Altec A7 VOTT I think I got a pair

[Jcricket]

Hey folks, just got off the phone witha guy. I am going to go get me a set of A7 VOTT altecs.










These are real altec cabs, not the homemade ones. They have the 421 drivers in them but no horns.

I have a set of 811 horns and selenium drivers for the interim.

Anyone ever ewave a set of these A7's?

Pics to follow soon................................

 

[dc270]

What model drivers are you Seleniums? I performed that "trick" work to my 220TI's and they sounded much better. Just thought I would mention it to you.

Great news about the VOT's, hope you can get them set up they way you would like them. Jave fun!
DC

 

[Scuzzer]

I am going to go get me a set of A7 VOTT altecs.

Cool. :thmbsp:

 

[similost]

Good deal, but sounds like the only thing you're really getting is the boxes.. You'll want to sell the 421 drivers to fund the correct VOTT parts. Those are instrument speakers..

The magic about VOTTs is the horns.. yeah, and the woofers too... so you'll want to see about getting actual Altec horns with Altec compression drivers. Running what you have, you won't hear the Altec magic..

 

[Jcricket]

I have the d220's. I wounder how theyu would sound on the 811 horn or if I should just go all out and ewave them......

 

[similost]

Personally, I wouldn't spend the time or effort to e-wave them... it's not what they are about... you won't have enough bottom end to make it worth your while.. the magic about VOTT's is the mids, and you're only going to get that from running OEM drivers...

 

[Sam Cogley]

Good deal, but sounds like the only thing you're really getting is the boxes.. You'll want to sell the 421 drivers to fund the correct VOTT parts. Those are instrument speakers..

There were a lot of VOTTs sold with 421s as PA speakers.

 

[Jcricket]

I also have a set of 821's(IIRC).
I did just get home with them.

I do have a set of 811 horns and I can find the compression drivers easy enough.

So, sell the 421's and put in what driver??

 

[Jcricket]

Oops,
I have a set of 921-8a's and then these 421's. SO which is the better for the cabinets, and what is hte ideal driver?

 

[Tom Brennan]

IMO the 421 in the 825-828 box makes nice midrange. But I think the ideal driver is the 416 which digs a little deeper in that box. But the 421 is pretty good, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Jcricket]

What is the bottom end of the VOTT? I looked on the altec page and it looks like it is between 20 and 35 hz, depending on what driver is in the cabinet.


35 is fine, 20 is ultra cool.

 

[bowtie427ss]

what is hte ideal driver?

HUGE matter of opinion, and a somewhat smaller matter of what your goal with them is.

What model 421's are in them?

If you have 421-8LF's, those can be quite good in an 825/828 horn box. For hifi apps a steep slope at crossover works best with those.

Compared to 416's, 421 have heavy cones and stiff damping, they were built to be durable in a pro environment as much as good sounding. They won't have quite as lifelike midrange as the 416's, but will produce tremendous dynamics all the way down to the cutoff point(~90hz) of the midbass horn.

Your 921's are a newer equivalent(more or less) to the original series of 421's.

There are probably 20 or 30 fairly common bass drivers/woofers that will all work admirably, and equally as well in a VOT box.

 

[Jcricket]

421-8a's I believe. I have the original boxes for the speakers. I haven't opened the cabinets just yet. I'll post pics in a bit.

Time to go unload them and put them in the garage for now.

 

[bowtie427ss]

What is the bottom end of the VOTT?

The horn rolls off somewhere in the vicinity of 90 and 100hz depending on the tuning of it's throat, below that the woofer operates in "bass reflex" mode with a steadily falling response. In an ideal room and setup with a little luck you won't hit the 10db down point until the upper 40's. Typically 825/828 based VOT's are all but done at 50hz.

Remember, these are a MID BASS horn, and that's where their gain resides.

If you want full fidelity extension, you will run large displacement subs and a LOT of power to get realistic bass that dynamically tracks the rest of the system. I run a quad of 15 inch woofers powered by up to a KW per channel to fill out the bottom with my A7-500's, it's almost enough.:yes:

 

[gdwrench]

There was a couple 416's pass through BT yesterday, did not last long @ 350...

 

[bowtie427ss]

But I think the ideal driver is the 416 which digs a little deeper in that box.

.......... and i hear the new 416-8C's from GPA are real good in VOT's

 

[Jcricket]

The horn rolls off somewhere in the vicinity of 90 and 100hz depending on the tuning of it's throat, below that the woofer operates in "bass reflex" mode with a steadily falling response. In an ideal room and setup with a little luck you won't hit the 10db down point until the upper 40's. Typically 825/828 based VOT's are all but done at 50hz.

Remember, these are a MID BASS horn, and that's where their gain resides.

If you want full fidelity extension, you will run large displacement subs and a LOT of power to get realistic bass that dynamically tracks the rest of the system. I run a quad of 15 inch woofers powered by up to a KW per channel to fill out the bottom with my A7-500's, it's almost enough.:yes:

So how many pp 6v6 tubes are needed to get that
something like a 6v6gt pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

 

[Tom Brennan]

If you want full fidelity extension, you will run large displacement subs and a LOT of power to get realistic bass that dynamically tracks the rest of the system. I run a quad of 15 inch woofers powered by up to a KW per channel to fill out the bottom with my A7-500's, it's almost enough.:yes:

That's my experience as well; I ran this pair of JBL 4648s below 100hz to flesh out my A5s.

That said they do OK without subs and the quality of the bass can be very good; I don't think I've heard Duck Dunn's bass on Stax recordings better reproduced than on some very old vertical vent A7s I had that used the paper surround 803 woofers.

Note too that the VOTs have stepped bass with the lower range coming from the bass reflex part of the box down several db from the higher range coming from the short bass horn. But despite their flaws they are marvelous speakers and I think everyone should try a pair. I've tried several.

 

[Jcricket]

I was doing some reading today. There is a modification online that talks about taking the vent board on the bottom, and changing it to some 4" ports. This will supposedly tune the bottom to get a few more hz lower. I was also wondering about possibly stuffing the bottom with fiberglass - if that might help.

Just kind of thinking out loud here.

 

[Tom Brennan]

I was doing some reading today. There is a modification online that talks about taking the vent board on the bottom, and changing it to some 4" ports.

The last set of VOTs I had used the 421s in older vertical vent 825s with the vent modifications you mentioned. I thought the bass was pretty robust and used them in a HT system without subs and it was quite satisfactory.