Mangist,
If you go to the Klipsch forum there is a member named Moray James. He has posted extensively on Klipsch mods. I did them all on my Forte I.
-Deaden horn bodies and woofer struts with dynamat or a substitute. A car renovation shop often will have a generic Dynamat that you can buy much cheaper, in a sheet. I used a 2”x2” piece on the inner and outer aspect of EACH strut on the Forte woofers. You’ll probably need 3”x3” or slightly larger on the 15” Chorus woofer struts. Fit one, precut the rest, and lay them out. Makes it quick and easy.
-On the outside chance you are in So Cal I can give you some spare Dynamat I have left over.
-On the horn bodies, leave about a 1/2” space b/t the front flange of the horn body and your matting so they fit back in properly. Otherwise the front cabinet baffle gets in the way.
-Brace cabinets with three 1”x3” wood struts going from front to back. Again, get a good first piece and them pre-cut the others. Some people screw them in to draw the cabinet together (not unlike Monitor Audio’s use of a single long screw going from the back of the cabinet to the center of the driver motor). You don’t have to do that. Just get a tight fit and use Gorilla Glue, which expands substantially as it dries. Put one brace centered between mid and tweeter (laid flat so it doesn’t get in way of horn bodies, and two-oriented upright on either side of the woofer-but spaced slightly wide between woofer and mid.
I used a small level and a rubber mallet to tap each piece into proper orientation.
-add a little weight to the back of the passive woofer, a 2oz washer on the Forte passive tunes it down even lower. Moray could advise on the Chorus.
-Get titanium replacement diaphragms from Bob Crites for the tweeters, smooths them out. 15 minute job and not costly.
-Bob also sells matched Sonicap capacitors for the crossover, again very affordable. I initially did a recap but a problem with one of them (I didn’t notice the original owner had mixed and matched Forte I and Forte II crossovers!) led me to buy the entire crossovers from Bob. Don’t even hassle with testing the old caps. Just get the ones from Bob. He’ll prematch them. Bob ships immediately and uses priority mail, so you would get the parts quickly. I’d order them today and have them by Saturday if I were you.
Go ahead and seal the rubber grill grommets with some silicon. You know you have a good seal if you can gently push on the front woofer and see a response on the passive.
As @Mahlman notes, there are a lot of easy mods. For probaly under $900 your modded Chorus will go toe-to-toe against $5-8k speakers. I’ve had my modded Forte in a shootout with the big boys, and it was usually a win, at worst a draw between comparably good but different “flavored” speakers.
All hail PWK.
