Bobby Beck: Iv'e heard more than 1 person say that they love the Selenium drivers. McCauley is a great product, probably cost/worth more than the Eminence too. one of my grills is actually split and has a crack in the metal! I have no idea, but something sharp must have hit it pretty hard. no damage to the speakers though.I doesn't look too bad. I painted mine too.
Bobby,
I first heard about the Selenium drivers from a fellow forum member via his website where he was talking about using their 2" throat drivers with a custom horn, and he was very complimentary of them. I figured if the 1" had similar engineering it might be sonically in the ballpark with these Klipsch/Eminence pieces. I initially got just one to load my center channel horn. That side of the room already had 3 15's and 2 12's for the bass, and one was a 15" subwoofer run through a BBE sonic maximizer/crossover, so I just wanted to fill the middle a little bit and anchor the soundstage, and it worked perfectly for that. I tried a Tannoy full-range speaker in that spot and it was so near worthless I can't tell you, so HF driver/horn via a High-pass filter and a little center channel blending network designed by Paul Klipsch is the way we do center channel at my house. As to the McCauley woofers, you're probably right. The prices on what specs nearest to what's in those cabinets now is around $300. per woofer, and I only paid $350 for the pair initially...and invested a lot of time tinkering and tweaking. It was definitely worth it.
My grills had little dents and big places where the finish was scraped off, but no holes. The metal had the look almost of brass or bronze. Take them suckers to a body shop and they could do a little of that big-stick solder thang and with a little finessing of the little holes with a small triangular file you would have a fix that no one could see, and it would not rattle. I don't know what to do with those pit-bull-chewed corners. Maybe bondo/auto body filler. Drill a few shallow holes with divergent angles in the cabinet material and force the bondo into those holes first, then put on the rest, and when it dries you couldn't knock it off with a sledge-hammer, because it would be locked on. I bet you could cut a corner off the bottom of a waxed milk carton and just about make yourself a form for the bondo, then rasp/file/sand down to a good contour. Fiberglass orthopaedic cast material would be the next good thing to try. Wear gloves, as that stuff sticks to air. A medical/surgical supply house would be a source. The real challenge is going to be re-weaving that rat-fur. Maybe one of those hair extension places would be of help??
I had a bunch of the machine screws that hold the horns in missing on mine. They have the same machine screw at Lowe's, but a little longer, no problem with that, just have to root around and find it for yourself. Some of the grill standoffs were gone, so I found a piece of thick-walled fuel hose and cut some my own self. They are not plastic/bakelite or whatever, but they do work!!
Good luck with your '02's. You are definitely going to like them, and they will fit in nicely with your other Klipsch pieces sonically.
Chuck/Doc