might have lost my mind. thinking of building a7 cabinets

[cradeldorf]

Enough to make you deaf in a very short time.

[bowtie427ss]

i know the 416s are rated for lower wattage but realisticaly how much sound do they put out?

"how much" is precluded by "how good". In terms of sound quality, there's probably no better choice in an A7 than a 416-8B. It doesn't have the motor strength of the 515, the 515B rivals everything in terms of midrange and dynamic punch. But it won't play as low in a small VOT, and the 416-8B's mids come mighty close.

The 416-8B's will play loud enough to drive everyone out of your house and get calls into the local PD from 3 out of 4 neighbors. You can actually drive them quite hard, but i recommend a high pass filter and the awareness that they will break and were not designed with long term heat dissipation in mind. I don't personally know anybody that's broken a 416-8B in a home environment. But, i have bought several broken ones not knowing the story of their previous fate. So, somebody out there breaks them, or used to.

The other thing to consider is resale/return value. With genuine Altec components(and most GPA products), if you buy them carefully you haven't "spent" any money, you just "parked" the money in some Altecs for a while.

[Alien_Shore]

I can tell you that I have old (1960's) 16-ohm 416As in 816 horn cabinets in the garage. With the new passive XOs (900 Hz) I have on them now, they sound amazing. Great mid-bass sound with a solid bottom end. With a pretty wide range of source material, they perform very well. They make MP3s sound like the crap that they are, and well-engineered recordings via WAV files sound marvelous. I am running them through an old Onkyo SS amp, and can't apply more than a few watts or they're running me out of there.

[Altec Best]

They make MP3s sound like the crap that they are, and well-engineered recordings via WAV files sound marvelous.

Yup that's why i scraped MP3's long ago... I use only .flac files now played on Foobar2000 media player. There really is no comparison !

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

[Phil-G]

i have a flac version of pinkfloyd animals. it will fit on a dvd. sheep is over 250mb.
on a side note im getting a bit concerned about my horns. i haven't seen a tracking # yet. it's been 2 days.

- - - Updated - - -

ok what's the skinny on this pair?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-ALTEC-Lans...item4171556a14

they look like they come from the same vintage as the horns i may or not end up with.

[gil393]

If you are not in a hurry I'd keep checking craigslist. I finished a task at work on Friday, didn't feel like starting the next project quite yet, checked some keywords on cl and there its was; posted that morning, 3 A7 cabinets about 1.5 hours away. They followed me home this morning. Total $ less than the wood to build 1.

They are all identical, appear to be factory built, such as it is/was. They were not built all that well. If you have any skills I suspect yours will be built and sealed much better than the originals. Also, mine have random nicks, scrapes, gouges, screw holes, etc. from past adventures.

I guess it boils down to your skills. I have very few with wood and decided that purchasing and fixing is easier than building. If you are good with wood these seem fairly straightforward with lots of room for improvement in bracing, materials, and construction.

Greg

[Cal Weldon]

I agree with all bowtie, alan and Greg here but want to add or reinforce some points.
If you can find them for sale they will be cheaper than building them (usually)
They need internal bracing. The external bracing on mine are more like skids so when you lay them on their backs, you are sacrificing only the skids. I never thought of them as panel braces.
Yes carry the mounting board to the full cabinet width.
If you plan to use a separate woofer, consider going with one of the 421's in the A7 cabinet.
The vent size should be reduced depending on the size of your room. I would make it 75 square inches for an average sized livingroom.
Use a minimum of the 511 horn or go wild with multicells.

[Altec Best]

Actually they don't make them anymore.

This is the woofer, same catalog number but now it has a smaller magnet and lower power handling. here also is a crappy photo of the catalog page of the ones i actually used, note the 100 0z magnet and 400/800 power handling:
MCM Audio Select 18'' Die Cast Professional Woofer | 55-1875 (551875) | MCM Audio Select

To get the same specs, 800 Watt,100Oz magnets you have to move up to the 21" woofer.

MCM Audio Select 21'' Die Cast Professional Woofer - 800W RMS | 55-2985 (552985) | MCM Audio Select

[VolvoHeretic]

Edit; oops, same as the one posted above. LOL
This one looks promising in a 16 cu ft box;
MCM Audio Select 18'' Die Cast Professional Woofer - 700W RMS | 55-2984 (552984) | MCM Audio Select

Input it into WinISD and it looked pretty good, but I am sure I don't know how to use it.

[alancohen]

A pair in south Jersey

Altec A7 Speaker Cabinets