Vintage Altec Loudspeakers
I confess that I am an addict. I am an Altec-oholic. I just love vintage Altec loudspeakers. I can’t get enough of them.
My vintage Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers in my audio-visual system.
Altec history goes back to Altec’s founding in 1927, so we are coming up on the 100th anniversary of the enormous contribution Altec loudspeakers have made to high-performance audio.
Altec loudspeakers’ musically realistic and emotionally truthful way of delivering live and recorded music sound have been the bedrock foundation of high-quality sound reproduction for movie theaters, concert venues, and home audio systems since the beginning of electric era of audio.
Due to Altec’s ultra-high-quality designs and the ruggedness of their professional sound reinforcement origins, vintage Altec drivers are capable of near-eternal life.
Vintage Altec 804A and 802D compression drivers.
Vintage Altec drivers that have been neglected, abused, or are just showing their age, can be serviced, or even completely restored by the actual descendant organization of the original Altec manufacturing and service team, Great Plains Acoustics.
Vintage Altec drivers can be restored to like-new condition with full remagnetization of Alnico magnets, new diaphragms for compression drivers, and low-frequency drivers can be completely rebuilt with new foam surrounds, voice coils, paper cones, phenolic spiders, or anything else they might need.
Vintage Altec 803A low-frequency driver.
The reality is that vintage Altec drivers only rarely need any attention, even many decades after their production, but if they do, they can be easily restored to their original historic glory.
It is an unfortunate truth that vintage Altec high and low-frequency drivers, cabinets, crossovers, and horns are getting harder to come by and becoming more expensive every day due to their impressive performance and storied historic significance.
If you can’t find those vintage Altec drivers you are lusting after, you can buy brand-new “Altec” driver designs from Great Plains Acoustics that carry that original Altec DNA, and are every bit as rugged as their ancestors.
If you are building up a pair of vintage Altec loudspeakers and need horns, but can’t find those ever scarcer originals, Markus Klug (Klughoerner) in Germany builds accurate artisanal reproduction horns out of wood, that word of mouth says outperform the Altec originals.
If you would like to have a pair of Altec A7 or A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers for your personal use or commercial applications, Gary Fischer Speakers will build accurate reproductions of them for you. I bought my restored pair of vintage Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers from Gary.
Vintage Altec N800E crossover.
The weak link in vintage Altec armor is their crossovers. While the Altec audio engineers were brilliant in designing adjustable high-performance crossover circuits for their loudspeakers, the capacitors, inductors, and resistors in those circuits eventually degrade due to old age and need to be replaced.
Since those ancient Altec days, big advances have been made in the quality of capacitors, inductors, and resistors, and you can now build new crossovers with state-of-the-art Duelund Coherent Audio CAST components that dramatically exceed the performance of any of the original components.
In fact, those Duelund CAST components have revealed that the potential performance level of vintage Altec loudspeakers is at a much loftier level than we Altec enthusiasts ever realized.
A pair of Duelund CAST crossovers will release the hidden magic lurking inside those vintage Altecs in rather awesome fashion, to yield a level of performance that few modern loudspeakers can compete with.
Conductor Leopold Stokowski's custom Altec loudspeakers.
I truly adore all three pairs of my vintage Altec giants: the Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers in my main audio-visual system, Conductor Leopold Stokowski’s custom vintage Altec loudspeakers in my office system, and my Altec Corona 832A loudspeakers in my master bedroom A-V system.
Altec Corona 832A Loudspeakers
I bought my pair of vintage Altec 832A Corona loudspeakers from LA Jazz Audio in about 2018, if memory serves me correctly.
Altec Corona 832A loudspeakers. Photo courtesy of LA Jazz Audio.
I am absolutely crazy in love with my vintage Altec 832A Corona loudspeakers. They are truly something special and are capable of making music come alive with a live-likeness that few speakers can approach.
Altec 16 Ohm 803A low-frequency driver.
The components complement of my Coronas are the 803A bass drivers (1947-1958), 802D compression drivers (1957-1972), 811B high-frequency horns (1950s), and N800E crossovers.
Altec 16 Ohm 802D compression drivers with 811B horns.
Altec N800E crossover.
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