Cabinet supplier for KLH, Advent, Bose, EPI and Acoustic Research

[DaveD]

In reply to another post which poses the question of what company manufactured cabinets for KLH and Acoustic Research, I wrote that I remembered being told that it

was a company in my home town of Jasper, Indiana. The company is now called Kimball International. The name comes from the W.W. Kimball piano company which was purchased by the Jasper Corporation in 1959. They manufactured pianos and also electronic organs under the Kimball brand name. The company also had other lines and did contract work.

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/IP.Boar...?showtopic=5132

After getting a "we don't know" answer from the public relations department of the company, I contacted the wife of the former CEO and present Chairman, Doug Habig. His family is one of the principals in the company. She wrote back to say that the Stylemasters division of the Jasper Corporation did make cabinets for KLH, Advent and Acoustic Research. She suggested that I phone Dick Lampert, who managed that division during the 1960s, to get some details.

Mr. Lampert was happy to talk about his company's work for the hi-fi giants of the day. After he had been at Stylemasters for a few years, they contracted to supply wood veneered cabinets to KLH in 1962. This venture was a success for both companies and in a couple of years Stylemasters started supplying cabinets to Acoustic Research. When Henry Kloss left KLH to form Advent, cabinets were supplied to that new company by Stylemasters from the very start. Dick also mentioned supplying amplifier and receiver cabinets to H.H. Scott and others. Bose also became a customer during this time period. When EPI started, that company contracted with Stylemasters for cabinets. Stylemasters perfected the tight sealing technique for acoustic suspension cabinets and a testing procedure for finding and rejecting leaking ones. Stylemasters had special assembly lines and conveyors for the speaker cabinets.

The best customers for wood veneered cabinets were KLH, Advent, Bose and EPI. Stylemasters may not have made all cabinets for these companies, because it was in the interest of the speaker manufacturers to always be looking for another supplier and a better price. But, it was a very large volume of business and many, many different models over many years time. For Acoustic Research, Stylemasters made a much lower amount of their cabinets for only a couple of years. This company was not as interested in marketing quality wood veneered cabinets as the other four speaker companies were.

The hardwood veneers became thinner over the years due to cost and this made the manufacturing more difficult and expensive. When the hi-fi companies started to want vinyl wrapped cabinets, Stylemasters built a new plant to accommodate the special techniques needed to produce a good looking vinyl wrapped cabinet.

After Singer bought KLH, they had the idea to have their own Singer line of speakers to sell in sewing centers. These Singer models contained drivers supplied by KLH and were fully assembled at Stylemasters, with help from the Kimball Electronics division. The line of speakers was a flop because nobody shopping for a stereo ever thought to look for speakers at a sewing machine store! I asked if these Singer speakers were exact re-badged versions of regular KLH models or different designs with different drivers, but he wasn't certain of the answer.

Up until 1981, when Dick Lampert left Stylemasters for the corporate main office, a large volume of cabinets were being produced for KLH, Advent and EPI. Bose was also still a customer, but had moved some of its cabinet production to its own Canadian plant at some point. Work for the audio companies continued for some years past 1981. There was a constant flow of cabinets from Jasper to New England for about 25 years. Hundreds of thousands of cabinets. He traveled to meet with customers often and spent time with Amar Bose, Winslow Burhoe at EPI and with Henry Kloss. He was in Kloss' lab during the development of the Video Beam projection TV, right after the screen itself had first been successfully produced.

Stylemasters also manufactured television cabinets for the major brands for many, many years.

Mr. Lampert told me that he is available to answer in more detail any questions about his work with these companies, if he is able to remember. Apparently no records have been kept. He doesn't want me to post his phone number, but members of this forum can contact me by personal message. I can relay a message to Dick and help to put him in touch with forum members. So, even though southern Indiana feels like the audiophile wilderness to those of us who live here, woodworkers in Jasper did play a large part in the manufacture of the equipment that we all appreciate.

[Andy]

Dave, Thank you for the information, this detail of info is hard to come by, even though it was only 40-50 years ago.

Andy

[tysontom]

In reply to another post which poses the question of what company manufactured cabinets for KLH and Acoustic Research, I wrote that I remembered being told that it

was a company in my home town of Jasper, Indiana. The company is now called Kimball International. The name comes from the W.W. Kimball piano company which was purchased by the Jasper Corporation in 1959. They manufactured pianos and also electronic organs under the Kimball brand name. The company also had other lines and did contract work.

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/IP.Boar...?showtopic=5132

The best customers for wood veneered cabinets were KLH, Advent, Bose and EPI. Stylemasters may not have made all cabinets for these companies, because it was in the interest of the speaker manufacturers to always be looking for another supplier and a better price. But, it was a very large volume of business and many, many different models over many years time. For Acoustic Research, Stylemasters made a much lower amount of their cabinets for only a couple of years. This company was not as interested in marketing quality wood veneered cabinets as the other four speaker companies were.

DaveD,

"This company was not as interested in marketing quality wood veneered cabinets as the other four speaker companies were." I assume you mean that AR wasn't as interested in marketing quality wood-veneered cabinets as the other companies. I know you are relaying what this fellow told you, but regarding AR, this is incorrect. AR cabinets were, if anything, more expensive to manufacture than any of the other cabinets, such as KLH, EPI, Advent and Bose. The main reasons: (1) AR required the use of extensive bracing inside and (2) AR used solid-stock wood for the cabinet moldings on top-of-the-line models, something that (except for some versions of the Advent) none of the other companies did. This gentleman from Stylemasters may have some hard feelings regarding AR, but the company really didn't use Stylemasters cabinets to amount to anything. The primary supplier (of AR cabinets) was Cab Tech of Nashua, New Hampshire (owned at one time by the family of Senator Warren Rudman), and as many as 10,000 cabinets-per-month were supplied to AR by this company alone. There were other suppliers, as well. These cabinets were principally wood-veneered cabinets in Mahogany, Birch, Walnut, Cherry, Teak, Korina and Utility Cabinets in Ponderosa Pine. By the way, the Walnut veneer mostly came from Indiana, the source of most of the quality American Black Walnut for many years. The Walnut veneer "flitches" were supplied to panel companies (usually not directly to the cabinet companies), formed into 4 x 8 plywood or MDF panels, then supplied to the cabinet shops.

--Tom Tyson

[DaveD]

I have subscribed to the email notification for personal messages and topics. This service is not working for me, with regard to topics for sure, and I do not get the notifications. I have checked my junk mail and my ISP's spam filter. I will return to this topic occasionally as time and physical ability permit.

[tysontom]

Stylemasters perfected the tight sealing technique for acoustic suspension cabinets and a testing procedure for finding and rejecting leaking ones. Stylemasters had special assembly lines and conveyors for the speaker cabinets.

> “Stylemasters perfected the tight sealing technique for acoustic suspension cabinets….”

Well, this might have been true for Stylemasters, but the original acoustic-suspension cabinet was actually perfected long before this by none other than Henry Kloss in 1954 with the original AR-1 and its cabinet. Kloss was responsible for approximately 75% of the mechanical design of the AR-1’s cabinet, although Villchur determined the dimensions, wall thickness, braces, crossover and so forth. What Kloss did was to eliminate the removable cabinet-back and the front speaker baffle-board (standard practice in the 50s and before), and he had these panels glued to the side panels for an integral, air-tight fit. This brilliant method had never been done previously, and all of these first cabinets were very air-tight and did not leak except for the intentional small air leak to equalize barometric pressure. This glued box did pose a dilemma for Kloss, as the conventional method of mounting the woofers was to mount them on the inside of the front panel. There was no easy way to do this with a sealed cabinet (no way to get the driver through the hole to the inside of the front panel), so Kloss engineered a method of cutting an oblong vertical slot in the center of the woofer cut-out hole, and then he fashioned a jib assembly to pass the woofer through the hole into the inside of the cabinet, seal the larger oblong hole, turn the speaker around inside the cabinet and put it in position to be screwed to the cabinet. Kloss struggled with this complicated assembly method; Ed Villchur then figured out the method of simply routing-out a recess for the speaker flange, put T-nuts in place and install the speaker from the front side using Mortite. All AR speakers from the first AR-1 were made this way using machine screws, Mortite and T-Nuts to fasten the drivers in place. I suspect this incident, along with problems with the AR-2 woofer, might have been the beginning of the somewhat sour feelings between the two men that resulted in Kloss leaving AR in 1957.

--Tom Tyson

[DaveD]

Answering some questions that were posted on the AR forum to this topic--

Dick Lampert said that they had their own walnut to use for the speaker cabinets. I knew it to be true that the Jasper Corporation had their own forestry program in the '60s, local mature walnut, and tree planting program called "Timber for Tomorrow". So, the company today may still be using at least some of their own walnut and cutting the veneer themselves.

I have not confirmed this, but it follows that the Jasper Corporation took their own walnut trees, cut the veneer or had it cut for them by a local veneer mill, and made the panels for the speaker cabinets at their Jasper Laminates division. That part of the company is still supplying Kimball and other customers today.

http://www.iswonline.com/ArticleLanding/ta...amp;issueid=240

Mr. Lampert did not mention any special joining technique, but there may have been one. He did say that they added extra glue to all of the seams after the cabinet had been assembled. Careful control of joinery must surely have been required in the assembly.

I am afraid that I caused Tom Tyson, genek and Steve F. to over analyze that bit about Stylemasters and AR. I tried to be diplomatic in describing Lampert's comments about working with AR. The two companies had a disagreement about what could and couldn't be done with natural grained wood and the relationship broke down. That would be another way to say it. Since Pine and Baker or Cab Tech were AR's main cabinet makers, everybody ended up getting what satisfied them, and that is about all of the analysis needed, I think.

As far as solid stock molding on KLH cabinets, my two pairs of 17s have this, and so did the pair of 22s that I had for a short time. I am no expert on KLH cabinet construction.

[soundminded]

I'll bet they didn't build this speaker cabinet.

http://www.audioheritage.org/html/profiles/jbl/paragon.htm

Now that is what I call one hell of a speaker cabinet. And there's more to it than meets the eye.

[boreas]

As far as solid stock molding on KLH cabinets, my two pairs of 17s have this, and so did the pair of 22s that I had for a short time. I am no expert on KLH cabinet construction.

My guess is all Seventeens and all Twenties have solid stock moldings. It would be much harder and less satisfactory to make the cabinets with veneer glued to a base wood molding or to a rabbit in the particle board.

As for Twenty-Twos, I have a pair with solid stock moldings on only one of the cabinets. I have a pair of Twenty-Fours (same as Twenty-Twos) which have solid stock moldings on both.

That almost has to mean that KLH used multiple suppliers at the same time, even for a specific cabinet. Go figure!

John

[JKent]

(1) AR required the use of extensive bracing inside and (2) AR used solid-stock wood for the cabinet moldings on top-of-the-line models, something that (except for some versions of the Advent) none of the other companies did.

Tom,

Sorry to be so contrary , but I believe all of the KLH speaker cabinets--from the little Model 21 extension speaker up thru the huge Twelves--used solid walnut front frames. And of couse the original Model Eight radio speaker was 100% solid walnut. As for internal bracing (I could be mistaken here) I do not recall encountering bracing when I took apart my 2ax, 4x or 7 ARs.

Kent

[boreas]

Tom,

Sorry to be so contrary , but I believe all of the KLH speaker cabinets--from the little Model 21 extension speaker up thru the huge Twelves--used solid walnut front frames. And of couse the original Model Eight radio speaker was 100% solid walnut.

Well, not entirely all. As mentioned, the Model Twenty-Twos I have are a "mixed" pair with one having solid wood moldings and one having veneer-on-particle board front edges. Also, the two pair of Model Thirties I have lack solid wood moldings. In the case of the Thirties the lack of solid wood moldings is probably due to the lack of an appreciable inset to the front panels. They're set in only about 3/16".

John

[dick]

Answering some questions that were posted on the AR forum to this topic--

Dick Lampert said that they had their own walnut to use for the speaker cabinets. I knew it to be true that the Jasper Corporation had their own forestry program in the '60s, local mature walnut, and tree planting program called "Timber for Tomorrow". So, the company today may still be using at least some of their own walnut and cutting the veneer themselves.

I have not confirmed this, but it follows that the Jasper Corporation took their own walnut trees, cut the veneer or had it cut for them by a local veneer mill, and made the panels for the speaker cabinets at their Jasper Laminates division.

Here's a few photos I took of the KLH23s with some sample flitches of walnut (c. 1970) on top. The flitches are about 1/32" thick. With sanding I suppose they diminish to somewhere around 1/64" +. Like the idea of heavy veneers for future sanding/repairs but don't think speaker cabinets veneers are thick enough for serious resanding. It seems special that local forests supplied the Indiana cabinets. Flitch production options were to roll the log and with a knife peel off a continuous sheet of veener, or to slice through a log which produced limited widths of wood but did show the grain as if it were sawn. In any event, the KLH23s here, finished by an unnamed CSP member, are superb.

[Andy]

We're getting a good amount of information on AR, KLH cabinets here. There certainly must have been changes in suppliers in the early years, leading into the high volume era -

Tom, I know you own one of the very first AR-1 speakers made (mid to late 1954) and if my memory serves me, it's cabinet construction is plywood ? Do you have the Speaker Pages link with the photos of this jem ? I myself own a pair of KLH model Six's from early 1958, beautiful 12-ply plywood cabinets....a stark contrast to the mid 1970s model fifty six which had a rather sad cabinet, thin MDF wrapped in vinyl. I don't ee how these could have been be made by the same company.

I know that in the early 1960's, veneered cabinets were the norm for many makers, but by around 1970-72 the costs must have increased to the point where even quality brands like AR, KLH & Advent started covering some models in vinyl.

Since I live 35 miles from Cambridge, MA., I'm always asking folks at flea markets, audio shows, etc. who themselves or if they know a friend who may have worked at AR, KLH. I've meet several people who did work at KLH, one fellow was there in 1959-61 and tells me that solid walnut model Eight radio cabinets were ordered for a stereo version, but it was never made (about 20 inches wide). The emty cabinets were sold to what he thinks was RCA in New Jersey. History lost and found !

Andy

[DaveD]

My guess is all Seventeens and all Twenties have solid stock moldings. It would be much harder and less satisfactory to make the cabinets with veneer glued to a base wood molding or to a rabbit in the particle board.

As for Twenty-Twos, I have a pair with solid stock moldings on only one of the cabinets. I have a pair of Twenty-Fours (same as Twenty-Twos) which have solid stock moldings on both.

That almost has to mean that KLH used multiple suppliers at the same time, even for a specific cabinet. Go figure!

John

OOPS! I just re-read what I wrote and found my typo. I meant to say that I had a pair of 23's for a short time and they did have solid walnut moulding.

[boreas]

OOPS! I just re-read what I wrote and found my typo. I meant to say that I had a pair of 23's for a short time and they did have solid walnut moulding.

And I found my typo as well. There aren't any rabbits in KLH speakers, just the occasional rabbet.