I've enjoyed my La Scala since 1992.I bought a pair of La Scala for about $1700 in Seoul, Korea where all foreign products are 'resonably' expensive.

My La Scala had been driven by a Korean-made 2A3 power amp for 6 years.
It was a great experience in my audio life. Now I began to drive the La Scala with audio research cl30 and sp9 MK2. The sound is unbelivably lively and dynamic. I love that lifelike clear sound.

I consider the purchase of my La Scala some great luck to me.
It brings the 'big' sound of a concert hall into my 'small' listening room.
I'll never make a divorce with my La Scala!

I bought my new, raw Klipsch La Scala in 1978. I have listened to classical music using McIntosh tubes exclusively. I never had the heart to apply a finsh because they looked so good, and now they glow with the natural patina of birch!These speakers are very crisp and clear, but seem to have a slight prominence or even slight forwardness in the upper midrange. This can be easily tamed by applying two sided tape to the inner edge of the wooden inset at the midrange and tweeter horns, and affixing 3/4 inch felt weatherstripping. In my opinion this prominent upper midrange is due almost wholly to cabinet diffraction off the inset of the wood. This mod is completely reversible, but you'll decide to keep it in place.
The bass can be made even better by bringing the speakers out from the sides and corners of the room, and by planting them on cinder blocks. This makes the bass as tight, taut, and quick as you could ever wish. With these mods, the La Scalas are perfect, and render a huge clear sound, and deliver every nuance in the music. Play them loud or soft, chamber, symphonic, keyboard, jazz, organ--Bach to Ellington to Glass, and they do it all. I own a pair of Quads and celestions, but nothing does it like La Scala. I'm moving to a small apartment and must give them up, but they gave me 20 years of glorious music.

I've wanted a pair of LaScalas since the late 70's. But, I never had the cash. When I discovered on-line auctions, I won an auction on a pair made in '78! My wife a& I went out to Virginia to purchase them (wanted to hear them first). When we got there, we discovered that the cabinets were in fair shape (dents, plywood splits, water spots). I was kind of hesitant when the owner said "Man these are 1000 wat speakers!" Oh no, they've been over-driven I thought. He had them hooked up to a REALLY cheap receiver with no CD player or Tape player so I could listen to something familiar. It looked like a wasted trip until I tuned the K-Mart receiver to a classical station. My wife said "Oh they sound good! Let's get them!" (She is a musician who plays Pipe Organ, Acoustic Guitar, Cello, Bassoon and others).
I’ve listened to the new Klipsch models (KLF-30, etc) and find the classic Klipsch speakers are much better sounding and much higher quality. My 21 year old LaScalas perform perfectly. They sound incredible good. For some reason, Klipsch changed the midrange compression driver in 1983 from Atlas to ElectroVoice. I’ve listened to some new EV speakers and thought they sound terrible! I don’t understand why Klipsch would go to a cheaper driver since Atlas is still in business making a compression driver that is very similar looking and performing to the ones in my LaScalas!

In short, if you want what is in my opinion the ultimate speaker, but a pre-1983 set of LaScalas or Klipschorns (if you have the room). You won’t be disappointed!

My well-used pair af La Scalas are the early model Professional Series-- identified by the carrying handles on the sides and the 1/4" phone jack connector on the back panel. I bought them for $800 from a fellow who had used them in his sound system business. The Klipsch La Scala design is a folded horn woofer, and direct radiator exponential horns for midrange and highrange. The sound is excellent with terrific "presence". For the first time I have been able to hear very delicate brush work in the middle of much higher level sound from a base, sax, and piano. The La Scala reproduces a wide range of frequencies (over a very wide dynamic range) without generating significant intermodulation distortion. Even old recordings reveal new material that simply was not audible from "ordinary" speakers.
Base performance has been criticized by some listeners as being a little weak. I'll admit that I thought that, too, for a little while but it finally dawned on me that I had been comparing the La Scalas with other speakers-- not with a live performance. The Klipsch folded horn speakers simply do not overemphasize the low end. Instead, they are incredibly smooth with a gradual drop in amplitude at the low end-- just what you want to maintain excellent phase linearity.
Playing a good CD of "Bach's Toccata And Fuge In D-Minor" reveals how powerful and absolutely CLEAN the base response really is. No audible harmonic distortion on the very low notes (even at high amplitude), this is an amazing pair of speakers.
I also own a pair of Belle Klipsch; these are La Scalas in a different enclosure, but any sonic differences I've noted between the two types is due to the two different listening rooms. I would recommend either design.
One important note regarding amplifiers: the La Scala is a very high efficiency design. Its sensitivity rating is 104dB @ 1 watt, so high power amplifiers must be used at low gain settings. Not because of the speakers' inability to take the power (Klipsch rates them at 300 watts RMS EACH), but in deference to one's eardrums! At low settings on the volume control, however, some amplifiers exhibit significant noise (hum, white noise) and crossover distortion due to the contribution of the power output stage. Low sensitivity speakers require the gain to be cranked up so high that this is masked; it's a question of signal-to-noise ratio. If you are using a high power amp, take care that its low gain performance is OK.
One last thing: speaker connection wires don't matter at all, as long as they are heavy gauge. Ordinary Zip cord sounds exactly the same as the most expensive "oriented crystalline solid OHFC copper" or whatever the snake-oil salesmen are peddling this week. Spend your money on good speakers, not hype.

Well, I hate to ruin a party, but I will cut the bullcrap and say right now that I am not a fan of the Klipsch La Scala or the Belle. As a past owner of a pair of Belle's (the same as the La Scala but in a different cabinet), I owned them for approximately 4 months until I finally decided to sell them.Reason? They sound like, well, horns. Imagine someone talking to you normally and then compare it to if they cupped their hands over their mouths and shaped their hands in a "megaphone" or "horn" shape and then talked to you.
It doesn't sound very normal, does it?
Well, the speakers were very large and heavy and for all their size they just did not have a very good low end deep bass response. Hell, my small Advent A1123's seem to have a deeper bass response than my Belle's did!
The sound had a "honky-ness" or a "horny-ness" to it also that irritated me very much.
Believe me, I tried to love these speakers! They were large,and had a beautiful furniture grade finish to them, but I finally sold the speakers due to the lack of sound quality.
My friend owned a pair of La Scalas that I listened to also, and I thought they sounded pretty much alike.
On the plus side, they got real loud without needing to push a lot of wattage.
But, like the saying goes, I'll take quality over quantity any day.

If Drew is a legitimate reviewer, it is unfortunate that he sold the Belles. I could have helped him get rid of what he describes as horniness. It's quite easy to do and involves removing the ringing of the horn body and energy storage of the crossover.If Drew is another seminar, anti-Klipsch reviewer (I have no reason to suspect that he is) then he could not be brought around to discovering the La Scalla (or Belles) true potential.
First of all, the LaScallas have a smoother mid respsonse than the Belles because the mid horn goes deeper. But in either case, damping the horns and removing a nasty elliptical filter in the tweet path loses the horniness.I have an engineer friend who has designed a reasonable modification to the Belles and La Scallas that extend their low end to 35hz. And I mean a real 35 hz.
Although I must say that people who use the cupped hand analogy to describe horns would never, for instance, stretch a piece of saran wrap and thump it to describe a Magneplanar. My K-horns are the most color-free speakers I have ever owned (I have owned Maggies and Vandersteens and ARs and Dalquists etc)
Paul Klipsch got horn technology a long way from where it was. I know people who can modify his designs and improve many aspects of them. They are the first to admire PWK's genius and acknowledge, like any man-made endeavor, there is always room for improvement.
The LaScallas are good speakers capable of being very good. In my opinion, bettered only by K-horns.

The La Scala has sounded impressive on dynamics and presence- given. But lets' talk about a product that was PRODUCED by Klipsch, and not modified at home. The product you buy for it's asking price has a hot upper midrange, and a horn sound when even moderately pressed. It has a low freqency [sharp] cutoff at 45hz, and the bass sounds THIN. This design [basically from a movie theater setup] has good ideas, but it is outdated, and needs modifications to smooth out and extend. If Klipsch would engineer these things for the here and now:
A servo controlled 15" driver can hit 20hz cleanly. The mid and tweet would have a tractrix diaphragm to eliminate ringing. The tweeter would be extended [like the KG series] to 20khz. Todays digital audio from DVD and CD
Extend from 20hz to 20khz, unlike the old RECORDS of the time that could taper off at 60hz sometimes, and rarely reach above 18khz due to the grooves being ground off by a diamond stylus. Until the LaScala keeps pace with the development of the smaller Klipsch line, it gets what it deserves: 3 stars.

Low distortion, hair-trigger dynamics, high output, ability to sound like actual musical instruments

narrow directionality, lack of low bass

I had a couple of pairs of these over the years and they were very good speakers. The lack of low bass is unavoidable with such a small basshorn and is a reasonable compromise, better to hear 50 clean than 30 dirty. The biggest problem is their narrow mid horn pattern which can cause a fierceness to the sound in some rooms. The substitution of wide pattern EV SM-120A mid horns for the stock ones had a very good effect on these speakers in my room. I've since gone on to Altec and JBL horn gear which I think is smoother sounding and of higher build quality (and is just generally "kooler")however the LaScalas are most excellent speakers and easily better than 99% of what's out there.

Similar Products Used:

Altec VOTs, Altec 605s, Klipsch Cornwalls, JBL horns, EV horns

I purchased my Klipsch LaScala's in 1980 in raw birch. Before buying these speakers, I had brought home several models, but when my wife heard these and said "Buy them!", it solved all problems. The clarity is unsurpassed, the depth of presence is to be felt. Although I did take liberties with the design somewhat in adding a frame around the sides, putting insulation in it and then covering the speaker with 1/4" teak veneer plywood. I also added smoked bronze mirrors to the bass part (hand cut and fitted) and a 1'4" smoked bronze mirror for the top. Nothing detracted from the sound at all and I consider what I have a unique set of Klipsch LaScala's. And to this day the mirrors haven't shattered or come loose. Most of all, the LaScala's (minus my handy work) are purity in the finest form. No coloration of the sound is apparant which is what speakers should be. 19 years later, they still perform as day one. A tribute to Paul Klipsch and his fine folks in Hope Arkansas. And if you ever get a chance, visit the factory! You can spend megabucks on loudspeakers, but sooner or later there is a point of no return. Klipsch has given the best for the investment with the LaScala's.

My choice of speaker was the Klipsch La Scala for three main reasons. First, it´s unbelievable lifely and vivid sounding - specially with 300B and similar single ended triodes. Second, it has always been my dream since youth.
Third, it has some advance in comparison with the Klipschorn regarding the point that a La Scala offers free positioning in your listening room.

Here´s some additional advice for using the La Scala from my personal view.

If you live in a country where the Klipsch is really expensive, compare the costs with the alternative possibility of ordering from an US dealer including shipping costs.
(I have safed DM 3500.- by overseas ordering)

If you drive your La Scala with low output amps, give a chance to very thin solid core speakercable (0.5 mm) with randomised flow of the plus and minus wires (way better in my current system), but not more than 2 metres run. Silver sounds better than copper, but it must be pure!
This is an advice from Allen Wright´s >The cable cookbook<.

Also change all internal wiring (it´s actually stranded) and go for solid core (0.5 mm) when driving less power. When driving higher power up to 100 watts, try (only one) wire plus and one minus, stripped out of an Audioquest Type 4, which is also solid core. Don´t forget the crossover wiring in any case.

Your Klipsch LaScala has a passive crossover, which enables the possibility of biwirng or biamping! Nowhere I had found some discription about this feature!. May be, Klipsch don´t point it out to keep enough distance to the Klipschorn. Biwiring sounds much opener and more relaxed in my system.

To enable biwiring, you must only cut off the wiring which links from the input plus and minus (very right when looking to the back of the speaker) to the very left two terminals of the crossover. Than go with a second pair of speaker cable straight in this new inputs on the very left. Note correct settings of plus and minus. Now, you have one input for the base, and the other one combines mid and high range ways. Enjoy the music...

It would be nice to have the statements from some more La Scala owners right here.
Thank you very much for your interest and sorry for my relatively poor english.