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It Lives! The Frankenmonster Altec Vegas!

analog addict

analog addict

Glory or Death!
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Thought I might get some opinions from folks about these Altecs I picked up last week. Couple of Madrid 872B's, serial numbers 1300 and some. Took 'em to the NC gathering and was quite surprised at how good they sounded as compared to hearing them in my little office. Turned into quite a fan favorite too. However it was noticed that they were noticably deficient in the upper treble range, and that the tweeters, although working, were pretty anemic sounding as compared to the bi-flex 420A's. So....late that night at the stroke of midnight, Homer, Bakes and myself got out the power tools, and with some delicate body sculpting, we created...


THE ALTEC VEGA​



using some leftover dome tweeters that Homie had in the boneyard. We were all struck by how much more lively they sounded. Needless to say, we didn't leave any marks visible on the surface, and the OEM tweeters can be replaced without being able to tell unless you took 'em apart, but the beautiful rich warm biflex sound now has a sparkling new finish to it....

Listening to them right now, powered by what else???

The Green Monster, of course!!!:D
 

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Are you saying that the tweet came out of a Cerwin-Vega, or that it has rust all along the bottom and burns a quart of oil every 100 dBls?
 
I think you should try some 811 horns again with a different XO :yes: . The EV active XO did not allow any fine tuning for the LF in relation to the HF. An Eminence 1600Hz passive would do nicely. We'll have to get together and try out some different things as I am curious to make the horns work with the bi-flex woofer.
 
Hmmm. You know the small "mystery horn" from the 890C Bolero would fit in that cabinet nicely. They come up on Ebay from time to time. Cross at 2000hz.
 

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All kidding aside...

...seems to me that given the freq response of the 420A up to around 14KHz, some sort of super tweeter set up might also be interesting. As I recall, as we had it set up, the horn and Bi-flex seemed to be stepping on each other, having too much overlap in the midrange....It will be fun to find out....:yes:
 
Cool!

Tom Brennan said:
Hmmm. You know the small "mystery horn" from the 890C Bolero would fit in that cabinet nicely. They come up on Ebay from time to time. Cross at 2000hz.
Click to expand...

Is there a specific part number? Yeah I know if there was, it wouldn't be a mystery horn, but I figured I'd ask....:D
 
Allen if you are thinking in that direction you should hear my Franentanas using a piezo horn tweeter (a real one not the cheap imitations). I doubt the bi-flex and the horn were stepping on each other as we had them electronically crossed. When the XO says 800Hz it means 800Hz. The woofer saw very little above the XO frequency. I suspect the upper regions of the 420's output are where people start to develope their dislike of the drivers sound. It is a challenging/fun project nonetheless.
 
"Is there a specific part number? "

Yeah, there's a part number, you can look it up in the Altec library on the Lansing Heritage site.

It's called the Mystery Horn because of it's sourcing, probably Heppner. One sees Heppner horns very similar to the Mystery often on Ebay.
 
Tom Brennan said:
Hmmm. You know the small "mystery horn" from the 890C Bolero would fit in that cabinet nicely. They come up on Ebay from time to time. Cross at 2000hz.
Click to expand...

How good are they? Don't you have some Bolero's?
 
"How good are they?"

Pretty good IMO. Not nasty, excellent dynamics, fairly extended.

Yes, I have some Boleros.
 
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