Altec 755a's

[Old Ears too]

I was always impressed by the crinkle paint myself.

 

[Redboy]

Mmmmmm, chocolate crinkle...

 

[scoville]

Ok, This one has to much drama for me. Perhaps my next one will be serviceable.
I'll be suffering with my Segovias, AR 2AX's, 3a's, 5's,10Pi's,and 90's.
You know where you can find it...
Out
T

 

[Joe Roberts]

I was always impressed by the crinkle paint myself

I always called that "purple" wrinkle but I'm not really sure that color even has a name! Altec graype.

 

[lordgarth]

Send it on over, bro. I'll give you my Fedex account number.

I compared Altec and WE 755As numerous times. There is absolutely no difference.Those silver WEs look very sexy though.

Actually, there is one constructional difference...the space in the magnet under the rear vent cover is stuffed with paper (Kimpak) in the WE and fiberglass in the later Altecs. i won't pretend to hear the difference here.

Anyway if you were really rich you would have an actual WE manufacture amp, not a shitty KS amp!

That amp was made by WE for GE. It's not a KS amp. My avatar is the 124b.However here's more.

 

[Joe Roberts]

hat amp was made by WE for GE. It's not a KS amp.

Wha?...that 350B amp in the previous post says KS right on it. Never saw a WE amp with 5879s in it! Got a better pic of that one? Are the output transformers WE (519A?)or NYT KS spec? The label appears to say "for Western Electric by General Electric," i.e. KS spec.

124 is a really fine amp for the 755A. Wish I still had a pr of those things but when I sold my silver 124s, I thought I would always be able to replace them reasonably easily...not so, as history unfolded.

In the grand scheme of things. I came to recognize that WE didn't make the very best performing electronics of all time, but the speakers were and still are super good. I would say that the 124s were probably the best PP 6L6 I ever heard though, along with 133A, and surely good enough for me! My favorites of all those antique WE amps are the D-spec PP 275A jobs from the 30s.

Alas, for the cost of a pr of any of these I could build many pairs of really good amps or three or four pairs of super nice amps.

 

[TubieNewbie]

I finally finished building the 2 cubic foot boxes for my 755A's. They were my first ever cab build, not perfect, but they work and sound very, very, very nice! I bought a Musical Paradise MP-301 MKIII 6.5 watt tube amp because I was worried that my CJ MV55 would be too much power for them, but they turned out to be a match made in heaven! The MP301 has a great sound, but just not enough grunt to control the Altecs. These babies have that magic that I knew was obtainable, and this is coming from a huge Martin Logan fan! They have taken the place of the mighty Montis.
I purchased a Shiit Audio Mani phono pre, Nagaoka MP-110 cartridge and Duelund DCA16GA oiled multi-strand Western Electric clone wire. My preamp is a Sunfire Classic Tube Control Center, but I need to re-tube it, so I have to use a substitute I'll update after I've burned everything in and put in some listening time.

 

[twiiii]

I loved the much later 755 E. In a ported 2 cu ft cabinet it easily was flat to below 50 HZ and reached out to 14 K being down 5 or os DB. It was pretty efficient, also. A 409 coaxial had better highs, but the 755 was a much better sounding speaker. It couldn't handle all that much power but it was fairly efficient and made a great ceiling speaker for distributed systems. The problem was very few people were willing to pay the difference between a 409 and a 755 so Altec discontinues the speaker by the middle 70's as I remember. Altec at one time made a column speaker with 755 speakers and its worked as well as Bozaks much heavier columns with. 8 inch B-800 and 200y tweeters. Bozaks ate up to much power though the drivers were almost of the same sensitivity.

 

[TubieNewbie]

My cabinets are sealed. I agree with your comment about the highs, and that's probably the biggest drawback with the 755A. But like you said, overall it's a better speakers then most others in every way. I thought about ordering Aperion Audio Planar Ribbon Super Tweeters which are available on eBay for $300 to get a bit more high frequency extension, and since they operate on the same wires as the speaker, I won't need a crossover to get in the way of the natural sound of the full range drivers.

 

[rappaportamp]

Send it on over, bro. I'll give you my Fedex account number.

I compared Altec and WE 755As numerous times. There is absolutely no difference.Those silver WEs look very sexy though.

Actually, there is one constructional difference...the space in the magnet under the rear vent cover is stuffed with paper (Kimpak) in the WE and fiberglass in the later Altecs. i won't pretend to hear the difference here.

Anyway if you were really rich you would have an actual WE manufacture amp, not a shitty KS amp!

Sorry for being aeons late to this most interesting thread.
Inspecting my grey wrinckle Altec 755a's under the rear vent cover, there's NO stuffing what so ever being it Kimpak or fiberglass.
Which puzzles me as the vent covers doesn't appear to ever have been removed.
If this stuffing is crucial to the drivers performance. How much Kimpak are we talking about? If going with one layer Kimpak. Approx how many square cm per driver?
Thanks in advance.

I cannot stop wondering though the potential risk of some of this material "travelling down" the small funnel and getting in touch with the voice coil.
I suppose to prevent this that would be the whole idea of having a rear vent cover.

 

[Sam Cogley]

Send it on over, bro. I'll give you my Fedex account number.

I compared Altec and WE 755As numerous times. There is absolutely no difference.Those silver WEs look very sexy though.

Actually, there is one constructional difference...the space in the magnet under the rear vent cover is stuffed with paper (Kimpak) in the WE and fiberglass in the later Altecs. i won't pretend to hear the difference here.

Anyway if you were really rich you would have an actual WE manufacture amp, not a shitty KS amp!

The WE and early WE-built Altec units have six welds around the magnet, the later Altec built 755s have three. That's one construction difference!