where I got mine for my early Six's.
Glenn
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And I just saw what you said about the handles. Makes sense. So I guess, that if I were to go at that inner beveling, that would be the end of that, as well as the grills, which I'm not in love with. The removable grills would just fit right in? The size of all the Sixes from different eras was the same?

EDIT: And I guess the good news, is that somebody already did the hard work of getting the original grills off the speakers. But then one wonders, was everything left intact? The drivers, etc.
 
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jgannon said:
And I just saw what you said about the handles. Makes sense. So I guess, that if I were to go at that inner beveling, that would be the end of that, as well as the grills, which I'm not in love with. The removable grills would just fit right in? The size of all the Sixes from different eras was the same?

EDIT: And I guess the good news, is that somebody already did the hard work of getting the original grills off the speakers. But then one wonders, was everything left intact? The drivers, etc.
Click to expand...
All model Six grills, removable and glued are the same size.
Once you have the grills removed, then you'll see if the drivers are original.
 
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