What is the best approach to replacing the speakers in my old standing floor speaker boxes.?

Question

I have a set of two Klipsch speakers. I'm not sure on how to measure the speakers themselves but they're around 7 3/4" s***w to s***w. There are two speakers in each box. Also horns on the top around 4"x8 1/2". Would it be better to just buy a whole new set of speakers or replace the components. Any help would be much appreciated. :)

Answer 1

buy new speakers. the technology gets better each year and the newer ones sound so much better.  

Answer 2

Many of the old Klipsch speakers are highly sought after and many are made of real wood or real wood veneer which is pretty expensive to ge these days.

They can still sound really good if you do a good job of refurbishing them. Your best bet is to go over to the Klipsch forum and post your speaker model (see link).

You may find however that it could get pricey to replace all the drivers and crossovers. Are you sure the drivers need to be replaced? If it's just the center of the woofer that gone or damaged that isn't where the sound is coming from and it's merely a dust cap to make thing look better. If the speakers just don't work then it could just be the crossovers.

If you had to replace all the drivers including the tweeters behind the horns plus the crossovers I would say it would probably be cheaper to buy new speakers. They could give you a good idea what it would cost a the forum I mentioned.

Answer 3

If you have an interest in speaker building, you might give this a try, but keep in mind that it will be a lot of (sometimes very tedious) work. If you want the new drivers (i.e. woofer and horn tweeter) fit seamlessly into your existing cabinets, measure the outer edge diameter of the woofer drivers and measure the cutout of the whole in the cabinet, also get the exact measurements height and width of the horn tweeters and also too the cutout for the tweeter as well.  Once you have done this, you can search for these sizes on the market (a few places to search are PartsExpress, Madisound, and Zalytron websites). Find replacement drivers that are at or less than 2 mm from the outermost dimensions of the drivers and not over if your cabinet has routed holes.  Even more important, find replacement drivers that have the same impedance (in Ohms) ratings as the old drivers, and the rest of the specs should be at or beyond what your current drivers are.  This applies if you are going to use the same crossover.  If you buy or build a new crossover, the new drivers will need to compliment the crossover being used.  If you're up for all of this, go for it, because for a lot of people, there's nothing like building something yourself and reaping the rewards of it -hopefully anyway.

If that sounds like too much work (and as I said before, it is), complete loudspeaker systems are available today at quite reasonable prices now with the internet.  I don't know how much you are willing to spend, but for under $500 new retail can get you a nice pair of floor standing loudspeakers (browse places like eBay or AudiogoN or even Amazon are some major marketplaces) from such brands as Athena and KEF and Acoustech, and sometimes they are discounted new more than 50% (see the reference below for just one excellent example).  There are also some great finds to be had in the used speaker market too.

And if you have a pair of Klipsch speakers, just sell them as-is, because they can get you quite a few dollars on eBay if you have a digital camera to take photos and can box them up for a safe delivery -or just have the winning bidder pick them up.

Happy listening!