Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater cabinets and speakers Identification

[Bill Seipel]

I have at least 3 Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater cabinets and speakers, with horns.
Need some assistance in identifying the model.

I believe they are A4's with the optional 'wings' but beyond that, I'm unsure.

I am 6'2" and the cabinets are easily 6-7 in taller than me.

Photos attached.

[Steve Guttag]

They MAY be A4s or a clone. I didn't see enough detail to determine if they were genuine Altec 210 cabinets. The face of the system will tell a bit more (how many cells are they on the horn. The model number of the drivers (both compression and woofers).

Factory colors on the 210 cabinet should be black or grey (depending on vintage. The 210 cabinet is 7-feet tall. The thing is really designed around working with 4x8 sheets of plywood (I have the blue prints for them, somewhere) for its construction. It's almost all plywood and 2x3 lumber (struts and wing construction). The wings were NEVER optional. They were always part of the cabinet system and you'll see four holes on each side in the horn/port area to attach the wings and two additional holes towards the rear to mount the struts.

[Bill Seipel]

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20241011_142910.jpgMore photos.

I've been told that these were likely made in Hollywood, after Altec Lansing had a fire in their factory. There was a period of several years where they made them in between factories. The person also commented that they'd never seen them labeled as such and it very irregular.

[John Eickhof]

I sold quite a few of them in the 1970s. it is an A-4X with optional 1005-2 high frequency and dual throat 288 drivers. the 515s are stock and the N-500-C is stock, The 210 cabinet affords the early 1970s VOTT decal so I would say they could be 1970s-1980s vintage. A very good loudspeaker! What else do you need to know? Excellent speaker rated for theatres up to 2000 seats and dual HF drivers afford better balcony coverage.

[Steve Guttag]

John,

You are WAY off on the vintage (decades). Those are original 515s (note the 20Ω impedance The horns are the tar-filled versions. The 288s are 288Bs (and crinkle finish). So, we're in the 1950s with all of that. By the time you get to the 1960s it would be 515Bs (16Ω) and 288C (24Ω)...with hammertone finish. I forget when the N500F entered but it would likely have been in the 1960s as the various combinations of drivers/horns would have needed impedance matching transformers and the N500F has a pocket for them. The horn wouldn't have been filled at all and been individual cells attached at each end. To be in the 70s and 80s...you would have already moved to the 515C. The 288 would have transitioned as well (gotten larger) as the phase plug would have transitioned to the tangential one while still using AlNiCo. And, by 1980s and beyond...everything would have been ferrite magnet stuff so 515E and 288K.

I would agree that yours should be called A4X/1005 Presuming that is an 5x2 multicell and not 4x2.

[Terry Monohan]

I liked the Cerwin Vega deep base speakers so much in the movie 'Earthquake' I remember going out to the local Pacific Stereo store in San Francisco and buying two huge CV speakers .They were huge and heavy and cost a fortune at that time

Sounded so hot for my mid 1970's DISCO parties. The Cerwin Vega's had the tweeters, mid range and a 15 inch woofer for the home stereo crowd. My SF apartment shook from these monsters.

When I first saw CINERAMA at the Orpheum Cinerama Theatre in SF they had giant Altec Lansing speakers behind the curved screen and the side/back wall surrounds. The Orpheum Theatre is still around today who knows what kind of speakers they use for stage shows. They are ugly looking long things hung on either side of the large wide stage. I remember they got rid of all the Cinerama equipment when they went live events I saw a few smashed up Altec speakers in the dumpster on the side of the building. I was to young to think about climbing in and getting some of these old Cinerama treasures.

Glad that Cervin Vega is still around today

[John Eickhof]

Haha Steve! I'm glad to see some one on here is still a fan of the old stuff like I am. You took the bait hook, line and sinker, and damn near sunk the boat! I thought I could start a conversation once I saw the later decals on the 212s! Otherwise the components are right out of the late 1940s Altec Catalogs! they even have Hollywood labels! I would bet if the instruction diagram on the HF sled is dated 1946 or so! And I was selling Altec in the 70s-90s and it was all the F and G series and were the ferrite types, although i still have a couple 288 diaphragm kits with the orange phase plugs! Good job! I do wonder if someone just put the new decals on the older boxes but the components are vintage. I wonder how stiff the cones are on the 515s now, they used to dry up and reduce spl output.

[Steve Guttag]

I've reconed countless Altec drivers. The paper is normally quite fragile, at this point. The phenolic spider is almost always deformed and, if the driver hasn't been rotated, the VC former will have been rubbing the pole piece.

I believe the 288G was the golden driver...had the radial (Tangerine) phase plug but Alnico driver. The 288H was the same but ferrite.

For the record, we were stilling Altec into the 2000s. We would refurb a 210 cabinet, open the ports up a bit, close off the upper chamber to tune the cabinet to the 515G though I later preferred a stiffer cone. GPA came out with the 515-LF (yes, I know that there was a 515-LFE but the the GPA one was different). They hit a home-run with that driver. I used them on some 816A cabinets and they were incredible.

I never liked the multicell but loved the Mantaray horns (over and above the other CD horns of the era). I still have theatres with our Frankenspeakers of A5/MR94 as well as some A5C/MRII594. If I have a mixed use theatre where the speaker has to sit/fly in a stage house, I'll take an A5 LF section (825 or 828) over any direct radiator.

I'm not quite so sure about your 1946 date...you are getting into original 288s, not the B and the crossovers would not have be "Cs" but those could have been different from the originals. I don't have a 1946 catalog so I can't say for sure. That stuff just looks like it is from the '50s. It looks like the same era as the Simplex XL stuff that Altec OEMed All of the XL stuff used 288B clones (the B has a shorting ring that will bottom out a modern diaphragm if the VC former isn't cut flush with the end of the VC. Either that or one has to send the driver to someone that can discharge it, remove the ring and re-charge it. GPA used to do that for us when they first started up. Now, GPA is all about selling VERY high priced drivers to home audio enthusiasts.

[John Eickhof]

good info,i was estimating dates by the location...the xover was Beverly Hills and the drivers are Hollywood so late 40s early to bid 50s or so.... i had great luck with the orange phase plugs too, thats good info on the LF chages / upgrades to the 210! Who is GPA? is it a back east co? not familiar with them...so much fun! lets keep em interested!

[Steve Guttag]

GPA was Great Plains Audio (now Great Plains Acoustics). The last Altec Engineer Bill Hanucheck bought the tooling from Telex/EVI when they shut down the Oklahoma plant. He was making genuine Altec drivers, diaphragms and cone kits. For a period, Altec Consumer tried to reintroduce the A7 to the home market (something like $5K a pair) so he supplied them with parts. Another Oklahoma guy had the molds for the small format Mantaray horns. Bill never got into the cabinet part...that was up to the user. Since we, in cinema, had an abundance of Altec cabinets coming out...that was never a problem. We built a jig to make the A4 bass wings too as we were putting those in relatively late (definitely past 2000). We did a set for Johns Hopkins in Baltimore (Shriver Hall) where the bass wings were foldable so they would be tight to the cabinet and be on casters so they could wheel on/off stage. They're gone now too, unfortunately.

In any event, Bill would take some of his high-impedance 288 diaphragms (ones that measured over 16Ω and stamp them 20221 for me so that they would be close to the 24Ω version (288C), which is the bulk of what we had.

I don't know if any of our A4 systems are still in use though. Times and needs change. We probably have a couple of theatres with A4 still running and definately have theatres with A5s and A6s running.

I did a little research and the N500C did go back to the '40s but the 288B would have had to have been late '40s and likely '50s. The N500F came out much later than I thought...I appears to be in the '70s and there may have been an overlap where the N500C and N500F co-existed though they were identical, circuit wise.

While I'd like to keep the Altec line going...the new entity isn't interested in selling parts. They just want to sell very high priced nostalgia drivers. I'm not saying that they are not good but they are not priced competitive enough to be used in a cinema application anymore. Though, as I mentioned the 515-LF in an 816A cabinet is pretty impressive. That will get you horn loading down to 125Hz and decent enough bass response down to 50Hz.

[Mike Blakesley]

We used to have one of those or very similar. It was replaced in 1986 when we went to 5.1 sound (John, you may remember it!) and was still working fine at the time. It may even still be back there in a far corner, I honestly don't remember.

I always did wonder how old it was, but it was there when I went to work at the theatre in 1975 and I know there was never any service done on it until it was replaced. It almost HAD to be reconed or had other service at some point, I'd think.

[Steve Guttag]

You'd be surprised at how well the Altec stuff can hold up. Now, they can't take a lot of power and definitely no harsh clipping. They were designed in the day when 15-watts was a lot and theatres were BIG. So, they were designed with efficiency in mind. To put it in perspective. An A4 is a 108dB 1W/1m speaker (sensitivity). A typically double-15 speaker by JBL or QSC is going to be around 100dB 1W/1m. It takes 4-times the power on a "modern" speaker to get to the same level as an A4. An A4 with 515B (or C or E), with the bass wings, can play reasonably flat down to 40Hz. There will be a dip around 80Hz where it switches to bass reflex. An A5 (or A7) can play pretty flat down to 50Hz with a dip at 125Hz where, again, it transitions to being a bass reflex speaker. The A7/A5 is a 103dB 1W/1m speaker so it is just twice as efficient as a typical "modern" double-15 system. With the HP drivers that came out (both "G" and "H"), they could handle a decent amount of power too with a slight penalty on the bottom end response.

One thing an Altec speaker can do better than most...play back dialog. They put the crossover down at 500Hz to keep it out of the dialog region and the components were designed with the spoken voice in mind.

Look up a picture of an Altec A5C

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Now look at your typical 3-way system like the QSC SC-423 or the JBL 3732. You don't have to squint too hard to see the resemblance. Altec was just doing, effectively, the 3-way system, with just 2 drivers, decades before the others. The Altec MRII594, as seen on the A5C was really a best-in-class Constant Directivity horn. Unlike other small format horns, it had pattern control down to 500Hz and was VERY uniform in coverage. And, if you wanted, you could splay the horns without the normal lobing (if your axis was correct).

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I don't know Steve... Are those Dolby Atmos approved? If not, then why would anyone ever install those? Even my new Motorola Razor phone has Dolby Atmos built in.

[Steve Guttag]

I realize the joke there (it worked better with THX approved...Joe's video is still tops...THX..."We'll Certify Anything!"). Dolby does not "approve" or disapprove anything. I could certainly use them in a Dolby Atmos system. Contrary to popular belief, Dolby Atmos doesn't put additional stress/demands on the screen channels or subwoofers. It also doesn't draw more power as the overall SPL should be the same or pretty close. What it does increase demands on are the surrounds...where each speaker has to be able to play just about as loud as a screen channel...then multiply that out times each speaker. This may make people think that the electric demands would go way up. But you aren't going to have 50 surround speakers playing at 100dB at once (think about that SPL!!!).

Would I use an A4 or A5 in an Atmos room? Yes, if it made sense for the room. That is always the key...matching equipment to the room.

[John Eickhof]

good information again Steve. Efficiency was they key! Mike had an A-7-800 originally used with his Motiograph mono system, MA-7505 25W amp. Sounded great as it should, but going to stereo the higher dynamic range was hard on the little Altec N-800s and even the N-500s and could saturate them and end up frying (or usually breaking) voice coils....but I still have A-7s in my theatre with no problems, but I did install later 802s and heavy basket 15s in them and with N-800s never had a clipping or saturation problem yet, plus they still sound great, but they won't take a hard thump or pop as you know that can momentarily shoot hundreds or even thousands of watts into a system, but the newer stuff is rated better for those types of occasions. I will stick with my Altecs! I actually like the melding of EV into Altec, that was a good time and like you I preferred the MR horns as the dispersion pattern was better in the corners than the older style multi cell horns and the radial horns.