I've gone completely bonkers over vintage Altec loudspeakers, which comes as no surprise to you if you're a regular reader of Jeff's Place. 

Vintage "Stokowski" Altec's

It's not that there aren't other speakers I enjoy listening to, like my Westminster's, for example, but there's just something really special about the way Altec loudspeakers play the music.

Vintage Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers.

Ok, so I only have three pairs of vintage Altec's, but three is enough to establish a trend for me, as each pair are wonderful in their own right, even though each pair sounds completely different from the others.

Vintage Altec 832A Corona loudspeakers.

Whether it's the pro-oriented "Stokowski" Altec's or the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers, or the more domestic-oriented Altec Corona 832A loudspeakers, they all share three important qualities in spades: tone, presence, and dynamics, which works together to give a particularly vibrant and engaging musical presentation.

Granted, for the pro-style Altec's, new crossovers are needed to realize their full performance, but that's a small sacrifice to make after you hear what they're really capable of. (I suspect the same is true of the domestic-style Altec's like my Corona 832A's, but they sound so good the way they are I haven't had any desire to do anything with them yet.)

Personally, I really like the Hiraga crossover circuit for the pro-style Altec's, and it turns out that components quality can make a huge difference if you are so inclined.

For example, the less costly components in the Hiraga-inspired crossovers of my Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers sound pretty wonderful, and I adore what they do for film and music in my AV system.

Duelund CAST Sn-Cu components for the Duelund-Altec Project.

However, the Duelund CAST tinned-copper components used in the Hiraga-inspired circuits of my "Stokowski" Altec's are so much better that it's simply a no-contest situation. Are the crossovers with the Duelund CAST tinned-copper components twice as good? Ten times better? More than that? I'd say it's closer to the latter than the former.

I can tell you this: You haven't heard what Altec's are truly capable of until you've heard them with really good crossovers.

It might not seem intuitive to take ancient "Jurassic" era loudspeakers like the Altec's, and then fit them with spendy state-of-art crossovers like the Duelund CAST tinned-copper crossovers, but the combination is illuminating (mind-blowing, actually), and I would never have guessed that the Altec's could scale such lofty heights of performance. I'm smitten. 

I'm going to have some visitors over the next few weeks, and I'm really looking forward to having them hear the "Stokowski" Altec's with their Duelund CAST tinned-copper crossovers.

In fact, with the Pass Labs XA25 stereo power amplifier providing the juice, I think they've just reached a new level of amazing for me, so I am looking forward to sharing that considerable level of performance with others as they visit. Now I've got to get the First Watt SIT-3 in the system and hear what happens!

I should mention that while you can go balls-out-crazy building exotic versions of high-performance Altec's, you can also get great results at affordable prices too. 

Gary Fischer's restored Altec A7 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers. Photo courtesy of Gary Fischer.

Take for example the Altec A7 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers, which you can get a beautifully restored pair for around $3500 USD from Gary Fischer, and then have Pete Riggle build a pair of his inexpensive Hiraga-style crossovers for them (around $1000 USD if I remember correctly).

The combination will crush any of the current "high-end" speakers I've heard anywhere near the price, or double the price for that matter, in terms of musicality and the sheer fun factor of their live-like presence, not to mention the personal satisfaction of owning a classic pair of loudspeakers.

GPA Altec 515-8C low-frequency driver

GPA Altec 802-8G Series II high-frequency compression driver.

I should also mention that you can buy brand new Altec drivers from Great Plains Audio (above) - about which I'll be telling you more about in the future - that you can build a brand new pair of Altec loudspeakers with if you so desire.

Also, there's a couple of places you can get beautiful custom Altec cabinets built, like Vintage Speaker Revival or Troy Audio.

Expect to read more about custom cabinets in the Duelund-Altec Project feature article, where I'll describe the "Stokowski" cabinets in enough detail so that you can have Vintage Speaker Revival or Troy Audio clone them for your own project, if you wish.

On the left is the original Altec 1505B multi-cell horn, and on the right is Markus Klug's Klughoerner hand-crafted wood replica of the 1505B.

If you want to check out some really gorgeous hand-crafted wood Altec horns, check out Markus Klug's stunning Klughoerner Altec replica horns, and reports from the field say they sound even better than the Altec originals. Markus makes all different kinds of Altec horns, which you can read more about HERE for a little extra inspiration.

If you want to see a variety of different Altec cabinet possibilities, check out the excellent How to Build Speaker Enclosures by Alexis Badmaieff and Don Davis that shows basic plans for many different Altec cabinet designs, or if you want to go even more exotic, you could have a beautiful pair of Onken cabinets built for your favorite Altec drivers. You can read more about Onken cabinets HERE, courtesy of Hiraga-san.

Also, I just became aware of a dedicated Onken website HERE that you may enjoy reading. The site is in French, but if you use a Chrome browser it will automatically translate it into your language. Thanks to Mikael for letting me know about this site!

How to Build Speaker Enclosures by Alexis Badmaieff and Don Davis.

By the way, me and my buddy Dave are going to get the walnut plinths for the Duelund-Altec Project finished up this weekend, and I'll be starting to build them up with the Duelund CAST tinned-copper components over the next week or two, using Duelund DCA tinned-copper wire, and the beautiful terminal strips from Santos Oropel (below) to connect everything together.

Santos' bespoke terminal strips.

I'll tell you what, if you want to go all out, a set of vintage or new Altec drivers, some cool custom cabinets, some hand-crafted Klughoerner wooden horns, and some Duelund CAST tinned-copper crossovers are the stuff that dreams are made of!

As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!