MY main experience was with big Altec and the Studio monitors, Urei, too. I owned some Coronados and Carmels back in the 60's. My favorite woofer box was the 817. Stack two of them with 4 woofers and the system was flat down to 40 hz, - 3db, and the sensitivity was over 106 db. Using 3156 which could handle over 500 watts with 2000 watts you could produce a lot of noise though I never used more than 600 watts per pair of woofers. . I liked the Mantaray horns for their directivity, but added four MR 902-16 HF or 950 UHF if I needed great highs over 11 or 12 KHZ. to match each Mantaray. For home speakers I have to agree the Model 19 was the best thing they ever built, even though I disliked the sectorial horns they used. Altec made some 4 way monitors for the Japanese market that sounded great. I got to hear the two models at an Altec clinic in Phoenix one time, or maybe it was Oklahoma City. Altec made some home speakers using 8 or ten inch woofers in pairs with a large midrange dome and a 1 inch tweeter dome that sounded nice. But it just couldn't match the model 19. I preferred the 604 Urei used with a supplemental woofer in the model 813. But you couldn't take one home. Yes they were ugly especially with that blue foam attached the the 604 tweeter horn. I have used Altec 210's and 410's without the wings with Multicell horns with 288 drivers with wye throats and 515 woofers and got great sound for concerts on college campuses in the middle and late 60's. But yes you needed strong scaffolding and a fork lift to set things up. My favorite multicellular was the 203 B. If I didn't have 817 boxes for concerts or marathons I would stack 4 A-7 boxes 4 high horizontally with the HF horns stacked and splayed adjacently on each side of a stage for starters. If it was in a basket ball arena etc then more boxes were added to cover the sides with more horns and stacked 203's for the long throws. We used to stack 4 203's with 290 drivers for very long throws for out door voice only PA's in multiples. 250 to 7000 HZ. 85 db at 400 meters was not uncommon. Mac amps with power guard in the 70's kept diaphragm failures under control finally. Altec always over rated the power handling of the 288C, 802, and 806 drivers. The 290 performed as claimed. 291 and 808 drivers could handle more power if you raised the crossover to 8oo HZ and used the appropriate Mac power amp with power guard. MR-902's could handle over 50 watts iff you crossed then above 7000 HZ. I crossed them at 6000 Hz when combined with 290 drivers as the midrange for discos using 311 horns. I was always trying to keep discos to 3 ways systems, but more often that not I had to add the dual 18" Altec subs to get the knee buckling punch they wanted in old Mexico. Even when we used JBL or Klipsch the systems ended up being 4 ways. Thats a lot of Mac amps. I never saw an Altec amp meet its own specs let alone Mac specs. Especially that awful 9440. The 1570 B was a joke. The 1590C worse with only 70 db signal to noise.
