First of all, sorry for the sucky photography, I realized I really need to clean the lens of my camera.

I went to a friend's house yesterday because he had some Klipsch La Scalas dropped off, they're in transit to someone in TN but they made a stop here first. I hadn't heard La Scalas before, so I was curious to hear how they'd sound.

Here they are:

And a pair of Cornwalls to compare them to:

Group shot. Behind the Klipsches are a stacked Advent pair, refoamed Acoustic Research towers, original Infinity RS1.5 bookshelves, and who knows what else.

First we listened to an Audiosource Tripath amp, the black amp on top with the meters. Frankly, it sucked on the La Scalas, so we used this instead:

6550's running push/pull, about 45wpc, with a Bottlehead Foreplay 2 as a line preamp.

A homebuilt Dynaco ST70 clone - EL34's in PP, 35 watts.

Before this, I had heard a pair of Cornwalls, so I knew what they were like, but the La Scalas just did everything the Cornies did above 100Hz and did it better. A/B'ing the two, I liked the top end of the La Scalas a lot better, it was just so much more revealing and airy. They didn't have the bass of the Cornwalls, there really wasn't anything below 55Hz or so, but that's what a sub is for. The Cornwalls really didn't need a sub even for bass-heavy material, but I'd rather have the better everything else of the La Scalas over the Cornies' better subbass

All in all, I think I still prefer the large Altec multicell horns...but those don't work very well with a passive Xover. These can.

I also wasn't a big fan of the Tripath amp. The Bottlehead + 6550 PP combo really showed it up, IMO; if I had a good SET amp to A/B with it it probably would have sounded worse

Nice! I love old school audio equipment.

damn, that's a lot of speakers

very cool

Very nice. There's something to be said for old school high efficiency and tubeage.

Kickass!

I thought Lukas was doing the wall of sound interview?

Nice, perhaps a sale is in order for your friend.

Nice, perhaps a sale is in order for your friend.

That's just one wall...the others are just as packed

Nice, perhaps a sale is in order for your friend.

That's just one wall...the others are just as packed

*Drool*