Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater Article

[MakeMineVinyl]

This is a nice article about the legendary Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater A5 and A7 speakers.

I have owned an original pair of A7-500s since I bought them new in the late 1960s: I've reinforced the low frequency cabinet which was constructed of 5/8" plywood and applied massive damping material to the exterior of the 511 high frequency horns. Various active crossovers have been used, but I now use a 2 pole crossover at the original 500Hz; I like the quickness and projection of these lower frequencies from the HF horn. The LF is driven by either a MacIntosh MC240 or Dynaco MKIII and the HF is driven by a highly modified Cary single ended triode amp using 2A3 tubes. I use four 18" JBL subwoofers, each in an 8 cubic foot cabinet and operated in stereo to fill in the low frequencies below around 50Hz where the Altec cabinets start to roll off.

I have two pairs of original HF drivers, 802s with 34647 diaphragms and a franken-driver which is a 902 cast pot assembly with an 802 phase plug (the phase plug on these drivers was originally the plastic "Tangerine" type which I hated).

I eventually became an engineer at Altec Lansing when they were in Anaheim, CA. Needless to say, this was my hog-heaven job.

 

[mhardy6647]

Yeah, there's a reason the VOTs were made for ca. five decades.
There was als a very good article, on the VOT family A5 in Joe Roberts' epochal (and influential) Sound Practices (issue 11). Joe has made the entire run of SP available on a CD-ROM for a nominal price and (AFAIK) still sells them now and again on eBAY. Great reading for Tubes 'n' horns types.

(stylized a bit out of deference to Mr. Roberts' copyright)

Several folks 'round here have reinforced the A5's LF section's front horn with concrete, to good effect.
Gary Kaufman's A5s with 1505/288 treble horns/drivers and Jean Hiraga's XOs are -- still -- some of the most musically satisfying (and best-sounding, not coincidentally) loudspeakers I have ever heard. I've heard a lot of loudspeakers over the past six-ish decades.

Power for the Altecs is provided by a SE 211 stereo amp he designed & built.
His A5s are not particularly structurally reinforced, though, AFAIK.

He did add a couple of subwoofers - as shown above - made from split 210 and loaded with a couple of 515Bs. Last I knew the subwoofers are being run by a couple of MC60s -- a good use for them.

I doubt that it's cost-effective to send a VOT to @amirm to test, though.

The Altecs haved dynamics coupled with an effortlessness that's essentially unmatched by anything else even close to reasonably sized or priced. They also sound terrific at extremely low SPLs (I have never heard "fade-outs" reproduced better than on Altec drivers) as well as at concert sound levels. No mean feat.

 

[mhardy6647]

Looking at your beautiful A5-500 in the OP gave me another thought...
as an aside -- danged Altec products sure are dustcatchers, ain't they?

604E by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Looking at your beautiful A5-500 in the OP gave me another thought...
as an aside -- danged Altec products sure are dustcatchers, ain't they?

604E by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Yes, they can be. On the mouth of the LF horn I have a grille cloth frame which fits in the throat of the horn to keep dust out.

By the way, when I worked at Altec I had an opportunity to listen at great length to a full on A-1X system. From what I remember of my impression at the time, I was somewhat unimpressed. They were in a large room but not a movie theater sized room which is where they should be. There was very little integration of the HF and LF that I heard; sitting down I heard the bass, and I had to stand up to hear any HF. If I owned a movie theater, they'd be just the thing with some hefty subwoofers (the VOTT cabinets were tuned so that the lows rolled off at 60Hz, partially on purpose to reduce hum in early projection amplifier chains). Integration of the HF and LF drivers is one thing I don't like about the A5 - they need a very large room to integrate well, and the LF section is way out-gunned efficiency-wise by the large format HF driver.

 

[mhardy6647]

Integration of the HF and LF drivers is one thing I don't like about the A5 - they need a very large room to integrate well, and the LF section is way out-gunned efficiency-wise by the large format HF driver.

The Hiraga XOs work quite well in that regard -- and Gary's space is quite large (although not the largest home hifi room I've had the pleasure to spend some quality listenin' time in). Indeed, Gary's loft, located over a three-car garage, inspired mine -- albeit one garage bay smaller.

I have the level matching "issue" with my Frankenaltecs, but it's exacerbated a wee bit by the treble drivers currently employed (JBL 2441s).
I get this urge every week or two to swap out the JBLs for the nice pair of 802Ds that live here... but those 2441s are heavy, and I am lazy.

 

[anmpr1]

Very popular loudspeakers in modern-day Japan. A 'legendary' figure, Susumu Sakuma's Tateyama establishment was half restaurant and half audio lounge. Sakuma san's system, which he spent his life working out, consisted of:

Denon DL-102 MC cartridge tracking at 5g
Grace (Shinigawa Musen) oil damped broadcast arm
Garrard 401 on a hand made wooden base.

He made his own tube amps, but his loudspeakers consisted of:

ALTEC: 288 + 288 (Ferrit) Horn : 1005-B Woofer : 515 (Ferrit) Enclosure : 828H Crossover : N1285-8B

Lowther: PM4 alnico with a handmade bass reflex enclosure made of cherry wood. PM6 alnico alnico with a hand made horn. PM6 alnico with a beer keg cabinet. This Audio Vector cabinet has an old PM4 alnico unit working in tandem with a PM2 alnico for reproducing the violin. TPI PM3 alnico driver. It is optimized for harpsichord music.

It was the only system he found that he thought was realistic enough for those old mono records.

 

[Jim Shaw]

I estimate that fully half of any potential hearing loss came from listening to a VOT used as a control room monitor when I was a weekend studio gofor while in high school. It was driven, earthquakishly, by a 20-watt tube amp. Those were the final days of monaural studio recording. The studio engineer, during sessions, insisted on cranking it up to hear every nuance of what was going through his mixing board to the Ampex 350.

I used to bum cigarettes off of the musicians to rip off the filters and stuff into my ears. Today, I'm very thankful I did.

 

[gabo4au]

As a rock-n-roll drummer who got his start playing in redneck bars in the 70s... I've logged many hours hand trucking a set of those to shows! There were no better PA speakers for small bands in those days. After a few years, we added two more bottom cabinets that we built ourselves. We copied every inch of the VOTs and found some suitable drivers, or at least close enough for rock and roll! haha They never sounded as good as the real thing, but it gave us more umph on the bottom end for my 24" kick drum!!

Nothing sounds better to me than efficient speakers! It's hard to find efficient speakers these days, with lots of available power and everyone wanting smaller speakers, they are just hard to come by.

One thing that's not talked about is that less efficient speakers effectively "compress" the sound. With music already so compressed these days, it's just another piece of the "slam fest" that goes on. So it's not just a lower power requirement (which is also nice) but to me it's just a more dynamic and better sound.

 

[restorer-john]

One thing that's not talked about is that less efficient speakers effectively "compress" the sound. With music already so compressed these days, it's just another piece of the "slam fest" that goes on. So it's not just a lower power requirement (which is also nice) but to me it's just a more dynamic and better sound.

So true. All these 6.5" "woofers" in tiny 2 way shoe-boxes pretending to be high fidelity...

 

[EJ3]

So true. All these 6.5" "woofers" in tiny 2 way shoe-boxes pretending to be high fidelity...

8" is a mid-woofer to me. 6.5"? NOT a woofer of any sort, no matter the port!

 

[Chr1]

Lovely...

Would dearly love to hear some of these famous big American horn loaded pro-audio speakers from yesteryear, but being uk based it seems unlikely unfortunately.

I'm a big fan of high sensitivity drivers and reckon the Altecs would be one of the few usage scenarios I can envision for the wee desktop amps like the Topping PA5, so popular with some folks here on ASR.


(Would look cool too...the amp/speaker size contrast!)

 

[mhardy6647]

Lovely...

Would dearly love to hear some of these famous big American horn loaded pro-audio speakers from yesteryear, but being uk based it seems unlikely unfortunately.

I'm a big fan of high sensitivity drivers and reckon the Altecs would be one of the few usage scenarios I can envision for the wee desktop amps like the Topping PA5, so popular with some folks here on ASR.


(Would look cool too...the amp/speaker size contrast!)

Yeah, that island's too small to support too many of them!

Ironically, in several Asian countries, folks (men, typically -- of course) living in homes the size of our bathroom (which is not a large one) will have a pair of A5s shoehorned in someplace!

I'd love a pair but I could literally not get them into my hifi room. Fortunately my Frankenaltec cabinets are partially deconstructible -- which is how I moved them myself when we relocated from MA to NH!

 

[Tom C]

Does anybody know of a place in the US someone can go to hear these?

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Does anybody know of a place in the US someone can go to hear these?

I'm sure there are plenty of people like me who have them, but finding those will probably be exceedingly difficult. They are way 'obsolete' in the audio world, and absolutely a niche interest.

You can find articles like this which feature Altec speakers with some of the VOTT components, but not the crucial short-horn loaded LF cabinet design. Also, companies like this are using vintage Altec Lansing VOTT drivers to design contemporary versions of the speaker.

The unique thing about the VOTT is that the LF and HF horns are naturally time coincident because of the short horn on the LF cabinet, making the vertical plane of the HF and LF drivers identical. Some of today's speakers jump through hoops to get this type of alignment which Altec did decades and decades ago.

 

[gabo4au]

Does anybody know of a place in the US someone can go to hear these?

There are a few for sale on fleabay, after you get them we'll plan a trip over and bring our favorite records

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

There are a few for sale on fleabay, after you get them we'll plan a trip over and bring our favorite records

Keep in mind though that these speakers, being so old and usually thrashed and abused by multiple earlier owners, are usually nowhere near in 'plug-n'-play' condition. They also require rather specialized knowledge (which is dying off with the existing people who are familiar with them) to get them back into usable condition, not to mention several tweaks which enable them to sound competitive with today's designs. If you are considering purchasing a pair, go into it with this warning. As-is, they will probably sound like crap.

I really started this thread more for historical interest rather than implying that buying these speakers was a viable thing to do for other than experienced DIYers or those willing to employ the services of places like Great Plains Audio.

 

[gabo4au]

Keep in mind though that these speakers, being so old and usually thrashed and abused by multiple earlier owners, are usually nowhere near in 'plug-n'-play' condition. They also require rather specialized knowledge (which is dying off with the existing people who are familiar with them) to get them back into usable condition, not to mention several tweaks which enable them to sound competitive with today's designs. If you are considering purchasing a pair, go into it with this warning. As-is, they will probably sound like crap.

Yes I'm aware of that, but sort of took it for granted. Thanks for pointing that out as others might not be aware of these very valid points.

It was really just a snide comment, which I shouldn't do on a public forum, apologies, it was all in good fun.

 

[DVDdoug]

I heard A7s a few times in the 1970s and they were my "dream speakers". Audio memory being what it is, it's hard to say if I'd rate them as highly today but I think I'd still like them, and who knows... I might love them!

The Altecs haved dynamics coupled with an effortlessness

Effortless is a good word... I was working for a sound company and we installed a pair in a smallish theater (a "live" theater, not a movie theater). We had a small amp... I don't exactly remember but it would have been less than 100W... In those days you didn't see 100W amps everyday. They just "easily" went loud without any hint of "stress" or distortion they sounded GREAT!!!

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

I heard A7s a few times in the 1970s and they were my "dream speakers". Audio memory being what it is, it's hard to say if I'd rate them as highly today but I think I'd still like them, and who knows... I might love them!


Effortless is a good word... I was working for a sound company and we installed a pair in a smallish theater (a "live" theater, not a movie theater). We had a small amp... I don't exactly remember but it would have been less than 100W... In those days you didn't see 100W amps everyday. They just "easily" went loud without any hint of "stress" or distortion they sounded GREAT!!!

Vintage VOTTs were rated at far less than the power outputs common today. Off the top of my head, I think the rating of the HF and LF drivers is something like 30 watts maximum. With their extreme sensitivity however, this was akin to a thousand watts through contemporary speakers. The later versions and ones specifically designed for stadium use had higher ratings, but these are totally unsuitable for home use as HiFi speakers.

 

[mhardy6647]

Does anybody know of a place in the US someone can go to hear these?

Several -- but the ones well known to me are all in MA and NH (oh, and my erstwhile Valencias, which aren't quite in the same league, are in RI). My house isn't one of them (I've got the drivers & the horns, but not the cabinets).
Sorry!


EDIT: As a weird aside -- a little fleamarket/charity store here in our (very) small town in NH, shortly before COVID, had a pair of Altec Magnificents. I had to actively resist acquiring them.
The Magnificent was a VOT A7 in a domestically friendly (well...friendlier) box.

(borrowed images)