Altec Lansing

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#121
panomaniac said:


Yep, Honolulu's like that. Traffic even worse than Atlanta - but not as fast.

Couldn't believe how dark it was when we moved over to Maui. We live "in town" and can sit in the yard and clearly see the Milky Way. Go down to the beach and it's super dark. Skies are amazing. I ride my bike home from work at Midnight everyday, the night sky is always a treat.

For the comb filtering, are you talking about the multicell horns? I've always wonder about that, how do those darn multicell things work? In my experience with them, I sure didn't notice any comb filtering. In fact, they were the best sounding horns I've ever heard. The 1505s, that is. My experience with the big 1803 is limited. It certainly has its fan, tho.
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Greets!

Worse?! Hotlanta is basically a parking lot for a high percentage of the day, but you're right, when it's moving it's usually moving at high speed and combined with cell phones stuck to most folks ears, why the accident rate is so high.

Sounds wonderful, I haven't seen truly dark, starlit nights since they started building up South Ga./North Fla. in the '70s.

Right, each cell + common throat + driver approximates a dustcap shod HE 'FR' driver of equivalent Sd, so just think of all the standing waves, overlapping BWs and discrete beaming going on, especially with one with as big and many cells as the 1803.

The 1505 is bad too, particularly in stereo due to its wide coverage angle creating excessive early reflections off side walls in all but the largest typical HIFI listening rooms. Up to a point all the multi-cells are incredible performers, but for HIFI they ideally need to be BW limited to their actual gain BW and let a CD tweeter do what it does best to complement it. IIRC, the pics I've seen of the system you auditioned used JBL 'baby-cheek' tweeters. Did they have them in your time?

GM
 
#122
Re: The Mod!

matt28sr said:
I came across this pair of Altec Lansing 508 towers at an estate sale about 7 or 8 years ago.

Now the 508s are not the horn loaded beauties from years before. But they are still beauties in thier own right. They utilized two carbon fiber 8" woofers and shiny, crome-silver domes for midrange and tweeter.
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Greets!

508 towers? Are these Spark-O-Matic speakers marketed as A-Ls?

GM
 
#123
Yes, easily amused sums me up pretty well.

I like the idea of putting the tweeter in the middle but it looked goofy. As it sits, the twin towers look majestic. They're a thing of beauty😉

I wasn't happy with the cone break up of the woofer so adding the mid has looked after that.

As far as SQ, the D205 tweeter is fine. It's not great but it does the job and being titanium, I was happy to XO it a little higher. The 250 mid is an inexpensive phenolic so again, it's not the end all but it does the job.

Besides, critical listening is the last thing I would do with these. I'm really just looking for a balanced sound that's low on fatigue.

Something like "loud is beautiful if it's clean"
 
#124
Cal Weldon said:


Do you hear from Guy much? Haven't seen him for a bit. I just loved the racing set on the A4's.

My double horn A7 is getting better. I think I'll slip a notch in there and tone down the 1-3K area but all in all it's 'sounding' promising.
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Greets!

I don't hear from him at all, and between the Altec forum either being bog slow and/or down so much combined with my audio on-line quality time being virtually nil lately, I haven't kept up, nor have I compiled the various speaker designs data I promised over a month ago to send to Marty to draw up. 🙁

Cool! Here's some 311-90 A5 variants with a 511 perched on top, though I don't have a clue what the XO points are:

GM
 

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#125
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: that's fun ...

Zen Mod said:



I posted that from really old scan;
if someone is interested,I can scan it tomorrow again......or .....I'll put whole article on my temp web
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Please do, I heard about Jean Hiraga's x-over design, yet to see the schematic. Was not able to open the zip, damn computer!
Cheers😀
 
#128
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: that's fun ...

GM said:


Greets!

It's for the A5, so will require some tweaking to work with an A7. BTW, here's the schematics as a pdf: http://web.archive.org/web/20041111094232/http://www.soundpractices.com/images/HiragaA5.pdf

GM
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If these schematics were for a 416/808 A-7, I'd be very tempted to give them a go. The cost of the large inductors is one other factor in keeping me from giving it a try, plus my almost total lack of knowledge and skills in x-over design.
Cheers 😀
 
#129
Cal Weldon said:
What we used to call "race car sets" Another member is heavily into it and our beloved GM has been involved in the past. He can correct me if that's wrong.
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Greets!

I resemble that remark 🙂, though except for my initial 'toy' set and a stint developing some hi-perf HO cars that were marketed as Aurora AFX 'Magnatraction' racers, I spent my 'career' involved in designing, developing, racing 1/24 commercial and large home track racers up to, and including, pro Group 7. When age finally got my one good eye and poor initial medical care of a serious neck injury caused some long term nerve degeneration issues in my arms, hands that degraded my hand/eye coordination too much ~7 yrs ago, I gave it up along with speaker building and just about everything else that required these physical attributes. 🙁

So here I sit, a 'talking head', getting my DIY 'fix' as best I can through the efforts of others that are willing to build/tweak/critique my designs.

Speaking of which, one of the things I never got around to was a higher SQ 210/211 horn optimized for home apps to replace mine and it's looking like someone's going to give it a shot, complete with build docs, pics, etc., so for those with the space and four 515s or similar spec drivers laying around, stay tuned............

GM
 
#130
Cal Weldon said:
Hi GM,

Is the A5 cabinet narrower than the A7?

Was the 311 part of it referring to the horn?
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Greets!

No, they are one and the same beginning around the mid '50s. Before that it was mini-210 sized (see attached).

Right, the big horn that ~looks like a 511 is actually a 311-90, the large format driver cast alum. version of the W.E. 329A 300 Hz sheetmetal horn. The relatively puny 511s are spaced up in wood boxes above these and offset to the rear to apparently align the VCs.

GM
 

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#131
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: that's fun ...

Grasshopper said:


If these schematics were for a 416/808 A-7, I'd be very tempted to give them a go.
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Greets!

If your 808s still have their original Symbiotic M.I. diaphragms and these are for HIFI, the first place to spend your money is by getting new ultralights from GPA, which are much smoother, with greater HF extension.

Which stock XOs do you have?

GM
 
#132
No stock XOs, originals were stolen and replaced by after-market ones which sounded like crap. The ones I cobbled together last weekend are so much better that I find myself staying up late into the night just enjoying the music.
Will look into GPA's ultralites.
G
 
#133
GM said:
Right, each cell + common throat + driver approximates a dustcap shod HE 'FR' driver of equivalent Sd
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Makes sense, but it sure didn't sound that way. Smooth as silk, very "real" sounding.

The 1505 is bad too, particularly in stereo due to its wide coverage angle creating excessive early reflections off side walls in all but the largest typical HIFI listening rooms.
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That may be why they worked so well for me. Never heard them in a small room. Medium to large room, to jazz club, to ballroom, to outdoor. Listening distance was often close, tho. ~3 meters. Very palatible 3D image. No close your eyes and imagine stuff.

IIRC, the pics I've seen of the system you auditioned used JBL 'baby-cheek' tweeters. Did they have them in your time?
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Correcto! But when I used them it was bullet tweeters, JBL 2402, IIRC. Don't remember what the crossover was like, execpt passive and massive. 2nd order, I think. Many times I simply didn't hook up the tweeters. Sounded fine to me. I could always "hear" the tweeters, they sounded good, but not real. Maybe I should have just turned them down. 🙂
 
#136
Breaking news WRT Altec forum...........

Hostboard, BlackWidow4x4, Thrasher4x4, pwrhouse domains's are back online
Bad News:
The Hostboard datacenter was recently broken in to and although nothing was stolen, the site was litterly smashed in to pieces.


Good News:
All hard drives are in tact so the last few days I have been scouring for resources to be able to mount the hard drives to off load the data and get things back to normal. In the mean time I needed to also secure a new hosting solution.

At the present time the ETA for Hostboard to come back online at 100% will be Thursday (12/21/06) evening as long as all the hardware arrives on time.

My sincere appologies to everyone for this latest outage as this past month things have not been as stable as normal.

Steven
Owner, Hostboard.com
 
#137
Just sent an e-mail to Bill at GPA for a quote on the price of new diaphrams. Anyone have a rough guess on the cost?
Reading a thread on another forum about x-overs, someone suggested anyone using Solen caps must be hard of hearing. Well, my hearing is just fine and my wallet is still fat. I would love to try some of the high end caps but the prices are just insane for some! Here a link to a cap shootout, some of you may have seen it.

http://www.vhaudio.com/21capacitorshootout.pdf

Cap values needed are 16mfd and 33mfd, based on some of the prices in the shootout, could buy a car for what it would cost for the caps I would like to replace!
Cheers
 
#138
Grasshopper said:
Just sent an e-mail to Bill at GPA for a quote on the price of new diaphrams. Anyone have a rough guess on the cost?
Reading a thread on another forum about x-overs, someone suggested anyone using Solen caps must be hard of hearing. Well, my hearing is just fine and my wallet is still fat. I would love to try some of the high end caps but the prices are just insane for some! Here a link to a cap shootout, some of you may have seen it.

http://www.vhaudio.com/21capacitorshootout.pdf

Cap values needed are 16mfd and 33mfd, based on some of the prices in the shootout, could buy a car for what it would cost for the caps I would like to replace!
Cheers
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nah......just find some nice ole oilers and enjoy.......that will give ya ,with new dias, right mix of lightning speed and mellowness 😉
 
#139
I just checked a few other things on that site. His power cords sound better than others. He must have an old cash register. Ring ring. I'll leave the order for the power cables until after I get the power people here to change from 50Hz to 49Hz. The the Gs won't beat with the mains then.

Jeez, I forgot to save the PDF, or bookmark the site.

Geoff.
 
#140
Grasshopper said:
Just sent an e-mail to Bill at GPA for a quote on the price of new diaphrams. Anyone have a rough guess on the cost?

Cap values needed are 16mfd and 33mfd, based on some of the prices in the shootout, could buy a car for what it would cost for the caps I would like to replace!
Cheers
Click to expand...

Greets!

Well, I paid $62.40/dist. net for my pair in 2/76 and according to an on-line inflation calculator they would be ~$175 today, so I figure they should be somewhat more since they're ~hand made to order.

Motor run caps were good enough for W.E., RCA, et al, so they're good enough for me and cheaper than a trip to Mickey D's: http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/N2DRVSH?SISECT=0002007211

GM
 
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