Old 600B up for auction

**Alien_Shore** · September 28th, 2015, 06:10 PM

1949 or 1950 maybe? Looks pretty old to me...

Vintage Altec Speaker 600B Hollywood Early Speaker | eBay

**bowtie427ss** · September 29th, 2015, 08:24 AM

Serial number is right up there.

I have one that i think is fairly old. If i'm not mistaken it has "Altec Lansing" stamped or engraved in the back of the return pot as 515's do.

**tomt** · September 30th, 2015, 02:15 AM

... and has a 'utah' frame ...

**Steve Schell** · October 14th, 2015, 06:43 PM

Here are a few historical hysterical ramblings...

When I visited longtime JBL dealer Hal Cox in about 2002 in Mill Valley, CA, he showed me a small, beat up 1930s field coil radio speaker. It had been given to him years before by his lifelong friend William Thomas, owner of JBL for the twenty year stretch between Jim Lansing's death until the sale to Sid Harman in 1969. This little speaker had been pulled from Jim Lansing's work area at the Fletcher Drive JBL plant, and quite unusually had an aluminum dust cap. Thomas had speculated that perhaps it had been Lansing's inspiration for his aluminum center domes. Jim of course offered Lansing Sound wide range drivers with aluminum domes in 8", 12" and 15" sizes in the late 1940s, and is also thought to have designed the Altec 400 (8") and 600 (12") drivers before leaving Altec Lansing in late 1946. These .002" aluminum domes, very similar to compression driver diaphragms, attach to the edge of the voice coil formers and usefully extend the top end of drivers so equipped, though without the smoothness or efficiency of a true compression driver with its compression and horn loading. I think the Altec drivers entered the B series by 1947 or 1948, and they sold a ton of them well into the 1950s. Likewise, Lansing's 8" (D-208) 12" (D-131) and 15" (D-130) drivers were very successful both before and long after his death in 1949.