Altec 3000 Horn Tweeter

[Mirrophonic Sound System]

I'm intrigued by the Altec 3000. What year were they introduced ?

This would appear to be Altec's only compression tweeter ?

Ideal for a horn system supertweeter ?

A worthy successor to the venerable W.E. 596/597 ?

What was the VC diameter ?

What do they sell for these days ?

[Todd W. White]

The 3000 came out shortly after WWII, as early as 1950 or so. It was immediately popular, and the literature of the era rated it out to 22,000 cps. Later literature (1970's) rated it out to 20,000 cps.

It showed up in the later version of the Altec 601, which was a 12" (414 style) with the 3000 glued to the pole piece.

It used the diaphragm from the WE/Altec 633 "saltshaker" microphone. THe v/c diameter was soemthing like

It was also available as a hi-fi part for custom projects and appeared in several home systems, most notably the "Melodist" system. It may have also been in the Capri, but I can't recall right now...

Supposedly, it could handle 35 watts of power, but that's with a bandpass filter that filtered out everything from 3,000 cps down. It was rated at 8 ohms.

[Mirrophonic Sound System]

Interesting that it is so early. Yet surprising it wasn't used in many more systems
similar to all those 3-way JBL designs.

I take it that the diaphragm was aluminum ?

[Todd W. White]

Yes, and quite small - something like 1/2" or so...

[Mirrophonic Sound System]

Comparing it to the Western Electric 596-A/ 597-A, the W.E. had a 1" VC of 20 ohms
and a power rating of 6 watts - which would be closer to the 3000's power rating I suspect
as many experimenters have no doubt learned the hard way

Apart from the 596 and the 3000, I don't know of any other good ultra low mass aluminum
diaphragm horn supertweeters of equal pedigree available to the enthusiast.
Certainly JBL's efforts were a sellout to high power ratings with higher mass/stiffer suspensions.