big red studio monitors

[atombee]

Hi-

I am not sure if these are Altec products - when i did a search for "big red monitor", I got several references to Altec. I acquired them some time ago. They are large (22x23x30 ) bright red cabinets with a single large woofer with a large tweeter in the center. They weigh about 100# each.
I had them serviced at A Brown Soun in San Rafael a couple years back & those guys got quite excited when they saw them.
I know I am a total newbie, but if any body can tell me anything about these speakers i would appreciate it. Thank you.

[selmerdave]

The big reds to my knowledge generally have a 604 driver (the duplex you describe and picture with the horn tweeter in the middle) - hearing a set of these set me on my quest (completed) of finding a set of 604E's although the rest of my setup (cabinets, crossover) differs considerably. The big red cabinets were made by Audiotechniques I think, although I believe their design is not that far off of some of the larger Altec designs. Another significant thing about these is that they generally would have used the Mastering Labs crossover, which is considerably more complicated than the stock one, and I think generally preferred. The combination of all three generally seems to fetch considerable money, upward of $2500 for a pair in my experience. I may get my hands on a set of plans for the big reds in the coming months, perhaps someone here can save me time - but I'll say this. After the purchase of the drivers I spent $150 or so on random cabinets and built a simple crossover with pretty good parts and I think I've ended up with about 95% of what I heard in the big reds, at less than 1/3 of the cost. The 604E's are beautiful drivers.

Dave

[atombee]

thank you so much for the information.

-kb

[kestudio]

Hi Dave, Hi KB!
Owning a fine pair of 604E, i would be interested to hear how they perform in those cabinets (the red ones). I learned to prefer the 620 cab as optimal but they?re soo big . . .
Could you both tell me some words about the sound and your experiences with different cabs? I think to end up with the 620 but it would let me curious not to know what it?s about . . . . .

regards, Klaus

[daman]

What can i say, both the speaker and the cab looks in really good shape, exellent if you will.
To me it does look like a altec woofer (LF driver, as for the box i'v never seen any thing like it, but never the less it could very well be a full altec speaker system. Also by the looks of this speaker system, if you are into deep clean bass you could use this one as a bass pin, if u have a external powered cross over network that like i use for deejaying.

[atombee]

When I had these hooked up to Bogen tube amps (350 watts per speaker) the sound was ENORMOUS! I used to have to walk down to the far end of my apartment to hear the really low end. I could do a filter sweep/or eq on a kick drum and feel the sound impact travel up and down my body.
I later switched to a much smaller amp - the bogens were hot and expensive to run - and they were still great for seating the bass in a mix. When I mastered my cd, we had to lower a spike at about 4000 hertz by 8 db in almost every mix - I was compensating for a softness there, I guess.
Now, I don't think I would have had that problem with the bogens. In any case, I am selling the big reds on ebay right now. A friend of mine who does film scores, etc., keeps telling my I am making a huge mistake 'cuz my mixes were so good in the low end.
Also, some asked how do you put a picture in a post. There is a button down below the text entry field, underneath "add reply & preview" buttons. click on "image" and browse to the image & hit upload!

[rghinton]

I tried to post an image but I cannot find the browse. I clicked on image and am asked for a complete URL. What am I doing wrong? Thanks Reed

[atombee]

I apologize, i forgot how it actually worked. I had to put a url to my own website & the image: http://www.instrumentality.com/bigred1.jpg

so you will need a place to park the image & then enter the url

the bulletin board will do the rest!