Tag Archives: Klipsch 2.5CM Tweeter drop in replacement

Machined Audio Horn Lens 2025 Update

Most of you do not know how stressful and tumultuous this year has been for me. Lost my wife of 39 years to gross medical incompetence and had to watch her suffer each day as we went through this. It really started three and a half years ago though. I was planting seeds in the garden one day and I came in and she was acting a bit odd. “How are you doing” I asked and she said “I am fine”. I knew right away she was not. She just wanted to be left alone but I knew better. So off to ER we go and after a half hour they come out and tell me I can see her in ICU and that she had had a major brain bleed. For the following three years there were variations in her condition and a slow decline.

Then she starts having trouble getting out of chairs and standing up and walking and I finally tell her we are going to get your spine looked at. The Doctor comes in with X-Rays in hand and kind of angry asking her why she had not been in there four or five years ago. Because she lies about her problems to me I said. Always after me to go to the Doctors for everything and she does not go.

Surgery went fine and off to rehab. First few days there she was walking and going the exercises and things looked good. Then they let her get a Urinary Tract Infection and she quickly was in trouble. These gross incompetents in a rehab nursing facility did not do UTI testing and let her get in a bad way before the local hospital who had her in to check for a possible stroke found the infection. Her behavior was like when she had her major stroke + anger and refusing to eat and hitting and biting nurses. I now know how serious these UTI’s are and women can go crazy, forever, and can die from these things.

It was the most horrific thing I have ever had to witness to see her each day and it took two months of pure agony before Hospice mercifully helped her leave. I remember them calling me to say I need to come up and meet with the Hospice people and sign papers because their was no more hope. I sign those papers and the second I am done they start taking tubes out and the momentary WAIT, DON’T DO THAT was in my mind but I knew it had to be. We buried her at the age of 73 8-8-25

To those of you who have had trouble reaching me or slow or no responses might have some insight into why this happened now. I miss her but I am grateful this ugly three and a half year trial is over. It is at least for her. My whole life is upside down over this and it has been hard to keep up with things though that is changing for the better. I am 73 years old just like Janet was and have no intention of stopping. I have had real struggles with loss and depression which are getting much better. I talk to everything now even though no one is there because I miss my companion. I am finding out most widowers do.

So, what does all this mean for the speaker world and I? I have enjoyed the audio world and the people I have met through it and intend to continue just what I have been doing for years now though there is most certainly going to be an amazing two way speaker being offered soon in addition to the tweeters. I will also be cutting more wood lens sets too. I have also started buying up old speakers to fix again which is where this whole thing really got started years ago. I had given up on finding used speakers at a price I could afford to pay and then fix up and sell on. Janet’s PC had Fakebook marketplace on it which had nice things close by and I have started using it. I figure that jerk zuckerterd can get all the data he wants from my deceased wife’s pc and no doubt find it useful. I will have some projects involving used speakers I will be posting on as 2026 progresses.

At this time I expect the blog to become far more active and look forward to interacting with my speaker friends in 2026 and on. In the mean time I hope that Christmas was good for each and every one of you and that New Years will be too as you safely usher in the New Year.

Regards Dave,

And thanks everyone for your patience.

The Beauty of Wood

    One of the things that I find fascinating with machining is the idea of cutting anything within reason. One day I got to thinking about wood horn lenses and what they would look like.

    I have 56 acres of mostly woods and used wood to heat shop. In the process of cutting for the heater I have seen many interesting pieces of wood over the years. I saved some with no idea as to what I would do but they were to pretty to throw out. In the mean time I had begun cutting the SMAHL and LMAHL tweeters in aluminum and when people on the Klipsch forum saw these they started asking about wood.

    Cutting wood is a different animal than metal and there was a learning curve. The V1 type lenses were cut in Walnut and Red Oak. This choice of wood was based on the veneer types Klipsch used on the vintage speakers I like so well so I used the same for my tweeters.

     Walnut cuts like a dream and is smooth enough to not need further work unless you require a perfectly smooth surface. I have coated them with Satin Spar Polyurethane with very good results as is when finished with just a little hand buffing with a scotchbrite pad. Red Oak however is a different story and with it’s much coarser wood grain and pore size was a nightmare to get even close to good. No matter what there were always some pick outs with this. Liked the wood grain pattern appearance it had though.

    One thing leads to another and there have now been perhaps six or seven variations on these lenses to arrive at the current one which I do not expect to change in the future.

    There is a huge variation in wood and I find a lot of it quite appealing. Here for instance is a set of Walnut Crotch SMAHL V2’s cut recently which turned out well.

 

DSC_0101

Black Walnut Crotch Wood SMAHL V2

      In case you are wondering wood does not change the sonic characteristics of these tweeters and these are cut with the exact same geometry as the aluminum ones and indeed the same cut paths with the feeds and speeds modified only.

     One of the other ideas I am kicking around is building complete speakers and cutting mid range horns into the motorboard. It will be a while before I get these done though as first is building and testing and figuring the best way to cut to allow for minimal to little hand prep of surfaces.

    small wwood mid

  Sorry about the glare on the LMAHL V2 but I did not have time to redo the picture. In any case the main item of interest is the mid range horn  cut into stacked and glued 25mm Baltic Birch which I am a huge fan of. Folks if you are going to ever make a speaker and want it to be durable and sound right and be good looking you cant beat Baltic Birch. This would get an Atlas Pd-5vh driver and have an aluminum mounting plate to the horn. Now I may or may not build this as it was a test run but I think it is part of cutting in wood and a work on progress. I will have more on this mid horn topic soon in a separate post.

 

  In any case just letting you peek behind the curtain at some things I will have finished and up for sale soon and planting seeds for the future. I might start offering exotic wood cut to order for the SMAHL’s in addition to the Walnut soon to be out there.

  Sadly at this time I do not thing the LMAHL’s will be offered in wood as the .20″ thick flange is too thin to be durable as a drop in replacement for Klipsch in existing motorboard cutouts.

  Until next time and some other variations of the tweeters lenses for specific Klipsch situations.