Nice find first of all. You may want to rotate woofers 180 degrees. The cones may have some cone sag after 50 years. Especially if they've been sitting unused for ten. Now that you've "upgraded" you will truly hear the good bad and ugly when it come to recordings. Enjoy!!!!!
Yeah. Further reading on LZ2 reveals this is a common complaint. Mine is a Japanese print which should be the better of them but your not kidding, these things reveal faults I never heard before with the old speakers.Originally Posted by mah
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Left speaker
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Right speaker
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no claims to the quality of the mic(blue snowball) or setup(audio out from macbook) mic 5 ft away in line with the horn . First time trying this out. I do have the attenuators rolled back one step and the grills were on. Looks like no major holes in the curve other than the jump at around 1000hz.
Nice measurements. What equip do you use?
Would be interesting to turn the horn down on the one that works and see the difference. Get rid of that 1KhZ peak a bit.
Of course that will turn down the highs too, a problem Altec addressed in later years with the A7x and model 19's dual shelved X-over.
But getting that peak down might make the sucky recordings more tolerable.
I've had several sets of A7's and have to say they do sound better flipped with the horn outside the box. You can build a removable top that you furniture finish to match sometime in the future. of course the wife won't like the horn look either.......ha!
You have a nice room for them!
Dire Straights "On Every Street" is another nicely recorded album to try.
Enjoy!
Ron
Enjoying Altec Speakers since 1972
For now all my mods will be of the "wife friendly" type as I need to ease her into taking over the room. The room itself is bout 17x 24 with a peaked ceiling thats about 11 ft at the center and 8 ft at the edges. The peak is not quite centered though and I've got windows down the right side and openings on the left and back walls. Its nice to have some speakers that can finally fill that space. the old speakers didn't have enough output to get any deflected sound.. But now, i can get stuff bouncing off all surfaces. The software is called Fuzzmeasure for mac and it was free download. The mic was a Blue Snowball USB. I ran the headphone out of the mac into the RCA on the amp. Took me about 15 minutes to sort it all out. I have better recording equipment and some different mics but this quick and dirty one seemed to do the trick. At least it confirmed that the crossovers are roughly working as designed.
im a few weeks in on listening and really happy with everything.. But yet.. I've been pondering adding a subwoofer to get a little bit more extension on the bottom end. I was getting ready to build some stands for these speakers with spikes to mount to floor.. when i though: maybe i can find room for a sub under each speaker.. Dayton Audio SUB-1000L 10" 100 Watt Low-Profile Powered Subwoofer
Pondering a pair of these.. one under each speaker and integrated into the stand. Corner placement would be ideal.. just not sure what the effect of placing a sub under the box would do to everything else. Again.. not looking to create ground shaking bass here but just a little bit of bass from 100 down.. Ok.. everyone, tell me why this is a bad idea..
Over the years a popular proposal was sealing-off the upper part of the 825/828 A7 cabinet and fitting an 18inch. JBL 2242 driver in the lower part of the enclosure.
This thread has some tips on avoiding the high cost of 2242s by re-coning more readily available JBL frames: http://www.hostboard.com/forums/f700...light=jbl+2245
Information on cab mods: Turn the bottoms into subs with 18" drivers. - djn - High Efficiency Speaker Asylum
One thing for sure - the cabs will be heavy.
Others here may know how successful this approach is.
Last edited by mah; April 15th, 2017 at 09:56 PM.
Opinion is only as valid as its verifiable supporting evidence.
FYI, in recent years, prosound has been going to larger drivers with 18" being very common now even in monitors and lately 21" & 24", all very high power handling with 130-140 + dB capability for those that either need it or just like having a system that just idles along at THX cinema reference, so many more options than just the ancient 2245 or the Altec 411A I used.
Really, for just low end 'fill' with < 100-80 Hz XOs, inexpensive 6.5" - 12" mobile audio 'sub' drivers in tapped horns are pretty much the norm plus can be spread more optimally around the room to make for a much more uniform [sub] bass experience, or use multiple drivers in one or a stereo pair to get efficiency up if desired, though for just 'fill', one/channel is usually enough.
GM
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
JBL 18" subs are a nice pairing with A7's. I use a stereo pair of reconed 2242 with a bridged Ashly amp on each.
The 2241 and 2242 are nice drivers. You can also recone the 2240 as a 2245. They have been around for a while, but still sound pretty damn good.
I have heard of what Mah is describing, adding a subwoofer to the 828 cab. I didn't want to alter my cabs. I just built a 10 cuft ported cab for each of my subwoofers. Hell if you're going to have some big Altecs, you might as well have some big subs.
Depending on your preferred listening volume, you might NEED some bigger subs to keep up with the A7's. To track the dynamics of them. If you are listening at lower levels, I'm sure a 10" or a 12" driver could keep up.
Like GM said, there are also some newer options. I have thought getting a pair of Lab 12 or 15. There are quite a few nice drivers available now.
Last edited by Elitopus1; April 16th, 2017 at 01:12 AM.
this is where my head is at right now.. Im not quite ready to start modding a perfectly good set of vintage cabinets and swapping out those magnificent looking altec drivers.. The only mod I'm really looking at is the crossovers right now. But i like the idea of some compact tight subs. been a few years since i played in the audio space..spent some time googling the tapped horn subs.. something like that looks like the ticket..
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