I am 18 and will be a sophomore at University of Washington and have just recently gotten really into the Klipsch sound. My first pair were the promedia 2.1 then I convinced my parents to buy the RF-25's when they were on Woot. I have been scouring craigslist for the past 2 months looking for some good Klipsch speakers and today a pair of La Scalas were posted to be on sale at a garage sale on Sunday for $500. What should I be looking for if I audition them? I will be powering them with a Onkyo TX-8511. Thanks.

welcome to the forum. you should put your ear to each of the three drivers to see if they are working. 500 would be a great price if the cabs are in good condition and all the drivers work. they usually sell for 700-900 in good condition. good luck and hope you get them

 What Budman said then...perfect college party speakers.

Wear out the forum search function to learn all you can; what to inspect for, different networks, etc...

My guess is they are gone.

$500 is a good deal (if in decent shape).  Can you get over there ahead of time to take a peek and maybe post a picture?

Thanks for all the feedback. I just emailed them to see if I could check them out before the sale and even pick them up. I saw a pair of Fortes for $450 on craigslist. For a college student seeing as how it looks like they have a better low end do you think they might be a little better or do you think if I just added a subwoofer with the La Scalas that it would be fine?

If you've got enough room, La Scalas and a sub will be better than a pair of Fortes.

So I went to go see them and they looked ok. The cabinets had a fair amount of scratches and the corners were pretty worn. When he played them for me I could hear all the drivers but there was a hiss when nothing was playing that was barely audible. I am guessing it was the receiver he had or the fact that he was using the headphone output of a ghetto blaster to use its cd drive. I will post more pics. I did not realize how massive these speakers were. There were 2 holes drilled in the top of each cabinet because it was hung from a ceiling from a hotel from which it was rescued by the owner. My gut is telling me that I don't want to spend $500 on something this banged up and this used. What do you guys think is a fair price? The serials are consecutive. Would it be very hard to sand and refinish these? Thanks again.

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In answer to your first question: I think $500 is a great price. Prices have been recently depressed, but this is still a good deal. I am biased in that I do not worry that much about a few scratches (not sure what to think about the holes on top however).

In answer to your second question: Refinishing them would be more work than you realize, especially if you have not done that sort of thing before. The job would be very time consuming since things need to have multiple steps of applications/sandings/ drying times etc. It is easy to underestimate the time involved to do a decent job and to do a great job is even worse.

You are probably right about the hiss being a function of the source and not the speaker. However, that does raise an interesting point about high efffeciency speakers. They are very revealing of any other flaws in the system.

Have you listened to them? Did you like them and was there sufficient deep bass? Unless the cabinets are very rough, I doubt they will last very long at that price.