Altec 601

[djnagle]

Hi All, does anyone have any real world experience with the 601? I just got two cabs that would well suited (I think) to this driver. I can find plenty of lit on them but have not heard one or talked to anyone that has. Also, are these super rare? I do not see any listed for sale anywhere. Thanks in advance.

[GM]

Greets!

The HF driver's VCs are easy to pop and there's no replacements, which effectively turns it into a high Fs, limited HF BW 414, so yeah, I imagine functional ones are almost as scarce as hen's teeth by now, with the rest being reconed as 414s or some generic version thereof.

Suspending a Fostex, Fane or similar horn tweeter inside a 414B or similar and using digital delay to phase align it would be a viable, if not particularly cheap, alternative. Probably your best bet is to use a current duplex from Radian, etc., and vent or aperiodically load it as required if no sub system is used.

GM

[Steve Schell]

The 12" 601 Duplex drivers are not really that scarce; I see them on ebay all the time. I recently had a mint 601C with crossover that I traded to a dealer. Altec made thousands of them over a long period.

The tweeter is very sweet sounding and extended in the highs. The diaphragm was originally a Western Electric microphone diaphragm, and they have a reputation for going open with too much input. Since the diaphragms are made of unobtanium, these drivers would be best suited for a low to medium volume system in a small room.

The driver that the 601 12" driver has been confused with in historical accounts is the original Duplex, the field coil 601 15" Duplex of 1943. These are indeed hyper scarce, and I was lucky to be able to examine one owned by a collector recently. This driver uses a 2" woofer voice coil, the early style phenolic spider of the Lansing field coil woofers, and an 801B high frequency driver mounted on the rear and firing through the pole piece into a beautifully made little damped sheet metal eight cell horn.

[Todd W. White]

Bill Hayes of MicroMike Labs has diaphragms for the smaller 601 Duplex.