Klipsch!. The worst speaker company, EVER?

I bought  a pair of H1 speakers when I first started to get in to high end audio. I liked them. They were good for the price. Eventually I moved up the ladder to different equipment. I Gave them to a friend who is still using them with a Fisher 500C receiver and they still sound good. I have seen and heard these speakers in bars and clubs over the years and they are fun to listen to. They are not like the high end speakers made today but when I hang out playing pool and having a beer in my friends basement, they are lively and fun in that atmosphere. Chillin and not critically listening. Great party speakers.

To understand why Klipsch speakers (whether K-horns or Heresy) are so polarizing it is important to recognize that most all speakers do SOMETHING well. I feel I can speak with authority about the Klipsch corner horns because I owned a pair for 8 years in the '70's in a 30' room driven by everything from an Advent receiver (15 wpc) to a Crown DC300. What they had was dynamic range. Compared to the acoustic suspension speakers that were in fashion at the time the horns jumped out at you and had a HUGE presence. They were really a PA speaker, like many JBL's. The midrange would become very fatiguing in short order and the highs were like razor blades across your eardrums, but they filled my room with effortless power, even from 15 wpc. My friend, a trombone player, had Heresy's (and still has them). He likes them because they accentuate the frequency range the trombone occupied; warm and woofy. You pays yer' money and you takes yer' choice!

@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.