Wood Tractrix horns will no longer be available directly from ALK Engineering. The Trachorns have always been made by Bill Martinelli of woodhorn.com. Mr. Martinelli has moved on to other endeavors and will no longer be making them.
Dave of Fastlane Audio and I will be working together to develop new horns that we expect will be comparable. We hope to offer both a 1-inch and a 2-inch version for the Klipschorn. Here's a glimpse of the 1-inch version and mounting frame: Fastrac K
A new horn and frame will also be offered to directly replace the K500 horn in the Belle Klipsch without the use of top-section risers.
On the right is a grill frame from a Belle Klipsch. It's the K500 squawker horn, K55V driver and "Z-bracket" K77M tweeter. A frame out of a Klipschorn, on the left, looks the same except everything is a little bigger. It uses the K401 horn and K55M driver instead. Both frames are held to the sides by 4 long screws. The screw positions are marked by red arrows in the pictures. Remove those 4 screws and the entire thing slides out the front! They are very easy to remove and replace.
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The real reason to move to a 2-inch horn is to allow a better driver than the stock K55 to be used. This is why a 2-inch horn is being suggested, not to extend the lower limit of the midrange! There is simply no 1-inch driver that will do! The B&C DCM50 driver is being offered for 2-inch horns. It was designed for the 400 Hz crossover required by the Khorn.
ALK will still be offering the B&C DCM50 2-inch driver which is an ideal driver for use in the Klipschorn. ( $760.00 ) No known 1-inch driver can replace the stock K55V without distortion. This should not imply that a K55 driver should be jury rigged to the throat of a 2-inch horn. This creates a major discontinuity in the throat no matter how it is done. Long conical extensions ruin the tractrix expansion which is itself a discontinuity.
NOTE: If you do decide to replace the K55 with a better driver you should realize that your "stock" Klipsch network will no longer be usable. All of them depend on the natural roll off of the K55 at 6000 Hz to form the crossover. Very few quality drivers do this. They usually operate far higher. This means the squawker and tweeter will both be making a sound simultaneously. Better drivers will normally be louder too. Only the networks from ALK Engineering will do.
The B&C ME10 tweeter and ME10 horn will also still be available from ALK Engineering $115.00 . Another good tweeter is the Selenium D220TI and HM17-25 horn. These are available from Bob Crites. Both of these tweeters have very low distortion even at extremely high levels.