Altec 606-Inspired Build Using A-7 Components

[elitopus]

Lookin good! I like the green of the horns against the veneer. They really pop.

Looks like you are almost done. I'm sure these will give you many years of good listening

Sorry to hear about your hospital trip. Good thing your wife saw what was happening and got you to the hospital. I am dealing with the same temps here in FL. I have to make myself drink lots of fluids. Sometimes I have to just go sit down in the AC and get out of the heat for a while. The hot season is almost over and then we will be back to the warm season

 

[gdmoore28]

Hoping that that the new hurricane doesn't make landfall in Florida. Two Storms in two weeks is not good.
GeeDeeEmm i

 

[EarlK]

Hey GDM,

Loving the progress and the overall look .

I'm in an airport lobby waiting for a flight ( after a couple of weeks R&R minus internet access ) and I just had to check up on your project.

Boy, those are really beautiful looking 511's & like Eli mentioned, pop out so beautifully against that wood grain.

BTW, I've had heatstroke some 4 decades back / I know just how easily it can sneak up on a person working in the heat & humidity.

 

[gdmoore28]

Thanks for the kind words, Earl. Been missing you! I appreciate the comments on the proportions. When you live with these things every day the looks grow on you and I have to wonder how they will look to others. I guess I'll stay with the current design - at least for now. It'll be an easy process to delete the bases and incorporate the top hats if I decide to go with a shorter look in the future. (That'll never happen. Once I'm done, I'm done.)

Weather is exceptional today here, with highs in the high seventies. Just beautiful. About time to go outside and get to work on these. More to come.

GeeDeeEmm

 

[macaltec]

Weather is exceptional today here, with highs in the high seventies. Just beautiful. About time to go outside and get to work on these. More to come.

GeeDeeEmm

Sure, rub it in. Some of us have go to work...

What is the volume of your cabinet? I have a project in mind....

 

[gdmoore28]

Sure, rub it in. Some of us have go to work...

What is the volume of your cabinet? I have a project in mind....

Volume as it stands right now is approximately 6 cubic feet.

What are you considering?

GeeDeeEmm

 

[gdmoore28]

Well, I forgot to take pictures of the top cabs while I was finishing them today. Not much to see, actually. I wired in the connectors, installed the horns, and secured them at the driver with the original Altec L-brackets padded with a block of rubber. Man, these top boxes with the tops and horns attached are HEAVY!!!!! It was all I could do to lift them to the top of the main cabinets.

Oh, yeah - I used 10-32 brass threaded inserts to attach the tops, and 1/4" inserts to attach the top boxes to the cabinets. I haven't installed the bolts to attach the top boxes yet, but the inserts are in place an aligned. I noticed after hoisting these things into place that I had mis-aligned one of the tops to the top box. Not a big deal. It's off only about 1/16", and I built in plenty of wiggle room for alignment. But moving it into place is going to require taking the horn back out, and right now I'm exhausted. Wifey time tomorrow. Maybe I'll do it Friday.

GeeDeeEmm

 

[gdmoore28]

Just noticed that in eleven days it will be five months that I've been working on these things and charting the progress here. That's about four months longer than I've ever worked on a speaker construction project. I dread to add up what I have invested in these, but I'll bet it is less than I anticipated, thanks to finding so much of this material second-hand.

Hard to believe that I started with this:

Good day, Gents!
GeeDeeEmm

 

[BillWojo]

Really looking good, pretty soon you will be able to kick back and enjoy them. Or do you have another project in mind? I have a feeling that you can't sit still. LOL

BillWojo

 

[cubdog]

Great work and impressive results! I admire your talents.

 

[macaltec]

Volume as it stands right now is approximately 6 cubic feet.

What are you considering?

GeeDeeEmm

I have a pair of 416A woofers, 511 or 811 horns and 808 8A drivers or SeleniumD220s, I think I have some 807s needing diaphragms somewhere. Possibly could use a set of Dayton PA380-8 woofers. I worked out the bass bin tuning for the Dayton's today. 5.5 ft cubed tuned to 40Hz got me an F3 of around 38 but had a bump from about 42 to 50 then dipped down a dB or two before smoothing out. I would likely biamp them with an active crossover, got a couple laying around.

I'd be happy making something just half as good looking as your project. Superb craftsmanship.

 

[gdmoore28]

Thanks so much, guys. The kudos really lift the spirits at the end of the day!

Future projects: man, I just don't know. I told my wife that this would be my last speaker build project, and that I wanted to make a pair I'd feel proud to pass on to my kids. So, this might be it.

However . . . I did run across a couple of well-made 3/4" boxes a while back of about 7 cubic feet. Bought them cheap, cheap, cheap. My wife's been asking, "And what do you intend to do with those?" Ummmm . . . . .

GeeDeeEmm

 

[gdmoore28]

I have a pair of 416A woofers, 511 or 811 horns and 808 8A drivers or SeleniumD220s, I think I have some 807s needing diaphragms somewhere. Possibly could use a set of Dayton PA380-8 woofers. I worked out the bass bin tuning for the Dayton's today. 5.5 ft cubed tuned to 40Hz got me an F3 of around 38 but had a bump from about 42 to 50 then dipped down a dB or two before smoothing out. I would likely biamp them with an active crossover, got a couple laying around.

I'd be happy making something just half as good looking as your project. Superb craftsmanship.

Oooooh! I like the idea of a bump at 42-50Hz! Can you imagine the bass drum impact that would produce? I wish you lived closer - I'd give you the boxes I mentioned above and you'd be set to boogie. You will start a new thread for us when you get started, right? I love watching folks build things.

GeeDeeEmm

 

[gdmoore28]

Note to self: Never, EVER use solid oak as a push stick! I knew better than this, but as I was running a board across this table saw this morning, I was in the middle of the pass and could not find my usual balsa push stick. So, I grabbed the nearest cutoff - a piece of solid oak. Just as I was finishing the pass, the push stick aligned with the saw blade and . . . BLAM! Straight back into my hand. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
That's not a cut you see there. It's blunt force breaking the skin on my hand, and it hurt like crazy. My hand is so sore now that I can barely use it to type. I found my balsa push stick once I was bandaged up. Lesson learned. Again!

Before the interruption, I was in the process of roughing in the speaker grills. I ran out of mahogany and had nothing left to make them with except from very nice solid oak. I suspect that I will end up veneering the frames so they will match the speakers.

The vertical boards (I'll call them stiles, even though that's not what they are) were cut with a deep recess in them to accept the panels that I'll cover in the grill cloth shown earlier in the post. I could not figure a way to recess-cut the rails (again, wrong name, but that's all I can think of), so I'll have to think of something for that purpose.


This was one of the very, very few times I actually used pegs to attach the stiles to the rails, but it seemed the only way to do the attachment that would provide the strength they will need.

The fronts have a three-panel division that goes deeper on the center panel than on the outer panels.

These look very plain-jane at this point. I'm thinking of veneering them, then attaching some half-round sticks from top to bottom on the stiles. That should break up the profile a bit. Comments and suggestions most welcome, as always.

GeeDeeEmm

 

[macaltec]

Ouch! Take care of yourself.

 

[BillWojo]

As someone who works with there hands, that makes me flinch. That's a nasty rip, maybe get it checked out, might need stitches.
Seems every time I wind up getting hurt it's because I'm rushing or just not paying attention.
These days I work on a lot of huge industrial metal cutting bandsaws. Think big, like cutting bars of stainless steel or titanium the diameter of a 55 gallon drum or bigger. Most of them I have to climb into the saw to service it, covered in slippery oil and sharp chips. I have to tell myself to slow down and make every move very deliberate, carefully looking where I step. A simple lapse of concentration can have serious consequences.
At our age, healing is a much slower process as well. Take it easy for the next few days and keep it protected. I feel for you brother.

BillWojo

 

[sunrayjack12]

looks nice

 

[EarlK]

Youch! GDM

I didn't realize grills were in the mix.

( FWIW ), I really like the look of the 50-60's whitish fabric that Altec used back then.

 

[gdmoore28]

As someone who works with there hands, that makes me flinch. That's a nasty rip, maybe get it checked out, might need stitches.
Seems every time I wind up getting hurt it's because I'm rushing or just not paying attention.
These days I work on a lot of huge industrial metal cutting bandsaws. Think big, like cutting bars of stainless steel or titanium the diameter of a 55 gallon drum or bigger. Most of them I have to climb into the saw to service it, covered in slippery oil and sharp chips. I have to tell myself to slow down and make every move very deliberate, carefully looking where I step. A simple lapse of concentration can have serious consequences.
At our age, healing is a much slower process as well. Take it easy for the next few days and keep it protected. I feel for you brother.

BillWojo

Oh, man, Bill. The thought of working around saws that size makes me a little queasy. I was a farmer for many, many years, and only the Lord kept us from being seriously injured. Open driveshafts, working inside of combines, crawling inside of running grain bins with the augers running full speed to clear out stuck grain . . . it's a wonder any of us ended up with a full set of limbs. A local kid got pulled into the header of a cotton picker back in the 1970s. He was punctured with 30-40 spindles holding him inside the header. The medical people had to keep blood running into him as the John Deere mechanics worked for over six hours to disassemble the header and remove him from his torture chamber. He lived through that ordeal only to be killed a few years later in a motorcycle accident.

Be careful, my friend.

GeeDeeEmm

 

[gdmoore28]

Youch! GDM

I didn't realize grills were in the mix.

( FWIW ), I really like the look of the 50-60's whitish fabric that Altec used back then.

That's exactly the direction I'm going, Earl. The grill cloth is only slightly darker than that pictured, but the peaked-in-the-middle theme is what I'm shooting for, just a slightly different style of peak. I couldn't bear the thought of my 416s being accidently hit by something - or a foot! - so grill protection was the only way to go.

I chose to break each grill into three distinct sections in order to break up that huge expanse of grill cloth. I think that will be more interesting to the eye. And to add a little flare to the overall presentation, I bought a pair of those reproduction Altec brass name plates to attach to the front of the grills. I'm not sure yet where to attach them - bottom middle, bottom right, top center, top right . . . Once the grills are finished I'll have to experiment with placement a bit.

My hand is sore today, so I may give it a rest 'till Tuesday. Monday is wifey day.

GeeDeeEmm