Loudspeakers

The guiding principles of Paul W Klipsch's first Klipschorn speaker are best illustrated by his statement that 'the midrange is where we live', and indeed that first design was all about its midrange driver, complete with a 60cm-wide horn made from impregnated wood. Meanwhile, the corner placement was all about delivering deep bass by incorporating the room into the horn design: to do this in a free-standing model would have meant more woodwork and a bigger, heavier and costlier speaker – singular in those mono days!

Over its life the speaker gained an aluminium midrange horn and a dedicated tweeter, built into the same cabinet section as the mid, while the bass driver grew from a 12in/30cm unit to the current 15in/38.1cm. Extra panels were added to the bass box, making the speaker easier to install in the kind of commercial situations where it has proved popular, as it was now less reliant on corner reinforcement. Mind you, in the process it has more than doubled in weight to 100kg, and now you need two of them!