Modified (and ruined?) 515s

[magnarc]

Vintage Altec Lansing 515 Woofer Quartet | eBay

This seller has had a number of Altec items listed that have been customised for specific purposes.

All well and good but the resale value has been trashed, IMHO.

[Earl K]

Vintage Altec Lansing 515 Woofer Quartet | eBay

This seller has had a number of Altec items listed that have been customised for specific purposes.

All well and good but the resale value has been trashed, IMHO.

The seller is a retired senior Altec transducer design engineer who's built up some custom woofers to work in a very specific application ( which is his own evolution of Altecs' folded horn > 1215/1225 system ). He clearly knew what he was after and how he wanted to achieve it ( IMO ).



He may well be optimistic in what these custom woofs are worth in the open market ( at the very least this'll be a small litmus test for GPA's new pricing regime ).

I guess we'll see.



PS; There's a whole whack of Klipsch folded horn aficionados who would do well to find a way to retrofit this sort of woofer into their folded horns.

[mah]

So how does someone 'not-in-the-know' use them?

[Earl K]

So how does someone 'not-in-the-know' use them?

I'll assume the mentioned tougher spider would raise the Fs of the device making it a better horn driver.

They were designed for use in a folded horn / ( possibly a BLH > back-loaded-horn could work well ) / so that's were they should work best.

Klipsch folded horn models and some early JBL speakers come to mind as possible homes.

[bowtie427ss]

these will wreck your house:



The EV "Eliminator" folded horn is more compact, it's larger and IMO much smoother than a LaScala bottom or Peavey FH-1.

https://medias.audiofanzine.com/file...ais-472670.pdf

FWIW, if i'm gonna fork out 500+ per driver they need to either be perfect original examples, or they need to look, feel, and smell brand spanking new. There's a world of woofers in that price bracket and i'd wager there at least a couple that will come close enough in parameters and performance to make the price/value difference unjustified.

To all but an extremely small crowd, i think those custom 515's are well over priced. Just my .02 y'all understand.............

[Phil-G]

[QUOTE=bowtie427ss;1978768]these will wreck your house:


Darn you Bowtie. Now I have to bud one or more of these. Lol

[bowtie427ss]

[QUOTE=Phil-G;1978769]

these will wreck your house:


Darn you Bowtie. Now I have to bud one or more of these. Lol

I suggest 4, they'll get your pants flappin, and you don't need gobs of power.

[magnarc]

Posting late at night will do it....

Each to their own and good on him for doing this. I guess my point was the resale value is just not there. He also had a 604E that he'd modded to an 8G. Very sensible from an operational point, just limits the value to the outside world.

[bowtie427ss]

Posting late at night will do it....

Each to their own and good on him for doing this. I guess my point was the resale value is just not there. He also had a 604E that he'd modded to an 8G. Very sensible from an operational point, just limits the value to the outside world.

I agree with your observations.

If you bought dead/broken 515's and had a skilled speaker guru re-cone them(to any spec), that total cost is squarely where i'd put their value.

They're all cosmetically challenged to one degree or another, and at least 2 of them were originally branded International Projector Corporation and still bear the LU-1081 part numbers.

It's my assumption that the seller, being a knowledgeable bloke probably started with damaged/non-working cores. I suspect the value in them was lost before his custom re-cones. just my .02 y'all understand................