Altec Monterey/834A

**audiomagnate01** · April 10th, 2015, 08:06 PM

Hello Altec fans! I have a pair of Monterey/834A's I am finally getting around to restoring and have a few data points, listening impressions and questions about them. First of all, these things must be incredibly rare, as there is almost nothing on the internet about them except what I posted over on the Lansing Heritage site back in 2013, and a thread at Audio Asylum that's loaded with crazy inaccuracies. The Monterey Jr. seems to have much more popular.

> This is a simple two way design from 1958 using one 3000B and two 16 ohm, 8 inch 402A's in parallel. There are no dual 15"s (?!) 9"s or 10"s in there.
> The two woofers get the same signal and both are active, so this is not a 2.5 way or a passive radiator setup.
> The cabinet design is what I understand to be a resistive port, similar to a Dynaco A25. It's a bass reflex port with a very dense, stiff piece of fiberglass covering it. You can see the block of dense fiberglass in theft side of the cabinet in the second pic.
> The crossover consists of metal, compound (oil filled?) capacitor unit consisting of two 2uf caps, one coil for the woofer, one resistor and an L-Pad. I'm not sure if the two caps are used together to form the series tweeter blocking cap (either 1uf or 4 uf depending on setup) or if the the second one to for a second order slope for the woofer.
>The unfinished cabinets are made from flooring-style solid wood pieces, poplar is my guess. The empty cabinets are surprisingly light for someone used to MDF cabinets. Maybe it's because I just restored a pair of Mac ML-1C's, but these are pretty easy to schlep around.

Listening impressions:

The 3000B probably needs no introduction around here, it's a very sweet, extended sounding tweeter. The two 402A's blend well with the 3000B, but don't put out much in the bass below 50 Hz, but combined with my massive sub swarm (4 x 12" and one 15" powered by multiple BGW 602B's) the Monterey's sound very nice indeed. My current reference system consists of the sub swarm, modified JBL L200's and Infinity EMIT-R's as UHF's (8K and up) in a quad-amped setup. The Monterey's are slightly more colored in the mids, but definitely hold their own against the big JBLs. I'm afraid to play them loud because of the delicate tweeters, but they don't seem to have the mid bass slam of the 200's; no surprise there.

Now a couple questions/requests for the experts here:

>A good color photograph of a stock pair would be great. Mine are unfinished, and I want the veneer job to look like the originals. The only images of the Monterey's I can find are line drawings from the old ads.
>A schematic would be nice. I understand that oil filled caps don't go bad (they seem to be working properly) so I don't plan on recapping, but I'm curious about what that second cap is doing.
>Tips on cleaning the grill cloth would be nice. I'd like to keep it on the frame if possible.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the first post being so long.

GM · April 11th, 2015, 12:12 AM

The only ones I remember were shellac'ed looking with a yellow gold painted bezel like this one: http://www.clipx.co.jp/archives/system/834a/1.JPG
http://www.clipx.co.jp/archives/system/834a/2.JPG
http://www.clipx.co.jp/archives/system/834a/4.JPG

WRT cleaning the grill cloth, I guess it depends on how dirty it is and if it's just dust or stained from being in a smoking environment for a long time.

Don't recall actually cleaning any grill cloth except with a soapy rag of clothes washing detergent and using a paint brush of whatever stiffness is required clean/buff it.

Anyway, for fragile and/or complex detailed knickknacks I usually spray mist on hydrogen peroxide to dissolve dust and bleaching stains a bit, then use an appropriate brush to clean it up, then spray mist it with club soda with a tiny amount of FINISH to 'wash' away any residue/add a bit of gloss.

GM

**audiomagnate01** · April 11th, 2015, 12:29 PM

Thanks for the pics. Very interesting, they veneered the cabinet and painted the front bezel. IIRC, they were available unfinished, blonde (that looks like what's in the picture), mahogany and walnut. I'm thinking of doing them in mahogany. I've decided to remove the cloth from the frames and hand wash them in the sink.

**Audio_by_Goodwill** · April 12th, 2015, 02:14 PM

I've got the Jr. I need to get them out again.

**Alien_Shore** · April 21st, 2015, 07:32 AM

Originally Posted by audiomagnate01

Hello Altec fans! I have a pair of Monterey/834A's I am finally getting around to restoring and have a few data points, listening impressions and questions about them. First of all, these things must be incredibly rare, as there is almost nothing on the internet about them except what I posted over on the Lansing Heritage site back in 2013, and a thread at Audio Asylum that's loaded with crazy inaccuracies. The Monterey Jr. seems to have much more popular.

>A schematic would be nice. I understand that oil filled caps don't go bad (they seem to be working properly) so I don't plan on recapping, but I'm curious about what that second cap is doing.

I did a bit of research on this crossover, and looking at the pics you and GM provided, did a reverse engineer.
Most of the component values are derived from some reference materials and pictures I was able to dig up.
I also am still not quite sure about that switchable L-Pad and how that thing actually works, so I've done a bit of guessing there as well.