I Missed Out On Vintage Altec Speakers

I saw them yesterday at an estate sale and the guy put on 'Bleeker Street' by Simon & Garfunkel and they blew me away. Unbelievable sound! They were 68' or 69' floor model that were immaculate. He wanted $950. so I asked if the price would drop tomorrow and he said yeah. When I got there this morning there was a sold sign on them. I was sick. I wasn't going to leave there until I cut a deal with him. He sold them for $650. I would have paid that. Does anyone here use or have seen these speakers? Any thoughts or insight would be appreciated. Maybe somewhere I could find a pair of these.

 

I don't know which model you were looking at, but I used A7's and 604e's extensively in the 70's. The A7's were generally used for PA and the 604e's were frequently used as my monitors when mixing monitors or doing live broadcasts. I wouldn't call the 604e's the greatest audiophile speakers, but they were point source and not harsh. They sounded very smooth but were a little soft on the high end. It may seem odd to say that horn speakers were not harsh, but these were not when compared to some the JBL horns we were using at the time. Of course this was very important since I was listening loud and couldn't afford to get listener fatigue. Generally things mixed on them sounded pretty good elsewhere.

 

I found and bought a pair of Altec 17's (604-8Gs) at a church yardsale about 18 months ago. There is virtually no hi-fi in my area without traveling 150 miles (1 way) to audition anything. What I have had a chance to audition, I wouldn't trade for my Altecs. I really enjoy them with my vintage tube amps.

You don't know what model # these were? They made several different models.

 

they were about 3 feet by 3 feet in gorgeous mahogeney looking cabinets that sat on the floor. the front was maroon clothe with a criss-crossing diamond shaped wood pattern. They were pretty heavy, I'd say about 60 to 75 lbs. I couldn't tip it enough to read the small writting on the lower back side. The sound was beautiful, even though they were driven by a 90's model Yamaha reciever and an older Denon cd player. I could kick myself for letting them get away.

 

These speakers were not harsh at all. They were very smooth and definitely audiophile quality to my ears. The guy selling them said they belonged to his wife's uncle and he was a serious audiophile nut. I went through a couple hundred LP's that were still there and they were all classical stuff that I know nothing about, and there in the last pile at the very end was an Emitt Rhodes s/t album in untouched condition. So it wasn't a complete lose.

 

YOu might look thru some of the Altec catalogs and see if you can identify them.

http://www.lansingheritage.org/html/altec/catalogs/altec-cat.htm

I have a feeling the next pair won't get away from ya.

 

I may be wrong, but I don't think Altec made too many types of speakers. I'll bet that your speaker cab probably had a 604 series 15" coaxial speaker, or the components of the A7 in a nice cabinet. If it was the later, the cabinet would be fairly massive. The A7 had a 15" woofer and a sectoral horn fitted on a compression driver. As far as the commercial versions of the A7, sometimes the horn was on top of the cabinet, and sometimes it was inside it.

They did make some smaller speakers as well that were geared towards the hi-fi market. I believe these used 12" woofers. But a lot of 604's and A7 ended up in nice cabinets in living rooms.

 

Thanks for that link www. I found and idenified the speaker. It was in the 1971 home section and was the A7 Flamenco. Yes. Now I see it went with a console and the speakers were seperate or sat at the end of the console. He had the console across the room and the guy either didn't know or didn't tell me they were together. But he wasn't using it with the console. He must have upgraded to that Yamaha. He also had a turntable I had never heard of but it was a guy's name Hamilton Something or other made in Farmingdale, NY. Thank you for helping me identify them.

 

You called it Doug. Thanks. I get the feeling you aren't very impressed with this speaker. Granted, I only listened to one song play, but I loved the sound of it. Great tone. Sounded nicer than my Paradigm's.

 

They're not bad, but not audiophile IMO. These speakers were actually designed for movie theaters and in fact they were called 'Voice of the Theater'. If they're A7's like I said it's a two way with a 15" woofer (a folded horn in the commercial version) and a fairly large sectoral horn with I believe a 2" driver. I think the driver was non metalic which is a good think, but I can't be sure anymore.

They're very effecient. I drove a pair of A7's with my Marantz 2270 and this was for my college band's PA. I could play them very loud. How bad can they be if many movie theaters used them. I could say the same for most JBL speakers. They're not considered audiophile by many, but that doesn't mean they aren't good. OTOH, they were considered professional speakers, though probably not in your cabinets.

 

I'm wondering how you think they set the price for these. I looked on e-bay and didn't find anything like these. Do you think $650. for a mint pair was a deal or no deal? It's very hard to know how much one should spend on this type of vintage equipment.

 

I wouldn't have a clue as to what they're worth. I seem to remember us paying about $500.00 for the pair in utility grey cabinets back in the early 70's. The cabinets probably add quite a bit to the price.

I'll bet they sound sweet with tubes, being they are so effecient. Of course these speaker were fairly popular with the hi-fi crowd in the 50's and 60's and I'm guessing most of them were tube driven.

For the most part, these speakers are the same as what they had in the 40's, so the technology is not exactly new. Of course that is not meant to be a negative statement at all. Klipsch speakers are somewhat similar and many members here absolutely love them.

 

Mark, there are a lot of diehard ALtec users that hang out on the High Efficiency forum on AudioAsylum. Doing a search there and then asking any questions you have should get answered.

Also, you ought to check out this site, dedicated to vintage Altec users. This place really knows their stuff on all things Altec.

http://alteclansingunofficial.nlenet.net/index.html

I don't know the prices of A7s, but $650 seems like a very fair price to me. Probably a couple hundred below value. The size of them makes them very low on WAF and won't fit in just any room. I believe the A7 were designed for a very large room. The 604 duplex drivers were designed as studio monitors and were for nearfield listening. Models 14, 17, 18 and 19 seem to be more desireable for audiophile use, anyway thats how it seems to me, I could be wrong.

 

I would bet that if these were truly MINTY as you say they would have sold for $1500 - $2K+ on eBay. Not knowing all the details... Maybe even more to the right person.

 

If these were the Altec 848A Flemenco with an Altec 416A 15"; 806A HF driver and 811B sectoral horn, price was about $400 each about 1971.

 

Was $650. a great price for a minty pair on today's market. I know I would have paid it for the sound alone, but that vintage look was priceless. I had a spot already for them. Would have really dressed up my stereo room.

 

Yes, that was a good price better luck next time
As to the Altec A7 for PA use I never saw too many around back then but they are similiar to the JBL 4560 low freq. horn which some did use back then. We used JBL 4520's and horns which were a dual (15") driver short throw horn in first PA system.

 

When I started out with my band it was the A7's. The first large show that I ever did as an amateur used four A7's per side. I used our two, two from a stereo store in town, and four that I rented from my future employer. I also rented some horns and did my first biamped pa. I was kind of scared when I hooked it all up, because if anything blew I was on the hook. I'm happy to say it all worked out well.

When I returned the rented gear the next morning I was offered a job as a sound engineer. As it turned out I was graduating from college the following day and started working at Sound West the day after that. I never dreamed I could make a living doing pro sound until they offered me that job. In fact, I had no idea what in the world I would have done after graduating.

When I started with Sound West, our 8x8 was (2) JBL 4550's and (4) 4560's per side. The 4550 used (2) 15" speakers and was double the width of the 4550's. Of course that didn't include the horns. With those speakers we used (4) 2440's on 90 degree mid horns and a bunch of 2420's with smaller horns for the highs.

We also had about 16 A7's but we rarely used them after going to the JBL's. They belonged to a good friend who did sound for about 6 years before I started working with him. I was at a Pink Floyd show in 1970 that he did sound for and he had the 16 A7's spread out in horizontal arrays, 8 on each side of the stage. I actually have a recording of the PA mix and it is a great momento. Everytime I hear it I think of those A7's.

I think Bill started with those A7's in 1969 and they were used at over 100 shows that I know of. They were just about retired when I started working with him in 1975.

 

Doug,
In early 1969 a JBL 4520 cabinet was brought here and quite a few copies were made from it. Easier to build than a 4550 or 4560. Hey we were poor rock 'n' rollers.

 

I imagine the folded horns were not that easy to make. Then again, I'm not a wood worker.

 

Aside from the sound, these speakers were beautiful vintage looking cabinets. I would have loved to add them to my system for the beauty of them alone. Fine craftsmanship. Much more so than modern day speakers.

 

I don't know if this is true but someone said that because of the smaller cabinet of the Flamenco about 28"x28"19" bass response really started to roll off below 80 hz. I would really demo any speaker in your system before buying.

 

Yeah. I think that's a problem about coming across speakers at an estate sale. You pretty much have to decide on the spot to buy or not to buy. I'm not an expert on speakers, so all I have are my eyes and ears. This estate sale I was pretty lucky that they were hooked up and operating, because a lot of times they are just sitting there without anything to drive them.

 

An ad in my newspaper today JBL 4612OK VINTAGE PRO SPEAKERS. I've seen JBL mentioned throughout this thread, but is anyone familiar with these?

 

This is a link to an Altec Lansing A-7 Voice of the Theater on sale on Audiogon (note that it is a single speaker). I think this is a cousin of the Flamenco A7. The asking price is $1,000.

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1168141992