511b, 908 drivers and Heresy's for bass, my first try.

[BillWojo]

Ok, some of you know me as the new guy here, not very knowledgeable about Altecs at all but trying to learn. Well I picked up a set of 511b horns with 908 drivers and a set of 921 woofers that will need reconing. Well I have the horns sitting on top of my Heresy's sitting on a towel just looking like they need to play music. Hmmm, what to do?
Well I called my buddy Kevin to see if he had some sort of active cross over. Yup, he's got an old Pioneer SF850 sitting on the shelf, said he would be right over. So I grabbed some wire and used my Mac MC40 mono blocks to power the woofers and a Dennise Had SE amp to power the horns. By the time he got here I had everything wired up and ready to hook up to the cross over. We slipped it in place, tried lots of adjustments but couldn't get the woofers to sound very good, just sitting on the floor propped up. After messing with it for a few minutes he suggested disconnecting the woofers and connecting them to my Heresy's. We crossed at 1000Hz with a 6db slope. The woofers and mid horns on the heresy's blend in nice. Listening to Robin Lee, Black velvet, dam she sounds good.
So far I'd say it's been a success and will only get better as I upgrade. I need to machine some adapters to smooth the transition between the horns (1" bore) and the 908 drivers (7/8 Bore). The drivers also have the Symbiotik diaphragms in them. Not sure what way I'm going with all this yet. Bill at GPA said he could recone my 921's into 416's. I'm looking at 240.00 plus shipping 40lbs of speakers across the country. New diaphragms are going to be about 200.00 Do I invest in other drivers or speakers?
Lot's of stuff to think about. Not to mention that I'll need to get my own cross over setup sometime. Thinking about the miniDSP. I have the microphone and preamp already to test it with so I'm over half way there on that front.
In the meantime I think I'll listen to some tunes and read up on all this stuff. My plan is to use the Altec parts in an OB setup. Big bass cabinets just isn't going to happen here.

BillWojo

[mah]

Original 416s will appreciate over time. Great Plains Audio manufacture new ones- check their prices, as they are reasonable.

The 921/416 conversion will be an orphan and not so desirable.

If putting the re-cone/remag cost into 416s is feasible, then that is the best way to go.

I went through a similar consideration for 421s and decided to go with some nice remagnetised 416Bs, with genuine cone numbers, from a forum member. The shipping to Australia cost nearly as much as the Altecs but I can still get my money back(or more) if I sell them here. The financial strain is but a memory. No regrets.

Good luck.

[BillWojo]

Well, after doing a lot of reading here I figured that my best bet to get decent sounding Altec's was to find a set of ....Altec's! I also read here that the HeathKit AS101 speakers are almost identical to the Altec Valencia's. Well, it looks like I will be picking up a set of AS101's tomorrow on my way home from work. The current owner just recapped them with Solen and Jentzen caps so it's one less thing that I have to do.
They will be replacing my Klipsch Heresy's.
After I get them in place and wired up to my Mac MC40 monoblocks I'll start a thread on them.

BillWojo