Altec History Photos

[robertbartsch]

The Woodstock pics are interesting. The system looks sparce, however.

Anyway, my recollection of Altecs from the 70s includes typical setups of 20 to 30 bass horns and horn loaded compression drivers run by Crown DC300s for furums of about 10,000 or so. These often got so loud your ears would ring for several days.

I've been to many modern day concerts and I have been dissapointed with the sound each time. My last dissapointment was the Eagles in the NYC Garden in 08 - very inadequate sound. I think these were Loud But Junk (JBL) columns but I'm not sure.

[bfish]

...These often got so loud your ears would ring for several days...

Mine still do...

[notloudenough]

JUNK BUT LOUD. Bob

[LICORNE]

There were good set ups in the 70's BI AMP was important. Here is a photo with 4 stage
boxes.




...................................

[robertbartsch]

I used to collect the literature from Altec during the 70s.

Anyway, the picture of the grey painted VOTT offerings located in the "street" setting brings back memories. Although it has been about 35 years since I last saw this photo, it seems like yesterday.

Not much of the history here discusses the LTV tragedy. I assume Altec was acquired by this conglomerate shortly before it went bankrupt and that led to the subsequent demise of Altec; right? Was the LTV bankruptcy a result of esbestos litigation?

[Todd W. White]

From the Wikipedia article on Altec Lansing, a portion which I wrote that has remained intact:

Altec Service Co. and Altec Lansing Professional audio products

James Ling purchased the Altec Corporation from the ailing George Carrington, Sr., in 1958. By the time he spun them off in 1974, his company, LTV-Ling-Altec, had assimilated a large of amount of bad debts, and they went with the Altec Corporation (established in 1964) as part of the spinoff. By the early 1980s, Altec Corporation was having trouble servicing the LTV-induced debt. By 1984, Gulton, Inc., purchased the Altec Sound Products Division from the Altec Corporation, which was operating under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, due to difficulties paying off debts incurred when they were spun off by LTV Ling-Altec in 1974. Included with the purchase by Gulton was the tooling, parts and product inventories, distributor network, designs, patents, and assets of the Sound Products Division of Altec Lansing. The Altec Corporation continued to exist as an entity for several years thereafter. The motion picture theater sound installation and repair business, Altec Service Co., the descendent of E.R.P.I., was sold to J. Bruce Waddell, then Head of Altec Service, and Robert V. Gandolfi, who was their Comptroller at the time. They established it as A.S.C. Technical Services in Richardson, Texas (I worked for them at one time - TWW).

The Altec Lansing Corporation was formed by Gulton as part of the purchase, headquartered at 10500 West Reno Avenue in Oklahoma City, the site of the University Sound factory built by Jimmy Ling when he moved that company there from White Plains, New York. Altec Lansing had relocated there to prior to the Gulton purchase in an effort to reduce operating costs, selling their Anaheim, California facilities in attempt to retire their debts from the spinoff from LTV Ling-Altec in 1974.

Altec Lansing Corporation enjoyed a brief resurgence within the professional audio industry from the middle 1980s until 1995, when Telex, who had purchased Altec Lansing's parent company, EVI Audio, Inc., in 1997, consolidated all of their electronics manufacturing facilities into one location in Minnesota. By 1998, the original Altec Lansing was gone.

[Audio_by_Goodwill]

Todd, did the Altec company that makes cherry picker type lifts come out of our Altec somehow?

[bfish]

For Altec history photos, I found this one I'd never seen at the Anaheim library;

http://imgzoom.cdlib.org/Fullscreen....and=calisphere

Dig the Altec flag...

[bfish]

Todd, did the Altec company that makes cherry picker type lifts come out of our Altec somehow?

Altec Industries

After all the hubbub over the Lansing name, it's kind of ironic that;

" 'Altec' is a registered trademark of the Altec Corporation"...

Now, Altec Lansing couldn't shed the Lansing name even if they wanted to...

[Russ Farrell]

Thanks for the photo of 1515 South Manchester, Bfish. A new one to me.

Re LTV and Altec: There is a biography of Jim Ling I read in the mid 1970's that detailed his rise and fall. Not much about Altec in it, but the way his empire grew and then how it fell apart fascinated me. Have you ever heard Robert Kennedy mentioned as (according to the [biased?] author) a major factor in LTV's fall? Altec inherited this huge debt, and then sank years later as the last few redemption dates came due. (Sorta like a nearly bankrupt country that borrows $26 trillion to solve its problem and forgets that debt will have to be paid back in the decades to come). Sorry, I don't recall the title.