Just wait till his children get a hold of it if he has any.Ebay here they come,keep your eyes peeled boys.Originally Posted by GM
Sadly, this is the case with nearly anything deemed "collectible" these days. i sometimes have mild inner conflicts when it get's hoarded away in collections and museums out of reach of the common man who it was once designated to serve or entertain. OTOH, it's good to know that some examples of some well respected and coveted inventions will be preserved for if no other reason, the sake of accurate history.A pity that so much usable old stuff is languishing in a museum.............. Oh well, better than the scrap pile/land fill where me and many others dumped them during the '60s-'70s tube-SS/multiple channel transition.
And who knows, maybe in another decade or two the bulk of vintage audio interest and value will decline to a level of value and interest much like the model A's and T's have in the collectible car arena.
Maybe since it merges with other areas of major interest, or for reasons which i'm unaware, the vintage theater sound stuff will always retain a status of significant desirability.
Not all vegetables make good leaders.
Good point! I know of two successful family businesses that the kids in their petty greed destroyed while the founding parents watched on the sideline. Both sets were devastated of course, all that hard work/sacrifice, but took the long view that they stepped aside to enjoy a multi-millionaire's life-style while the kids quickly squandered their inheritance thinking that dear old mom n' dad would continue to spoil them and leave them plenty in their respective wills.......not! Neither parents gave them anything, and by nothing I mean one set of children went to jail for looting the parent's home as soon as they were pronounced dead from a car accident. Seems they had left all their worldly possessions to their church. Some thought it cold/cruel of them, but it seemed like a fitting justice to me.
GM
Loud is Beautiful if it's Clean! As always though, the usual disclaimers apply to this post's contents.
i really dont think its waste sitting in a museum...how many common men can even afford these? im sure they started their collection long ago when prices were better. i, for one, salute these folks for their good taste, ive seen beer can collections. as for the rest of us with stuff on shelves, the market values are rising. invest in gold or western electric or junk bonds. we all have our hobbies, and from what i can see in the pics, it looks like they listen to quite afew of them..more power to them. am i envious? oh yeah
"those sounds to which no definite pitch can be assigned are usually classified as noise"<br />harvey fletcher-1928
What gets me (kills me) about the vintage theatre gear, especially the supreme prewar stuff- is that the majority of it was removed from service in perfectly functional condition and hurled into a dumpster. Most of this atrocity occurred during the postwar hi fi boom, when a good percentage of the population was buying drivers, building their own boxes, wiring kits, etc. Meanwhile across town, neanderthals were "upgrading" prewar sound systems and tossing out the equipment that is now revered and hyper-collectible. One friend has told the story of picking his way through the rubble of a theatre being demolished in Philadelphia. He managed to remove the woofers and compression driver from a big Lansing field coil system, and struggle with them on the buses as he made his way home.
That was Kinda the point I was trying to make.About children's inheritance can't wait to sell everything for the money,nothing sacred, just money.I've witnessed a similar situation more than once.Where they were left houses and they sold the houses for the money and then ended up homeless and flat broke after a couple years very sad.
I too think this collection was started long ago a lot of those drivers are in the tens of thousand dollars each.I admire people like that.You can call them museums or whatever,but they could have just as easily been trashed and gone forever.If he has children they may soon be for sale if not then his estate will put them up forsale.Which could make them available to anyone again.I think that is great.Otherwise we could only see these gems in pictures and literature.People like that look at them and see a wonderful driver,speaker,invention,and well others will just see a pile of money.That is one museum I sure wish I was the curator of.
Lots of anachronisms with this:
Decal on wing says 'WideRange' (early 30's WE system) while components are late 40's ?
Bass encl seems to be Altec copy with sealed inf baffle difference.
So this system more eclectic than purist in nature.
Post war WE (after they had been busted down by Govt Antitrust) very
uninspiring vis-a-vis their pre-war glory/quality/bold experimental nature:
Decline evident by smaller HF/LF horns (blah), higher x'over (800hz)(blah), phenolic
driver (blah)
Altec made a horn loaded enclosure for 12 inch woofers?Bass encl seems to be Altec copy with sealed inf baffle difference.
Another interesting and well preserved Mirrophonic entry: Motiograph Mirrophonic Field Coil Speaker Theatre Audio - eBay (item 170493084777 end time Jun-29-10 09:38:50 PDT)
Not all vegetables make good leaders.
That Motiograph system was made for them by Jensen and there's nothing "Mirrorphonic" about it. "Mirrophonic" (two Rs) was Western Electric's trade name for their late 1930s Shearer type two way horn systems. In fact many details of the Jensen equipment, including re-entrant ring radiator compression driver, square horn throat (!) and divided cell multicellular horn may have been intended to avoid infringement of W.E.'s patents. They were free to use the W bin folded bass horn as that had been innovated by the Shearer team at MGM (at the suggestion of RCA's Harry Olson) and was not controlled by W.E.
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