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Uncle Tito's Beloved KLH Model 4 Speakers


Guest angel17

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Guest angel17

Hi Guys,

I inherited uncle Tito's KLH model 4 speakers recently. My uncle owned these speakers since 1964; he was a rolling stone that enjoyed listening to Tito Puente the King of Latin Music and Classic Jazz. He was divorced about 4 times but every time he managed to take his KLH's 4, Dual 1219, and Sansui 1000A with him.

I have read the Topics at this Forum for a long time and this has helped me in the restoration of my KLH 5,KLH 6,KLH 17,KLH 20 and KLH 24 speakers. But now I really need some help with this new to me KLH 4's. Before his passing at age 77 he had a problem with his Sansui 1000A his favorite receiver because it could drive a 16 OHM load speakers such as the 4's. I think one of his drinking buddies brought a SS receiver so they could listen to music and mess up the tweeters on one of the speakers, to make it matters worse they tried to fixed the speakers and removed the aluminum plate at the rear of the speakers to get to the crossover and not knowing that the components were held together by some kind of hardening material, they hit with a screw driver and it crumbled into little pieces. Now I'd like to restore them and keep them for myself in sake of his memory. Since I read an article at this forum by Tom Tyson about these speakers, I knew in advance that the drivers were epoxied and in order to get to them I had to cut the rear panel of the cabinet with a jig saw. Well I cut through the wood and tested the tweeters using a 1.5 volt battery and found out that one tweeter is bad. Bad...Bad...Bad... where in this world am I going to get a replacement? What caused this tweeter to go bad? Maybe a capacitor at the crossover? Even though the other speaker is working properly I cut it also in case I need to use some other tweeter to match both speakers. I don't have an OHM meter right now so I don't know the value of the bad tweeter. I know they will not be original vintage but I want to keep them. I took a few pictures to show you guys. As, you can see in one of the pictures, I was able to assemble the crossover that someone messed up. I will gladly take your input as to what replacement tweeter to use. In order for the replacement to fit in the cabinet hole the tweeter must be 2 inches wide in the rear. I listened to the good speaker and it sounds sweet with a deeper bass than the KLH 6. Thanks in advance for the help!

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Someone else on the forum will have to provide technical advice on how to go about the repairs needed on your model Fours.

I can give a little history on them ~ The model Four was KLH's first full-range loudspeaker, and likely was on the market in late 1957 or early 1958. In a 1996 interview, Henry Kloss himself said of the Four, "the high frequency speaker is not one that we made. It was a unit made by GE, of all places. The best tweeter I could find happened to be one that came from GE. The Four was more expensive than the AR-1 and wildly competitive with it. I think it was $224. each. " (kloss - in 1996).

CBS records adopted the model Four as their monitor speaker in about 1960. You don't see the model Four out there too often, production was much lower on them then on the models Six, Seventeen. Also, since they have the sealed cabinets, folks give up on them.

It's an early KLH classic - good luck restoring them.

Andy

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