Altec Model 19 restoration

[gregorskiff]

i restored a neglected pair of 19's a couple years ago.
took alot of pictures with my 1999 vintage digital camera so the pics arent real good.

finally got them uploaded today.
i hope these shots might help you guys building or restoring model 19 cabinets.

keep in mind that i dont have access to a shop so i did all the work in my apartment's kitchen....the girls were not impressed, they thought i had finally lost it.....until the mess was cleaned up and they saw the finished results and heard the 19's performance.

photobucket is definately the place to host pics, alot of others wont host large pics and your pics tend to disappear for no reason.

heres another tip for pictures:
do you need to resize, crop, convert formats, join a bunch into one, view thumbnails?

heres a small(884K), handwritten, FREE FOREVER program, no spam, ads, nagware,spyware or BS.
http://www.irfanview.com/

model 19 pics, i uploaded them backwards so go page 3 to 1.
http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...LTEC/?start=40

[boltupright]

WOW!!! I'm impressed with those bases you made,very nice work.
When I restored mine, the bases were in excellent condition so I just left them, but I repainted them with a special paint meant for auto interior vinyl.
I also reninforced the horn & woofer section of the cab together with extra bolts on the front & back, put a few extra baltic birch strips on edge inside to stiffen the cabinet walls in the woofer section, completely dissasembled the cabinets & re-oiled them with danish oil & steel wool & wet sanded them with the oil & 600 grit paper.
I picked up the horn foam from that gentleman on Ebay, dampened the horns by spraying truck bed liner on the outside, but it didn't do as good a job as I expected, so I zip cut the verticals in the horn flare & used black gasket silicon to fill the gap as to deaden them even further.
The grills could use new cloth to make them look absolutely brand new, but there is a miminum order of 5 yards, & it's a bit exspensive & 5 yards is way more than I need.

[gregorskiff]

Thanks Bolt,
when i got those speakers the bases were just plain gone...disintigrated in the early 80's the former owner told me.
i made my bases out of vinyl brick moulding and shelf brackets painted with hammerite.

i didnt take pics of the fasteners i used for the horn and bass sections, i didnt trust the screws to hold in fiberboard so i through bolted with long 1/4" bolts.

on the veneer i used watco rejuvenating oil and 0000 steel wool followed by paste minwax in the can.

i got the foam surrounds from paul darst, i think they are the same ones from ebay.

i still need to dampen the horns because i couldnt decide which way to do it...now i know, thanks!

the xovers have new solen caps and mills resistors and the L-pads are bypassed with a 10 ohm resistor.

i couldnt find decent grill cloth anywhere so i rolled the dice and ordered that from parts express.....its alot thinner and not as nice as the original, i might redo them someday if i can find good cloth.

Mr Gonzo:
i posted in your thread to share with the guys out there building and restoring the model 19, a hijack was not my intent.
we all want to know the details and see more pics as your project progresses.

when i recovered the grill frames i set the support pieces back a ways from the inside of the cloth so they wouldnt be visible, i used pine trim painted flat black, glue and dowels.
i wish i had sealed the frames with paint because im getting dirt/dust through the cloth from the porous fiberboard frame, i did clean them beforehand but that wasnt good enough...even after vacuuming alot its still coming through.

[boltupright]

Sounds like you have a killer pair of 19's there, yeah the zip cut method turned out real good, the horns don't ring at all, very dead.
I've yet to rebuild the crossovers, but the speakers sound fine, I thought I'd wait until I hear problems with them stock.

Here is a link to the cloth I've found, it looks dead on in the picture, but who knows until you see it in person.

http://www.acoustonegrillecloth.com/#

click where it says "click to see complete line of swatches" then click back one page on that window to see B100 & B200 stretch, it looks pretty close to the altec black & brown cloth, but it is expensive, especially if you have to order 5 yards of it to actually get some, maybe they would send a sample piece & maybe we could find a retailer somewhere.

[Steve Gonzales]

Great bunch of information here guys, thank you. As far as the hijack thing, not a problem, I'm very easy to get along with and think that the more information that we can share just adds to the value of this forum. To tell you all the truth, I'm finding it hard to take them apart to restore the enclosures! I am just amazed how good these speakers are, even with the 09' x-overs. I listened to Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" last night all the way through - outstanding. Even at the highest eBay selling price, the Mighty 19's are a bargin. I recovered one of the small upper grilles last night and that bloody dust keeps coming through. Oh well, tear it off a redo it right next time. Thanks for all the great info- Steve G.

[gregorskiff]

Hi Bolt,
i found some acoustone stretch cloth by the yard online here:
http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/id78.htm
they may still have brown in 36" width by the yard, $15/Yd.
i measured my grilles and 36" X 94" stretched will do both speakers.
the other colors are 66" width for $30/Yd.
i requested info and a sample from youdoit a few minutes ago, it does look like some nice stuff but as you said who knows?...hopefully i can get my paws on a sample.

Horn dampening:
i was thinking about having a machine shop mill out the welds, i havent come up with a plan to make the cuts myself without distorting the vanes or getting the cast aluminum too hot.
what is "zip cut" and how do you go about it?.

Mr Gonzo:
i dont blame you for wanting to listen instead of restore!
supertramp and just about any other good quality recording sounds awesome on my 19's

on the first lower frame that i covered i didnt get enough tension in the fabric to support the ALTEC emblem so off it came for a retry, there was alot of staple pulling and cussing involved.

getting the fabric to stretch around and lay flat on the square corners was a challenge, a very light misting of 3M spray adhesive (the kind that stays tacky) left to dry for an hour or so kept the frame tacky and helped in periodic repositioning of the fabric.

let us know what you come up with to seal the frames, i may just redo mine again.

Cheers!

[gregorskiff]

forgot to add,
i got a new camera a few months ago and ive never seen an online hires pic of the foam surrounds that paul darst makes, they really are very nice.

theres also more gratuitous model 19 pics, some without the flash.
http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...w%20pics/?sc=3

[Tom Brennan]

Skiff---The vane welds are easily cut with a sawzall.

[boltupright]

Yeah they are easy to cut, a zip cut is a thin abrasive blade that fits in an angle grinder, it's about 4.5 inches in diameter & aprox, 1/16 of an inch thick, it cuts through that weld very easy & fast so it doesn't have a chance to heat & distort anything, & leaves a very small gap, enough to do the job that's for shure.
I then use a black gasket maker silicon to fill the gap, it takes about a week to cure though, but you cant even tell that there was anything done to it afterwards.

Nice pics by the way.

[boltupright]

I just looked at the link you posted skif, it looks as thought the weave pattern on their B200 is different than the acoustone link I posted.
If you look closely on my link, the B200 weave is the same as all the stretch cloth on that page, but on the link you posted, the weave looks different.
When I look at my altec cloth, the weave look an awful lot like the B200 on the original acoustone link, wouldn't you agree?