My uncle's 1960 kit-built speakers.

[Firedome]

In 1960 my late Uncle built from plans a pair of Cabinart Klipsch-designed Rebel V corner speaker cabinets. Cabinart Co. of NY published plans for 3 different size Klipsch designs and publicized them in Popular Electronics and Radio & TV News magazines, where he saw them. The Rebel V was the smallest of the 3, no doubt my uncle chose those due to the WAF (wife acceptance factor)! They were also available as unfinished factory built. They're a folded reflex (?) design, rather complex to build, designed to hold a 12" full range speaker with space for an additional tweeter if desired. Uncle Don chose a University Diffusicone 12" full range and added a Stomberg-Carlson RT-476 3" tweeter with "Brilliance" pot mounted on the back.

Being as obsessive as he was I have the original sales brochure/sheets he'd saved, and the mail-order plans. I just finished re-painting them in Warm Gray, he'd chosen to paint them rather than a stained-wood finish, as he used unfancy non-veneered plywood. Originally a Seafoam Green to match their LR walls, then Antique White. Haven't taken them apart as they're built in such a way that I'd have to remove the ribbed trim then take off the cool original Mylar-metal cloth which would destroy it. So am not sure how I can check or replace the crossover caps, or do speaker repairs. Will next test them to see how functional they are, if so they'll be paired up with the Fishers from the CE IV console. They're probably quite efficient being from that era and a good match for a low-ish power console amp.

[Firedome]

original data sheets:

[TC Chris]

Long ago I was given a mono system--Garrard RC-80 with GE VR cartridge, Heath A-9 amp, and a corner horn with an EV SP-12 speaker. This speaker is much less sophisticated than the Klipsch design--the walls are the last part of the horn, while Klipsch design uses plywood. The EV in the corner horn does not produce anything like the bass I would expect. Not sure who produced the enclosure. It sure doesn't work very well.

When I built the Heath AA-100 and AJ-41 for my Dad, we needed speakers, and built some E-V reflex enclosure kits with LT-12 2-way speakers inside. For some reason both LT-12 voice coils seem to be rubbing--gravity affecting them like it does aging bodies? I haven't listened to those in a long time and wonderhow they compare. I remember the HF horns sounding a bit horn-ish.

Chris Campbell

[Firedome]

Corner horns definitely had a sound of their own, and were certainly a very popular design in the '50s into '60s. I've ofent found them to be somewhat lacking in the very low bass. My Dad had a mono system of a H-K Recital II receiver, Collaro, and a pretty good-sized factory-built but unfinished corner horn about 50% bigger that the Rebel V that may well have been one of Cabinart's larger models. I was only 8 or 9 when he built it. He put a beautiful mahogany top and bottom on it, grille cloth on 3 sides like the Rebel, and the speaker was a full range JBL 8". I was quite amazed to see such a small speaker when I opened it up years later but it actually sounded very good due to the little 8" speaker's high performance!

[Motorola minion]

That University brochure shows a coaxial speaker in the lower left, which looks like a model 6201, that I have used many times over the years. It was not a good bass speaker IIRC.

[TC Chris]

The speaker kits my Dad and I assembled were E-V Marquis models. See photos of an identical speaker here:

https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649 ... s/1507270/

Our boxes are stuffed with E-V LT12 coax speakers, as I mentioned. The enclosure has cutouts and adapters for 15" speakers and for separate mid and high horns.

Last weekend I retrieved them from the attic and the 2nd floor den and moved both to the garage. Then I grabbed my early high school bass reflex enclosure, built to hold the speaker of my '37 Zenith, and moved that out also. It's got a 12" Jensen in it right now. The plans came from one of the "Popular" magazines, as I recall--Science, Mechanics, one of those. My plan is to keep all of these. They have little market value but I think they're cool. I won't need to convince most readers here that it's fun to be surrounded by cool stuff, regardless of dollar value.

Chris Campbell

[Firedome]

I've found that almost every (maybe every?) ported speaker from that era had less-than-terrific bass. Those even included Altec VOTs like the mint 846a Valencias with monster 15" woofers and large 800Hz sectoral horns and compression drivers. The big woofers and very large ported cabinets couldn't approach an acoustic suspension AR-3 for true bass reproduction. The Altecs were actually meant for reproducing sound at very high decibel levels in very large spaces, and were amazing at that, but for most home applications in normal-sized rooms acoustic suspension designs work better for wide frequency range listening imo, with the caveat that they often need really good tweeters like domes, not typical 3" cones.

I'm expecting these period University/Strombergs to make for pleasant casual listening at moderate volumes, no more.