'Crude.' 'Vulgar.' 'Unrefined.' 'Relentless.' 'Coarse.' These are but a few of the terms which sprang to mind when I sat in front of the Klipsch Heresy loudspeakers. 'Uncivilised.' 'Boorish.' 'Raw.' 'Untamed.' Hey -- I was turning into a 'kin thesaurus, these ridiculously-styled (or, more precisely, utterly unstyled) boxes challenging me for negatives. They went so heavily against the audiophile grain that I thought someone was playing a practical joke. And all the while, in the background, was the spirit of Paul Klipsch, a man so truly deserving of every music lover's respect that I was facing a crisis: could anything bearing his name sound so, so gauche?

The ugliness -- I could live with it. These speakers are, after all, among the longest-lived products in all of hi-fi-dom. But what on earth possessed me to covet a pair when I was a teenager? Was I that inexperienced, that out of tune with natural sound back in the late 1960s? What was I hearing?, overlook it and have no more reason to 'look modern' than does a Mini or a pair of Doc Martens.' These are bu
They look so Fifties, with their carpet-like grilles and ungainly dimensions, that nobody on earth would have the gall to have styled them after the initial appearance of the Braun shaver, the basic Swatch or even the last of the big-finned Cadillacs. Why oh why did I want these over, say, stacked Advents or AR3As or even JBL Decades?

That's because another lexicon springs to mind, a rush of words which probably would have grabbed me when I was eighteen if I knew what they meant in sonic terms: 'Musical.' 'Funky.' 'Outrageous.' 'Gutsy.' 'Ballsy.'

Then there's the most important one: Fun. With an upper-case, capital, 40-point 'F'. Those of you who look at specs and crossover layouts and metallurgy reports and AES papers: buzz off. Right now. This speaker is not for you. The only metallurgy that has anything to do with the Heresy II is heavy metal, and I don't mean from the Table of Elements. This is rock'n'roll, jukebox, ghetto-blaster, 500litre bins, 115dB, Deep Purple, Les Paul Jr, ear-bleeding, anti-social metallurgy. This is a speaker that makes a Cerwin-Vega seem like gy. This is a speaker that's every Gramophone reader's nightmare. It is the Rocky Balboa of hi-fi: dumb, but with the biggest heart this side of Jumbo the Elephant. Or, in keeping with Led Zep, Moby Dick.Working Titles: Ma, I'm Horny. Darn Tootin'

'Relentless.' 'Coarse.' These weII evocativeimpressed''bold, Go home. Run a rusty Gillette blade across your throat. Do it rjuvenile delinquent, If it were a musical, it would be West Side Story. With 'Maria' dropped from the proceedings.

And, as my mid-life crisis deepens and I eagerly return to my youth with even the slightest provocation, I now understand what it is about this Harley-Davidson of a loudspeaker which grabbed me back when Paul still played with John, George and Ringo. It is America writ large. The Heresy is so un-high-end, so 'un-effete' that -- in order to appreciate it -- you first have to adore such things as Chevy V-8s, a week in Las Vegas in a motel, a greasy hamburger, Roller Derby, Lucky Strikes without filters, pool halls, WFW wrestling and Brylcreem

It's not really enough to tell you that the current Klipsch Heresy II measures 543x394x337mm (HWD) and that it weighs 16.8kg. Or that the squat, dumpy casket of a cabinet houses three Klipsch-made drivers, including a 12in K-24-K woofer in its own sealed enclosure, a K-53-K compression driver/horn assembly for the midband, or a K-76-K horn-loaded super tweeter -- all of which look like they should be encased in amber they're so 'vintage-looking'. (Example: The K-5 Series first saw the light in 1952, the same year that this KK was born.) You'll only nod knowingly at the intrinsic backwardness of this design when I tell you that the rear panel sports but one pair of terminals; no bi-wiring for this Son of the South.

Far more important, though, are some numbers which -- whether you're a tweak, a headbanger or a lab technician -- will reveal almost all that the Heresy has to offer. This 8 ohm system delivers 96dB for one watt at one meter and it tops out at 116dB, handling 500W peaks with aplomb. Or, as at Chez Kessler, the might of Krell MDA-300 monoblocks without flinching.

Mistaking it for a PA speaker is easy: it sounds like one. No matter what you do to it. £40,000 worth of the finest electronics and cables made little difference to the sound quality; the big Krells merely allowed me to annoy my neighbours to far greater effect than would, say, a wee valve amp of the correct vintage. Installation was a nightmare for those who don't want bass which calls to mind what Jonah must have heard when his temporary housing felt a bit peckish. Or, worse, constipated. Rumble all the way, like the Sharks vs. the Jets.

So I got 'em up off the floor, but only by placing them on top of the Harmonix Elephant's Feet. No spindly stands for this system, which uses the room the way a squash player aims at the playing area's boundaries. But I was presented with the wierdest phenomenon I've experienced since first using the Chesky LEDR test for image height. Ol' John Crabbe is gonna love this one; then again, I don't mind giving the old bugger something about which to complain.

Set up the Klipsches as per instructed, low to the ground like an East LA Pontiac. Listen at civilised levels. The sound, and therefore the images, stay down on the floor, little Munchkins of music, weaving around your feet. But crank the volume control around past the sanity mark, and the images grow, rising up above the enclosures like King Kong overlooking the Manhattan skyline. I kid you not. The performance of this system relates strictly to the playback levels. Ask 'em to whisper, and they shrug, barely acknowledging the listener. A rocket up the arse, and way-hey -- you could fill Shea Stadium.
and precise negatives. The Klipscheseven than dost of the big-finned Cadillacs.

They're derived from what started out as a centre-channel speaker, back in the early days of stereo when designers filled the hole in the middle with another transducer. They weren't even full range when they first appeared as the Model H. A dealer was told by Klipsch that he wanted to turn it into a full-range three-way. The dealer said that that would be heresy. And so it was named.

I could sense're genuinelytried to ''(Talk about being 37 years ahead of one's time...) Probably which mighten if I knew what they meant ally

Pee on the third rail. which grabbed me back when JohnPaulAnd that has nothing to do with Hope, Arkansas, also being the home of super-wimp Bill Clinton, who's about as Klipsch-like as the Queen Mother. itsbecause driver :much of wWith the grilles removed, it looks like one. effect than I could withI Boom. Flatulence. Vi a fortz in rossel.

5in-tall fanaticFirst, you sloor, little musical Munchkinswell And I even tried tilting them back, so the speakers were aiming up, having learned that the company produces plinths which do the same thing. Didn't matter. All the Heresies need to reach a stage of total tumescence is power enough to break free, Hercules Unchained, Steve Reeves circa '61 with badly dubbed English over Italian.

Lest I start sounding like a snob, please note that -- however sniffy I am about certain aspects of life -- I do have the capacity for a laissez faire attitude. Much though I despise, say, Norman Wisdom and Russ Abbott and Bullseye and Pot Noodles and Eurovision , I'd be the last person to stop others from indulging. And so onto a speaker which defies all that been preached for at least two decades.

I understand the need for alternative tastes and preferences.rap and quartz watches and , a product which is, in many ways, the National Enquirer, supermarket tabloid of loudspeakers

Subtlety was ruled out immediately. Delicate vocals from my favourites females singers, acoustic guitar from the Water Lily catalogue -- forget it. The effect was like sprinkling sand onto an oyster before swallowing. But, as I'm unashamed of my curder tendencies, I turned to Danzig and the Dogs D'Amour and grungy old soul recordings and mono James Brown artefacts and Jerry Lee Lewis and the Sex Pistols. I ran the Krells to tropical, waited until the office next door was shut for the day, took the phone off the hook and found a jar of Tylenol. I ran the old Tandy SPL meter off the scale.

Midland Radio Supplies sounds like the kind of charming, olde worlde company which wouldn;t have been out of place in the pages of this magazine when it was fringed in yellow. A chat with Mr Holdsworth is a respite from the hustlers who make up today's hi-fi community. He will not be charmed or even remotely in sympathy by what I have to say. It's just taht the Heresy is one hooligan of a speaker.

Fun? It was Saturday night at Frye Hall, 1968. Freddy Haines was break dancing a dozen years too soon, the girls wore angora and the speakers in the PA were held together by masking tape. Humid? They could have charged extra for the free sauna. But it was unbridled rock and roll. Loud and solid and palpable, not just in your ears and face but up and down your spine. The Heresies are for music lovers who will not compromise the visceral aspects of music with any of what the rest of us call virtues. Refinement, delicacy, detail. This is all mere tosh. Or, as ZZ Top would say, tush. However majestic and noble the full-blown Klipschorn may be, however cucumber sandwichy it seems when driven by a pair of cosseted Class-A 300Bs, its tiny sibling is the other side of the gene pool: a savage beast. It has as much right in a hi-fi system as a Land Rover has being parked next to a Lotus.

And I'll tell you something else: anyone who gets his or her jollies with home theatre will find these just the ticket for realistic levels from a small box. And to think they started out as centre-channel systems...

I now understand what that 'V' in the Klipsch logo means: it's two-fingers raised at audio's wimps.

All this from a speaker which sells for £830-£870 per pair depending on finish. Talk about maximum bang for the bucks.Minus the handles. nstallation iwhat comes nextos ngelesto them simaging at me and therefore approves of this method Crude but effective.accept that there are, and I can do nothing about it which doesn't fall under the same category as genocide. in these lesser distractions/the Heresies had on such music uburied the needle on 'nity. He will not be etictoa, inexcapably, sweaters hall's, physicalregard as they and a diet of classical, this fromhorHyde to the K-Horn's Jekyll. And yet it Horses for course. Or, in this case, wild mustangs.

The Heresies neither obscure nor lose subtle details. The sound is all there, the imaging three-dimensional when the right levels are reached. Coloration? The sound acquires a bright sheen, an edge. But it's all present and accounted for, in your lap and up your nose and on the floor and up the walls. This is a speaker for permanent 18-year-olds. it is, quite simply, very, very naughty. And because of that, I adore it.