New Altec lover

[Petro]

Hi Steve, I'm fairly new here myself, from Burlington. Where in SJ do you live?
I started with a set of 511b horns with 908 drivers sitting on some Klipsch Heresy's. Soon after I picked up a set of HeathKit AS101's that are basically Valencias in nicer cabinets and a slightly better crossover. As soon as I get some extra money I'm going to build a set of Model 19 crossovers for the AS101's.
I'm really enjoying the Altec sound with my tube amps, they will only get better I'm sure.

BillWojo

Hello Bill, I live on Long Beach Island. Yes, year round. Lol. I've been looking at Heath kit designs. I like them alot. I'm sort of a tinkerer, I will easily build a cabinet from a mix of other people's ideas that I like, and add my own ideas and if it doesn't work. Well then I bust it up and start over. It would be strange if I liked the first attempt.

IME, it is easier to blend the 32 horn with a 12" or 15" Altec woofer for a smaller domestic listening environment than an 811 or 511. So before selling the Altec 15, I'd suggest comparing the sound of the 511 vs. the existing 32 horns in it - pull out the compression drivers and mount them on the 511s on top of the cabinet using the same crossover.

Just my 2 cents...happy listening!

JE

Thanks!!! I love that idea. I had 2 pairs of model 15's a series 2 and these, I tested the drivers in both and liked the 902-8a's best so that's what is in mine. Sent the series2 to a friend. I'm going away for 10 days, as soon as I get back I will do that. Try the 511's with both sets of drivers.
Thanks again for the idea.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh btw I forgot to mention I run an older Viva 300b with a Rega turntable and ortofon cartridge. Only tubes and vinyl in my house

[bowtie427ss]

I tested the drivers in both and liked the 902-8a's best so that's what is in mine.

Some points for you to ponder:

a) 902 has a 7/8 diameter aperture, 511 has a 1 inch throat. Billwojo started a thread here that will give more details and you can see what he did to address the non-matching throat size.

b) 902 performs best above 1.2khz, Altec did not use it below that, and for good reason.

c) for lower XO points(800hz, 500hz) the 800 series drivers are audibly superior.

d) if you are going to use them, re-cap the N801's.

FWIW, my current daily drivers are 9849 monitors set up for near field listening, 414-8C woofers, the ones that use the one piece stepped return pot as found on the 416-8B, horns are cast 32's with 23746 one piece cast pot compression drivers with original low mileage 23744 "light" diaphragms, networks re-capped with Dayton 5% poly's. I tried a film bypass cap, and ended up removing it.

[Petro]

Thanks for that my xover and cap knowledge is not where it should be, and I need to learn about them. The 902's are in my 15's and sound great. But I'd like to re cap those crossovers as the present caps look tired.
The 808's are definitely going with the a7 project no matter what I do with the cabinets. And I may look to put new caps in those.

Anyone use the plugs for the a7's? They have the xover wired to the plug and have nice thick wire running from the 808 to plugs in the back. And also another plug I guess for linking many speakers together. I see lots of restorations and no one seems to use them. These are in such great shape I'd like to get a nice nylon sleeve for them and use them.
Thanks you guys are awesome and a great help!!

[Petro]

OK I don't want to start a new thread for this but I need some advise. My a7 cabinets are beyond saving. I pulled out the center piece to see how they braced the woofers, and pretty much researched this forum and all over the internet. I'm going to use 3/4" MDF on the cabinets and step up the bracing, and use 1/4" ply for the curves and put some on upper and lower so I can stain and poly that area and paint the rest of the cabinets for a little different look.
Problem is I wanted to shrink down the cabinets a bit. If i drop the cabinet down to 36" tall and 26.5" wide . The numbers seem to add up fine, but if I try to take 4" off the depth I run into the bottom of the woofer surround not having any slope to it. I don't want to move the woofer back anymore than 1"if at all, so taking 3" off the surrounds is pretty much the rate of the slope. So that brings me to making the whole surround the original size height and depth wise and just taking a couple inches off each side. Which means the bottom of the cabinet will be much smaller. At 25" not counting exterior walls and 19" high. And I will shrink down the port.
Does anyone think I am ruining a good thing? Or just being silly doing this?
I have at least 2 friends that love and want a7's but are too big for them as well. I think if I can make this work, I could build and sell a couple more pairs to them.
Please let me know any thoughts or opinions or if any of you have tried something similar
Thank you