I'm glad I could help.

Quote Originally Posted by Corona Blue View Post
The 123A-1's seem to lack punch. I have no experience with them beyond this project, so I don't know their innate character. Do people ever modify these? Or is that considered sacrosanct amongst the vintage JBL fans?
If they were my speakers I'd replace those 123A-1's with a pair of 414's. As you probably know, Altec doesn't manufacture the 414's any more (or any of their high quality speakers) as a result of being bought out by Sparkomatic (to make a long story short). However, Great Plains Audio does manufacture brand new 414's. If you've never heard of GPA, they are owned and operated by former Altec employees who bought the designs, schematics, tooling etc. to make authentic Altec Lansing replacement parts. Here's a link to some brand new 414's http://cgi.ebay.com/Altec-Lansing-GP...item35ad4c1876

This link is for Great Plains Audio's website for more info about the company http://www.greatplainsaudio.com/ If you call them, you can bypass Ebay. Of course you could look for a used pair of 414's, but I'd go for the brand new ones--you will be amazed by their sound and you don't have to worry about buying used (and potentially expensive) speakers that may need re-cones, etc.

I clicked on the links that Earl K was kind enough to provide for you http://altecpro.com/pdfs/vintage/Spe...r%20System.pdf I can see that your crossover was designed to work well with the 414 woofers and Altec 902 h.f. driver which means AFAIK it should also work well with your h.f. driver (other members please chime in to confirm this). Altec used the 802-8G (which is what your drivers look like to me?) in Model 19's for example, and then later switched to the 902 h.f. driver but kept the same crossover--in other words they were used more or less interchangeably by Altec in some applications AFAIK (the 902's replaced the 802-8G's). So, you'd basically have speaker very similar to an Altec 9849-8B studio monitor which was an excellent speaker! You would of course, have to adjust the tuning of your cabinets to optimize them for use with the 414 woofers--there are people here in addition to myself who can coach you on that (a few in particular who are very knowledgeable in cabinet tuning). It's not as hard as you might think.

Keep in mind, you can sell the JBL woofers (ebay, audiogon, craigslist, etc.) to recoup a good portion of the cost of new woofers--so for not much money--you could have some amazing speakers--very similar to Altec 9849-8b studio monitors in home made cabs. Hopefully others here (there are some amazing experts here) will chime in to either support or modify my recommendation......