It's Christmas morning here in Washington State, and I'm sitting here with a hot steaming cup of coffee, and I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Like any kid looking forward to the arrival of Christmas morning and opening the presents under the Christmas tree, I have been looking forward to the arrival of a pair of restored vintage Altec Lansing A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers from Gary Fischer Speakers.

The A5's were scheduled to arrive on Monday afternoon, but due to massive winter snowstorms they were stranded in Butte, Montana, until the roads became passable.

I got the word on Thursday that they were moving again, but due to the ongoing severe winter weather in Montana, it looked like they would be stranded again, this time in Missoula, Montana, until the Monday after Christmas.

Somehow Old Dominion Freight Line was able to push through the winter storms to deliver the A5's on Christmas Eve.

Gary did a really nice job of packing & crating the big A5 VOTTs. The 10-cell Altec 1005B horns with their Altec 288C Alnico high-frequency compression drivers - along with the Altec 500C crossovers - were packed in one crate.

First I unpacked the 1005B high-frequency horns with their 288C drivers.

I was a little surprised to see that the 288C drivers had 24-Ohm stickers on them rather than the 16-Ohm versions I was expecting.

If you've been reading along on the previous A5 VOTT blog posts, you know that Yazaki-san designed crossover circuits for the combination of 16-Ohm versions of the 515B low-frequency drivers and 288C high-frequency drivers based on Hiraga-san's design for the A5.

Upon seeing the 24-Ohm sticker I figured we'd have to modify Yazaki-san's 16-Ohm crossover design to accommodate them, but it turns out that will not be necessary, as after discussing it with Gary, it turns out that when Gary services the 288C compression drivers he installs new 16-Ohm diaphragms (or 8 Ohm diaphragms) to match the buyers request.

Gary told me that the motor & driver frame are the same on 288C's, so all you have to do is replace the old diaphragm with one that provides the desired impedance, and you're set to go. Gary leaves the original 24-Ohm stickers in place because the original stickers are important to Altec enthusiasts.

As I was pondering all the mysteries of the 288C compression drivers, my buddy Ron-san arrived with a nice bottle of French wine, and George's vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier in hand, that Ron had hot-rodded with Arizona Capacitors & Tepro resistors according to Yazaki-san's suggested modifications.

Ron's timing was perfect, and we moved into the garage and began to unpack the shipping crate for the 825B bass-horn cabinets with their 515B Alnico drivers.

As with the 1005B horns & their 288C compression drivers, Gary did a beautiful job packing and crating the big bass horns.

After unpacking the cabinets, Ron and I wheeled the big 825B bass horn cabinets into my living room.

Our first task was to move the enormous Tannoy Westminster Royal SEs with their external Duelund CAST crossovers up against the side walls in order to create enough room to setup the nearly as huge A5 VOTTs.

We moved the big 825B bass horns with their 16-Ohm Alnico 515B drivers to where the Westminsters had been sitting, then carefully placed the 1005B & 288C horn assembly on top.

Then we hooked up the Altec 500C crossovers, warmed up the vintage McIntosh valve gear, and gave it a listen.

Having been listening to the sweet sounding custom vintage Stokowski VOTTs, we had high expectations, and we were horrified by what we heard from the A5 VOTTs.

Everything you've ever heard about horns sounding bad applied to what Ron and I heard from the A5 VOTTs: shrieky, hard, harsh, high-frequencies; and diffuse, distant, and unimpressive bass response.

I shut down the music and we scrambled back to the Altec 500C crossovers, and changed them from their 2dB attenuation setting to their 4dB attenuation setting, then we fired the music back up.

The right-side high-frequency horn was not working, so we double checked our connections, then put the 500C into its 3dB setting on the right side, which restored the sound. Clearly the right side 500C had a problem, so we disconnected the 500C crossovers.

I put a message into Gary, and he was bummed out that Ron and I had a disappointing experience on our first listen. It turns out the culprit was probably a combination of new diaphragms needing a little run-in time, the aforementioned malfunctioning 500C crossover, and possibly exacerbated by the freezing temperatures the A5's experienced during shipping, with everything needing to get back up to normal operating temperatures.

Gary told me to send the 500C crossovers back to him and we'd figure out a solution.

In the meantime, I pressed into service a pair of autoformer based crossovers that Werner Jagusch in Germany built for me. The concept of Werner's A5 crossovers is similar to that of the crossovers used in the Tannoy Westminster Royal SEs, where the output & roll-off of the high-frequency horns is adjustable. Werner makes crossovers for both the A7 and the A5 VOTTs, the pricing is very fair at €549 Euros, and the quality of construction is very nice.

We wired Werner's crossovers to the 16-Ohm 515B bass drivers and 16-Ohm 288C high-frequency compression drivers with vintage Western Electric WE16GA, my current favorite for speaker cables & loudspeaker wiring.

Then we fired back up the vintage Mac gear and gave the A5 VOTTs a listen. While it was clear that we still had a lot of crossover adjusting & speaker positioning to do, the sound was transformed into a richer, sweeter, version of what we were hearing before in the high frequencies, but the bass still needed some work.

Ron and I moved the A5 VOTTs all the way back to the front wall to see if we could beef up the bass a bit, and about that time our buddy Leo showed up with a very nice bottle of Woodward Canyon Artist Series #14 Cabernet Sauvignon, and we all sat down for a little listening with a glass of wine in hand.

Ron & I had setup Werner's crossover with the minimum high-frequency output to start with, and that combined with the positioning against the front wall, the bass now sounded too prominent and the highs were recessed.

I did a quick & dirty RTA of the sound, and the spectrum revealed that we had bass prominence up to 500Hz (the crossover point for the high-frequency drivers), with a significant roll-off after that. I moved the high-frequency output jumpers on Werner's crossovers up a couple of notches up on the terminal strips and listened again. Better. I then moved the jumpers a couple of notches again and listened. Better still, and the RTA spectrum was looking better all the time.

It was time for Ron & Leo to go off to other Christmas Eve plans, so we a called it a night.

This Christmas morning, fortified by some good hot coffee, I moved the A5 VOTTs further out into the room, continued to fine tune the crossover adjustments, and played a bunch of great Christmas music.

Now the A5 VOTTs are really starting to sing, with occasional flashes of brilliance, which was more like what I was expecting from them.

I'm thinking it took a while for everything in the A5's to warm back up to room temperature, after their frigid two-week journey through winter snow storms, before they were comfortable with music flowing through them again. The new 288C diaphragms also needed a little run-in time, and then there's the aforementioned 500C crossover malfunction, which limited our ability to get things working right, resulting in perfectly dreadful sound quality. A perfect storm.

But now things are sounding very good indeed, and I would say we are off to a very successful start to the A5 VOTT Project.

Gary did a beautiful job on the A5 VOTT's restoration, and I'll be sharing more details about that shortly as I interview Gary. Gary was great about keeping me informed as the A5 project progressed, sending me photos and status reports all along the way, which I really appreciated.

 ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪  ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪  ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪

I continued to fine tune the A5 VOTTs' room position and crossover settings over the course of the day. That along with some more run-in time on the new 288C diaphragms, and everything getting up to normal room temperatures, the A5's are really starting to sing.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll have a lot more exciting hi-fi adventures to share with you soon!

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!