Klipsch!. The worst speaker company, EVER?

@robert53- Interesting comments you have made. Obviously our ears and end goals in hi-fi are different for the particular sound/s that we want. Mr Hughes being a reviewer I presume has listened to many speakers in his time since 1989 when he reviewed the H1's. You say they are not high end speakers which to your ears they are not. I have to disagree with you and I am Mr Hughes would to as he is still using them to this day. They never come up for sale, so they must so something right, or to the owner's on these speakers have a drink problem? lol. If your friend ever wants to sell them, or indeed if you know of a pair that needs a new home. Please let me know. They are my end goal speakers, and maybe Mr Hughes's to...

Running a set of RF7-III's right now and I LOVE them with zero buyers remorse. I spent a lot of time auditioning speakers after a near impulse buy of my MAC6700 on craigslist. Every speaker in the $2k-$3k price range was half the size and didn't give me that jackhammering rock and roll music I like. at 100 dB, too, with 200 wpc I often tell my wife "Plug your ears for this part".
I think one of the advantages Klipsch has, is that they have a HUGE dealer network. I even found a place in Toledo to demo the RF7's on a McIntosh amp for me. And side by side listening to the helicopter come in near the beginning of "The Wall" and stuff like that, nothing in their price range could touch them. The XR100's at the McIntosh dealer definitely sounded better (less bright) but at $10k a set I was good with Klipsch for less than 1/3 of that.

I can understand criticisms of Klipsch. I did not warm to sound of my early 80's era Klipschorns in original form. Shouty mids made them virtually unlistenable, and that with SET amp. Still, I could hear potential in them, so decided upgrades were in order. Keeping somewhat to original design I kept shallow slope crossovers (Crites AA), which were further altered to A design with Audyn True Copper Max and Jupiter VT caps, Duelund internal wiring, higher quality solder tag strips and Vampire binding posts. All drivers upgraded, Volti horns on mids.

I've owned and heard many speakers over the years, never heard a more lifelike presentation. Klipschorns, even in stock form have awesome macro and micro dynamics and a fairly high level of resolution and transparency. Mine now have a much more natural tonality and timbre such that I can have multi hour listening sessions with little or no fatigue.


I haven't looked closely at newest heritage products, if using cheap caps and bad horns they will continue to be a letdown in stock form. Based on the number of people happily modding Klipschs, nice design diminished by inferior parts and implementation.

For Klipsch, getting the RF 7 III’s is the better bet...modern design!

The following comment is mostly rhetorical and possibly mildly comedic in nature, and not worthy of reply, thus saving the reader from having to think about it much if at all:

What is the number of people happily modding Heresy IIIs? I need to know...If there are "cheap caps" and "bad horns" (put there by corrupt Klipsch technicians caving to the Cheap Cap and Bad Horn lobby) in my almost stock (mid horns damped with dampy stuff, which may have improved something...can't remember) Heresy IIIs it's possibly a miracle they manage to sound as excellent as they do. Modded Heresy IIIs ("updated" pre 2006 versions excepted for the purpose of this post), although discussed on forums like this one, are certainly a tiny fraction of the numbers sold to people "happily" enjoying them (but are they really happy?). It's also worth noting that reviewers who report positively about Heresy IIIs haven't modded their review samples. I haven't heard new Klipschorns as I don't care about them...too big, and I got that sort of thing out of my system with the A7s I owned years ago...but I have heard new Heresy, Forte, and Cornballs that sound great in stock form.