wsjoe
Well-Known Member
Hi,
This is my first post here.
What can I say...it was love at first sight. BUT due to its low SAF spouse approval factor, I was ready to use the box as my coffin because thank God she said yes! So now it's in the living room.
I just finished my Altec Voice of the Theater super high efficiency speakers. It is the so called A5 VOTT speaker used mainly in small to medium theater speakers.
The only Altec parts are the horn driver 288-16H (with 8ohm voice coil), 515B woofer and N501-8A crossovers. Everything else is a wood replica of the original including the speaker enclosure (box), the wood horn and adapters.
How does it sound? Simply put AMAZING. I have listened to the original A5 and A7 setup with the metal horn and it probably sounded great in large halls for a few thousand square feet building but in my 20x40feet living room, it will sound a bit harsh. It was not my idea but I am following Brayant's advise from Simplexaudio.net. He is the one who started building these wood horns out of Baltic birch plywood. The enclosure is made with 3/4" North American Birch plywood. Anyways, it took me exactly 4 years from idea to finishing and mainly the money gathering/saving part took the longest. It took me also almost a year to finish. The enclosure took me about 1 month to finish and the woodhorns about 3-4 months. Everything has a 3 coat of Watco Danish natural oil finish.
Each speaker weighs about 240 lbs. Efficiency is around 112-115 db/w/m. I am using a loaner from Brayant with 483 tube amp that outputs about 0.74 watts! Yes, that's 3/4 watt! It's an amazing single ended tube that does not have alot of power but that near 1 watt with Sowter output transformer puts out alot more than many amps that put out 20-200 watts. Well, it's not apple to apples but my G-22000 Sansui receiver puts out near 300 watts.
I have decided to go with 300B custom tube amp that Brayant will be putting it together for me. I have done alot of reading but deciding what power and output transformer, brand of tubes and capacitors was very critical in getting "the" sound I want and Brayant was able to define each of those elements very efficiently. At the end, I have chosen to go with newly made Western Electric or KR 300B tubes with Western Electric 310A input tubes and Sowter transformers. Anybody interested in tube equipment, should visit his page http://www.simplexaudio.net/contactus.html.
So how does it sound...?
Effortless, omni directional, wide and sweet. Many horn speakers have the disadvantage of being so pointed and directional. And I have alot of good horn speakers including Edgar's horn, Avantgarde and others. To me my 8 multi sectoral horn sounds just as good or better. I am biased!
I just bought a few Altec VOTT stickers and the original stand. I will update with more pictures and get rid of those pillows supporting the front end of the horns.
My previous speaker was the Yamaha NS-1000 which are reference speakers used in alot of recording rooms. Actually, its smaller brother NS-10 is ubiquitously used in MANY recording rooms. Those berillium drivers are really amazing but they sounded small to my ears.
The cd player is my modded Denon DCD-3560 and Sony SACD player DVP-S9000ES.
The picture shows my previous Pilot 240 integrated amp. Nice tube amp but nowhere near the 483 (special breed of 45 tubes) Brayant's amp.
The 828 enclosure blueprint can be found here along with some more pictures from the Altec Heritage website:
http://www.lansingheritage.org/images/altec/plans/1970's-lf-plans/enclosures11.jpg
http://www.audioheritage.org/html/profiles/altec/vott.htm
wsjoe
This is my first post here.
What can I say...it was love at first sight. BUT due to its low SAF spouse approval factor, I was ready to use the box as my coffin because thank God she said yes! So now it's in the living room.
I just finished my Altec Voice of the Theater super high efficiency speakers. It is the so called A5 VOTT speaker used mainly in small to medium theater speakers.
The only Altec parts are the horn driver 288-16H (with 8ohm voice coil), 515B woofer and N501-8A crossovers. Everything else is a wood replica of the original including the speaker enclosure (box), the wood horn and adapters.
How does it sound? Simply put AMAZING. I have listened to the original A5 and A7 setup with the metal horn and it probably sounded great in large halls for a few thousand square feet building but in my 20x40feet living room, it will sound a bit harsh. It was not my idea but I am following Brayant's advise from Simplexaudio.net. He is the one who started building these wood horns out of Baltic birch plywood. The enclosure is made with 3/4" North American Birch plywood. Anyways, it took me exactly 4 years from idea to finishing and mainly the money gathering/saving part took the longest. It took me also almost a year to finish. The enclosure took me about 1 month to finish and the woodhorns about 3-4 months. Everything has a 3 coat of Watco Danish natural oil finish.
Each speaker weighs about 240 lbs. Efficiency is around 112-115 db/w/m. I am using a loaner from Brayant with 483 tube amp that outputs about 0.74 watts! Yes, that's 3/4 watt! It's an amazing single ended tube that does not have alot of power but that near 1 watt with Sowter output transformer puts out alot more than many amps that put out 20-200 watts. Well, it's not apple to apples but my G-22000 Sansui receiver puts out near 300 watts.
I have decided to go with 300B custom tube amp that Brayant will be putting it together for me. I have done alot of reading but deciding what power and output transformer, brand of tubes and capacitors was very critical in getting "the" sound I want and Brayant was able to define each of those elements very efficiently. At the end, I have chosen to go with newly made Western Electric or KR 300B tubes with Western Electric 310A input tubes and Sowter transformers. Anybody interested in tube equipment, should visit his page http://www.simplexaudio.net/contactus.html.
So how does it sound...?
Effortless, omni directional, wide and sweet. Many horn speakers have the disadvantage of being so pointed and directional. And I have alot of good horn speakers including Edgar's horn, Avantgarde and others. To me my 8 multi sectoral horn sounds just as good or better. I am biased!
I just bought a few Altec VOTT stickers and the original stand. I will update with more pictures and get rid of those pillows supporting the front end of the horns.
My previous speaker was the Yamaha NS-1000 which are reference speakers used in alot of recording rooms. Actually, its smaller brother NS-10 is ubiquitously used in MANY recording rooms. Those berillium drivers are really amazing but they sounded small to my ears.
The cd player is my modded Denon DCD-3560 and Sony SACD player DVP-S9000ES.
The picture shows my previous Pilot 240 integrated amp. Nice tube amp but nowhere near the 483 (special breed of 45 tubes) Brayant's amp.
The 828 enclosure blueprint can be found here along with some more pictures from the Altec Heritage website:
http://www.lansingheritage.org/images/altec/plans/1970's-lf-plans/enclosures11.jpg
http://www.audioheritage.org/html/profiles/altec/vott.htm
wsjoe
