Model Fifteen

[gamalot]

The L pads might work just fine with a good bath of DEoxit. They don't usually just go bad to a point of no return.

Magnets might get weak if over powered alot.

When I bought my model 19s new, a good deal was about $1400/ pair. The model 15s went for around $700-$800 a pair.

What you can get for them now depends alot on where the market is the day they sell and on the honest condition they are in both functionally and cosmetically.

Watch Ebay for a while and base your reserve according to what you see there. Some go for $700 while others can't get $300.

The 15s are a very nice speaker if working and looking right. I have mine in my basement system and had them cranking all day today and can't say a bad word about them.

I hate when sellers part them out unless the cabinets are shot.

The HF drivers should be 802-8Gs and have the number 033952 on the rear covers. They typically bring $300-$500 alone and the horns are a very nice horn. XOs always sell for between $75 & 150.

The woffers are not all that valuable unless you find someone looking for them at the time.

The major drawback is shipping these and if you do sell them and ship I highly recommend you remove the HF drivers and ship them off the horns as they do tend to get beat to death and broken in shipping.

Even if you do pack them great, they will probably arrive damaged which is why they don't usually bring the value in whole that they can fetch in part.

Gary

[grahamd]

Hi Gary,
Thanks for your comments. I know what you mean by the horns being fragile. I had one break a number of years ago in the 'move from h*e*l*l'. I had to repair the horn with epoxy, and every time I've moved since, the horns come out. It isn't a good idea to ship these speaker on their backs!

I've got three of the four adjusters fixed with some cleaner. The fourth still had dead spots. They are cheap enough, so I'm just going to replace all four when I can get them.

Only other thing I need now is some new foam to replace the original foam speaker grill. Something will turn up if I keep my eyes open.

Thanks again,
Graham

[gamalot]

There is a member who comes here on occassion and is always at the LH site named ******gun.

He makes some very pretty replacment foam grills as close to original as you can get for our speakers. I have seen his work numerous times and will gladly recommend his services.

I am a cheapo and did it myself with standard speaker grill materials but if it was important that they be as close to original as possible, he would be my go to guy.

Gary

[gamalot]

I guess I said something wrong above.

Remove the periods S. O. N. O. F. A. G. U. N.

Gary

[DNV47]

I wanted to comment on the original posters comment that his room was too small for Model 15's.
My 19's are in a room just under 12 X 12 and I am daily enjoying the best sound I have ever had with any speaker in any size room.
Loud is not necessary to achieve a live or rewarding experience in listening if the source material is well recorded and if your system floats your boat.
My own opinion is that having the sound (sonics)you like, meaning the synergy between all of the equipment and your ears is far more important than room size unless you just like loud all the time.
Sometimes I get the urge to crank something up but
then the small room does become a problem but in reality the volume in db at the listening position exceeds that of a live performance (excluding rock) so what's the point of that anyway? Is live classical guitar or piano heard at 100DB average?
The only down side I find is that the sweet spot in my small room is very limited in size and bacause I have added tweeters it's very narrow for serious listening so I'm always in the same spot to listen.
If I had worried about room size and all the reported problems of boominess, etc, etc would I now have a system I enjoy or would I have small speakers for a small room and not be happy?
My old EV Esquire 200 bookshelf speakers have qualities that rival or better the 19's in some ways and conventional wisdom says they are a better choice for my room size but the bass is a joke so does that mean a subwoofer I won't be happy with?
All I know is that what I assembled and voiced via specific tubes,caps and lots of experimentation with an added tweeters floats my boat bigtime and playing a new or long boxed LP has been fun and rewarding because when those outstanding recordings show up they are truly amazing and the rest usually sound tolerable to good.
Too bad it took 42 years of me playing with all kinds speakers and equipment to finally get here but better late than never.

[grahamd]

Thanks for the comments above regarding the foam speaker grills. I'm going to keep my eyes open, and see what I can find. I'd like to leave the fronts off of the speakers, because they're nicely veneered on the front and look cool. However, I don't trust our three cats to leave the woofers alone. One of them already did in the original speaker grill.

Regarding the comment immediately above about the room size. My room is about 10 by 15 feet, with the speakers in the corners on the long side. The room is carpeted, and has all of the usual stuff in it. I'm pretty sure they'd sound better if I could get them up off the carpet about a foot or so. I notice odd resonances as I move about the room, that I associate with the room. Years ago, an audiophile buddy of mine hauled them out into my back yard when I wasn't there (I had gone out for beer). I came home to the strains of Jerry Garcia Band in the neighbourhood and was stunned by the improvement of the sound quality by just getting them away from walls, couches etc. I know they are great speakers...I'm looking for the silver bullet to make them sound nice in this room. I don't play them excessively loud, but I find that I do need to crank them a bit to hear everything...probably a function of my age 50+ ears. Unfortunately, my kids aren't into really loud rock 'n roll (now explain that one to me??) so they don't get exercised like they should.
Thanks for the comments. This is an interesting thread for me.
Graham

[DNV47]

The major items in my small room besides the 19's and the rest of the system is a small 2 seater sofa, small console table, coffee table, rug that covers most of the floor and drapes on the windows.
Before I got the system to the point where I was completely happy with it I had already noticed that the 19's still sounded full at low listening levels almost like a loudness control was activated but I NEVER use the loudness control on the preamp. Nor do I use bass boost.
My major gripe was that the highs were unacceptable to me and I knew I was missing detail because my previous speakers revealed things on LP's that the 19's didn't.
Someone in another forum ran some response curves on the 802-8G driver used in the 19's and that confirmed that even with the compensation network in the model 19 xover the highs still started to roll off between 10 and 12KHZ.
If I used 4 db of treble boost on the preamp (4 db at 20KHZ) I was able to hear more of what I was missing but that meant turning the so called HF controls of the 19's up all the way and I didn't like the result because that sounded garbled and screechy to me so that wasn't the fix.
Having no test equipment for acoustics it was a long and totally by ear adventure to add tweeters to the 19's but it was worth it for me.
I ended up with very efficient EV T-350 tweeters sitting in the middle of the top of the 19's crossed over at 29KHZ at 6db per octave. (.68 cap in series with the tweeter)
I was able to turn the Model 19 HF controls down (counterclockwise) and now with the 4db treble boost everything comes through without a problem and the balance and blend sounds great to me.
You'd think that crossing tweeters in at 29KHZ would be useless but at the 6db per octave rate and the slow rise to 20KHZ of the highs with the treble boost it works great for me in my system so even at low listening levels I hear a balance of highs and lows that makes me happy.
Also interesting is that the T-350 tweeters don't do much on their own after 14KHZ but again with the 4 db treble boost at 20KHZ they get extended a bit.
Just a case of to each their own I guess because without the added tweeters I'd be looking to replace the 19's or at least the 802-8G driver with one that is more extended in the highs but would I have liked that fix as well as what I have now?
The BMS, 4450 I think it is, does do better in the highs than the 802-8G but would the "character" of that driver be the same as the 802-8G in the mids?
A neighbor with Altec Valencias said I was too fussy and I'll never be happy but when he heard what I did he ate crow yet he would never jump through hoops like I did to get what I wanted because it's not that important to him.
Now I sit for up to two hours a night listening to and enjoying music rather than listening to the equipment/speakers thinking of what they aren't doing right or how to make them better.
Maybe I'm just lucky that the 19's work so well in my small room but to me there's zero problem other than restricted sweet spot.
My speakers are in the corners too but they are towed in so that the center of the 811 horn is aimed to the listening position as are the tweeters so I'm gettin on axis response to my ears and that made another big difference.

[grahamd]

Hi,
Thanks for the previous comments. I think I'll look around for some tweeters and hook them up to see what the effect will be. Did you hook them up externally (from the terminals on the bottom with the wires running up the back), or to somewhere in the existing cross over on your speakers. In that case, I guess the wires could be routed out of the port and up to your tweeter - would save drilling holes in the furniture. However, it is probably just as easy to bring wires up the back from the connections on the bottom of the boxes.

Thanks again,
graham

[GM]

FWIW, while adding a super tweeter has its benefits, especially WRT off axis response, using an L-pad by-pass cap is the usual way to get a balanced top end if the horns aren't driven by a high output impedance.

GM

[DNV47]

Graham,
I ran the tweeter wires right to the power amp speaker terminals where the wires to the Model 19 are as in a bi-wire (not bi-amp) setup.

Just any tweeter won't do the job because the Altec HF driver will be more efficient than a lot of tweeters so they need to be high efficiency.

I tried a pair of Altec 3000 tweeters and there was hardly any output compared to the 802 driver even when crossed over at a lower frequency and to solve that problem, you just open up other cans of worms.

I already had the T-350's so it wasn't a big E-Bay investment and they do the job for me.

As it turned out I did not need to use a padding
resistor or L-pad to get the level right. They are running full open but being crossed over so high that's not a big surprise.

There are those that don't believe in adding tweeters to Altec 2 ways and those that say it can't be done and sound right but maybe that's because they tried with a lower crossover point
and they altered the original crossover so that the HF driver is rolled off by an inductor?

What kept tripping me up while experimenting was the polarity. Now the tweeters are wired in reverse polarity than the 802's.

I think that makes sense if you view the 802 diaphram as being backwards compared to the tweeter diaphram.

The other issue was the placement of the tweeter front to back on top of the Model 19 cabinet. I found that about midway sounds best to me but other tweeters may need a different alignment.

It floats my boat and the Model 19's are still original except for the caps and woofer inductors so what harm is done?

For me the added highs and/or more clean and defined highs was the deciding factor to keep the 19's.