If you have the room - a pair of Klipsch Heresys are hard to beat. New H3's will run you closer to $2k, or you can shop C.L., like I did last autumn, and find a nice vintage pair for a fraction of that. Classic speakers - classic sound - and sensitive, too.
OP for old school Klipsch forget the poor Klipsch mans Hershey's and start with
Klipsch Cornwalls or better or moreover the Crites modified same the Klipsch Heresies were never all that and usually had cheap drivers and horns next to my old school
EV Sentry III block party or large studio speakers out back or my spendy new 3 way JBL pro that all have way better drivers and Horns in EV speakers than any old school Klipsch or even the spendy Khorns have and ever had ,
That said none of the speakers or horns were typical mass market console stereo horrible and cheap and the some of them were fairly decent and all respected brands just not JBL or Altec levels .
Early mid century Klipsch with Stephens and Eminence and somewhat less Jensen were respectable woofers along with the EV horns when they used them and the later CTS woofers , Klipsch K33 variations and Eminence Kappa are decent but not JBL spendy or quality .
OTOH AFAIK the modern Klipsch horns and woofers ain' bad though and maybe better than a lot of the old schools given today's manufacturing processes but Vox int'l or like that owns Klipsch and Energy speaker and they have the touch of tarnish not gold they arent Harmon ,but Harmon just got sold too and they been the quality stewards and designers of some of the best audio on the planet!
Klipsch and his crew was more about the cabinets acoustical design than the drivers and horns , they used whatever they could get from Stephens ,University, CTS, Jensen,Eminence ,EV and maybe Utah and so on but
never JBL or Altec quality but now I believe all that is home grown on the old schools or at least the same in any given pair of speakers like they were back in the day
That said said the old school cornwalls or better and larger were pretty remarkable considering what was in them that wasn't much better if at all aside from the respectable crossovers they always used than some of the best Bi amped or powerful otherwise Magnavox console stereos that had some decent 15" Magnavox and later Utah or CTS woofers and maybe Heppner horns or whatever they could get noting Magnavox invented the dynamic loudspeaker and made them for nearly everybody at one time and something at the~ Heresy level or better similar boxes in the 1970's and justifiably legendary Magnavox Concert Grands were made to each customer's order .
Paul Klipsch and his crew were clever like that and made some remarkable old school speakers and the remarkable to this day K horns with what they could get but The Heresies were never remarkable that was the common ported budget box and not unique Klipsch style and if anthing ever good came out of one before Klispch inside it probably had a Crites Loudspeaker Xover and horn or EV horn
