Were University and Altec ever the same company?

[TVH]

Along these same lines is a question concerning Dukane. I obtained an 8-cell horn identical to (I'm not specifically sure which) to the 803-805B series Altec's. It is model 5A320. It says Dukane by Vitavox England. There were two attached adapters P4469 (rectangle horn end to 1.4" round) and a P4467 (potato-masher JBL type to 1"),on it was a Dukane driver (by James B. Lansing sound) model 5A350) The driver crossreferences with a JBL LE175. The combination has me mystified as the horns seem exactly the same as the Altec multicell's.I did not think JBL made horns like these. Did Lansing Sound "duplicate" these horns after leaving Altec, prior to what I know as JBL today? I'm guessing Lansing sound was the oem for Vitavox/Dukane horn ,as they were the compression driver.Or did Vitavox maybe obtain the horns from Altec under license, and the drivers from Lansing sound? Can anyone shed some light on this? There is nothing about Dukane/Vitavox in any of the posted Altec or JBL history.Any info. would be much appreciated. I'd be happy to email a photo if one desired one. Thanks so much!

[Don McR]

Hi TVH

JBL and Altec had OEM relationships with numerous companies. Altec equipment was sold under Western Electric, IPC, Westrex, Simplex and other brand names. JBL sold to Ampex, Dukane, Westrex, Simplex etc.

JBL did sell multicellular horns. Their very first horn was the small H1000 that was similar to the Lansing/Altec 808 horn. This was discontinued in 1950 in favor of the acoustic lens based horns.

In 1971, JBL introduced a series of multicellular horns that can be seen here:

JBL Multicells

I have been told that they were made for JBL by Vitavox, though I have never been able to confirm this. They were definitely not made by JBL since I have a product announcement that states this. JBL made them available after their contractors complained they were unable to bid on jobs that specified multicellular horns. However, once available, few contractors ordered them and they were dropped after only one year.

Vitavox is definitely a British company that is still in business. They make the horn and driver for the Living Voice Air Partner shown below.

[Todd W. White]

Don,

Now that you mention it, I actually DO recall the JBL contractors screaming for multicellular horns, as you stated - I just never saw any that actually got installed anywhere...

I looked at the pictures in the catalogue you linked to - they look an AWFUL LOT like the stuff old man Frazier was building in Dallas at the same time - in fact DuKane offered "their" multicell's when they went into the "pro" market, and I am almost certain they were made by Frazier. The company I used to work for in Ft. Worth had to use them (with the Dukane label) when they installed the sound system in the old Arlington Stadium (since torn down).

An interesting note: The system used PASSIVE crossovers built exclusively for the project by old man Frazier, which leads me to believe that those horns were his, too. I have seen them in other facilities with Frazier labels, and I have been told that Frazier built them in house...

Thanks for the clarification on Vitavox - it just seemed to me that they were in England....

Fascinating, isn't it?

Todd W. White, Owner & Webmaster
Altec Lansing's (unofficial) Homepage

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ January 14, 2003 07:13 PM: Message edited by: Todd W. White ]</font>

[TVH]

Great info. !!!!! That is WAY more than you can get through "official" site company histories. I can see why they would endeavor to keep stuff like that quiet. Although it "IS" history. The horn is @33" across cells by @16" high (2x4) multicell. I have a pair of 805B Altecs on the way, and I will do an exact comparison when they arrive, and post the results. That speaker is nice looking in the photo...I would like to hear one someday -does it come in "Altec" grey? I really appreciate you all shedding some light on this. I cannot wait till the 805's arrive and I can "really" see what the differences are- if any.Thanks Again!!! T.

[Todd W. White]

Lee,

Vitavox was a European company that made horns, drivers, etc. It seems like they were French - Ted Uzzle told me that once, but they may have had more than one location. England sounds more likely...

At any rate, they made some really strange stuff. I used to own a pair of little multicellular horns like you the ones you mentioned, but you say the ones you have are large - are you SURE they are the same size as the Altec 805's?

To my recollection, JBL never made any multicellular horns after Jim Lansing left Altec. He had built them for John K. Hilliard when he was at MGM building Shearer systems for their theatres, and Western Electric built them, too, but after he left Altec, they kept the tooling, which would have been cost-prohibitive to reproduce, so JBL went to making "radial" (sectoral) horns.
International patents were hard to enforce back then (still are), so many companies overseas built knock-off's of the Altec multicell's, Vitavox being one of the more prominant ones. Last I hears, there was still a firm building them in the former Soviet Union....

In a former life, I worked for two different DuKane dealers - one of which had started out as both an Altec and DuKane contracting company. One of their guys had been there since the 1960's. It turns out that they were doing REALLY well with Altec, and DuKane (originally known as"Operadio") was making GREAT inroads into the hospital nursecall business, and decided to get into the "professional sound" side, too.

It sounded good - after all, most of their dealers were also sound contractors, so why not get into that business and become THE single source for all their contractors needs, hmmmm?

Well, like I said, it SOUNDED good....

The problem was that DuKane had (has) absolutely NO expertise in the engineered sound business- they weren't even set up to BUILD anything in that arena! SO - they started getting as many companies as they could to OEM them "pro" stuff for them to re-label and sell as DuKane products. JBL,which was taking a real beating from Altec in the contracting market, readily agreed to supply them with drivers, woofers, horns, etc. (usually factory seconds - part of the reason DuKane didn't stay in that side of the business very long). Vitavox (and others) followed suit, as well.

DuKane, realizing that they would NEVER get ANY business from the Altec or JBL contractors if they didn't pull some kind of stunt, did exactly that - they told their dealer network that they HAD to make a choice - either drop all their other lines and buy everything from DuKane, or keep selling the other brands and lose their DuKane dealership.

Seeing as how there has always been more money in nursecall systems than in engineered sound systems (especially in the late 1960's, when this happened - hospitals were building like crazy!), many contractors were forced by DuKane to drop Altec, JBL, etc., and start buying products from DuKane.

It was a marketing disaster.... the stuff DuKane relabeled was JUNK, delivery times were AWFUL, the markup put on the OEM'd equipment made winning sound bids difficult (at best), plus, as all who really know KNOW - the JBL/hybridized speakers just DIDN'T sound good, so the DuKane dealers began losing sales. Some lost their businesses as a result of it. The ones that didn't either got out of the engineered sound business altogether, or told DuKane what they could do with their "use US or ELSE" policy and went, typically, back to Altec, IF Altec would let them back into the family of dealers (many were turned down).

It didn't take long for the whole DuKane master plan to collapse, leaving quite a few systems out there with no good way to get parts for and service them (most are probably gone completely by now).

"Pu-Kane", as the Altec contractors lovingly called DuKane's hybrid speaker/sound systems fell flat on it's face, and, I heard, lost millions in the ill-fated venture.

I'm not surprised that there isn't any official documentation at JBL or DuKane about this fiasco - those in their companies that still know what really happened don't like to talk about it.

The Vitavox parts are probably worth a tidy sum - the JBL seconds? Who know? Probably not much...

Hope this helps!

Todd W. White, Owner & Webmaster

Altec Lansing's (unofficial) Homepage

[Don McR]

TVH

I don't think there's any effort to hide the Dukane relationship or that of any other OEM. Thses OEM relationships formed such a small part of Altec and JBL's business that none of them are reported in either's corporate web history. I know for a fact that there is no one left at either Altec Lansing Technologies or JBL that was around when these OEM contracts were in force (generally in the 1950's and 1960's). We only found out about them after inteviewing retired employees and digging deep into their archives.

Todd

You are probably right about the horns coming from Frazier. The Vitavox connection never made sense to me. The costs of importing big heavy horns from overseas just doesn't make economic sense.

[Earl K]

Hi All
- I have jpgs of a Dukane labelled 6 cell , multicell horn including one that clearly states among other things :

MODEL 5A 310
CUSTOM - BUILT FOR
DuKane Corporation, St. Charles, Ill.
By VitaVox, England

- Don't discount the fact that post WW-2 Englands' economy/currency was in shambles and as such was eager for exports especially to Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Once the Canadian connection was established working on entering the US market through DuKane seems like common sense marketing .VitaVox apparently also had licensing agreements with Klipsch to build K-horns north of the border. These K-Horns used a metal-cast Radial style horn with 3 "vanes" in the throat. These same VitaVox horns have shown up on Ebay labelled as a Dukane product. The DuKane number might be A5 300 , but don't quote me on that.

regards <> Earl K

[TVH]

More great info. !!! The model number I have is 5A 320 and is an 8-cell with same information referenced in Earl's post above. Very interesting reading from all. Thanks again ALL !!!!!