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VOTT overkill at Blue Bottle Cafe in North Oakland

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That's a ferrite 288/291 in the pic. 288's and 291's were alnico motors thru at least 1978.

The sentiments are wonderful. The facts are a little shaky.
 
Hey! I dont live too far from that Blue Bottle. Have never gone in though. They have an operation in the Ferry Bldg in SF and I just remember long ass lines and super expensive coffee. Plus I'm a tea guy. People seem to love em though.
 
btol said:
Hey! I dont live too far from that Blue Bottle. Have never gone in though. They have an operation in the Ferry Bldg in SF and I just remember long ass lines and super expensive coffee. Plus I'm a tea guy. People seem to love em though.
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My office is a few blocks away from the Feery Bldg shop, but I never go there because I won't pay THAT much AND stand in line for coffee...

This Morse location is a much better space and pretty cool at that....it just reminds me how acquiring and setting up an audio system is such a complicated and personal equation with many variables - miss on one or two of those variables and you have little more to show for your effort and expense than fancy vintage audio jewelry.


BTW: The yirgacheffe coffee was great, the buns were ok. I had the savory gruyere bun, fwiw.
 
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SFBayArch said:
acquiring and setting up an audio system is such a complicated and personal equation with many variables - miss on one or two of those variables and you have little more to show for your effort and expense than fancy vintage audio jewelry.
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Yeah, I think this one is mostly about looking cool. But they could definitely rock a party (with some rather harsh sound, in that setting) after hours.
 
Zonker92 said:
Article here:

http://sprudge.com/sick-stereo-setups-sf-cafes.html

They're JBL ... wait ... say what?



SF-Misc-1020020.jpg
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What an annoying, cloying article! "JBL" VOTT's? Bose from, "The early 60's," designed, "to be used in a concert hall"?

-k
 
SFBayArch said:
My office is a few blocks away from the Ferry Bldg shop, but I never go there because I won't pay THAT much AND stand in line for coffee...
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Thank you for being a voice of reason. I dearly love coffee and do pay some extra for having mine fancy roasted and only a few days young when purchased. But dang, ya know?

xo, Biggles
 
nailer said:
The City's coffee scene is unbelievably hip.
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I just had an idea. We got all these hipsters who think they like obscure old stuff. Someone needs to make a website to post all the wrong ideas hipsters have about old stuff. They could call it Wrongster. This article can be the first post. :scratch2:
 
ken kantor said:
VOTT's are assured a place of high honor in the history of loudspeakers. However, let's be real: they are among the worst sounding speakers ever to be called "hifi." And yes, I have heard them in the home systems of several of the well-known writers who promote them.... with just about every reasonable combination of power amp and front end imaginable. While they do a great job turning Watts into dB's, and over-emphasizing the 2KHz to 3KHz region so that speech intelligibility is very high, they are highly inaccurate and distorted, no matter how one coddles them with equalizers and triodes.

Is the Blue Bottle worth checking out?

-k
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Well lets face it.. They were designed for movie theaters not HiFi ! But with some patience they can be made to sound pretty good. Some tweaks have to be made to the box to improve the bass for one.. To my eyes it actually looks like an A5 with a large format HF driver on a 805 horn..That setup needs another pair of woofers IMHO.

@Bowtie Yeah it was kinda dark without going any further just looked like an 311-90
 
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ken kantor said:
VOTT's are assured a place of high honor in the history of loudspeakers. However, let's be real: they are among the worst sounding speakers ever to be called "hifi." And yes, I have heard them in the home systems of several of the well-known writers who promote them.... with just about every reasonable combination of power amp and front end imaginable. While they do a great job turning Watts into dB's, and over-emphasizing the 2KHz to 3KHz region so that speech intelligibility is very high, they are highly inaccurate and distorted, no matter how one coddles them with equalizers and triodes.

Is the Blue Bottle worth checking out?

-k
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I agree with every word of your description/impression of the VOTT. Yet, that midrange is exactly why most of the VOTT owners are willing to put two refrigerator sized cabs in their living room.
 
Let's remember that Altec made an entire line of home speakers closely based on the VOTT that sound really good in the proper home environment. The Model 19 is a perfect example of one of those models. Is Mr. Kantor saying that the Altec 19 is not a great sounding home speaker system ???
 
gogofast said:
I agree with every word of your description/impression of the VOTT. Yet, that midrange is exactly why most of the VOTT owners are willing to put two refrigerator sized cabs in their living room.
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Having just gotten a set of 828H/511b going myself, I have to agree, the clarity of the midrange and upper end is astounding. :thmbsp:
 
CLS500 said:
Let's remember that Altec made an entire line of home speakers closely based on the VOTT that sound really good in the proper home environment. The Model 19 is a perfect example of one of those models. Is Mr. Kantor saying that the Altec 19 is not a great sounding home speaker system ???
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I doubt it, and anything Mr. Kantor says is typically dead-on. He's got tons of experience in our hobby.
 
CLS500 said:
Let's remember that Altec made an entire line of home speakers closely based on the VOTT that sound really good in the proper home environment. The Model 19 is a perfect example of one of those models. Is Mr. Kantor saying that the Altec 19 is not a great sounding home speaker system ???
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I suspect that if you did some instrumented testing of the Model 19 you would find that it has some significant, undeniable warts, although I, for one, would not mind having a pair. It's just the old Vintage Vs. New dichotomy we see every day here. A lot of vintage speakers leave a lot to be desired objectively, but many of us still love listening to them. :dunno:
 
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CLS500 said:
Let's remember that Altec made an entire line of home speakers closely based on the VOTT that sound really good in the proper home environment. The Model 19 is a perfect example of one of those models. Is Mr. Kantor saying that the Altec 19 is not a great sounding home speaker system ???
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Yes! And, even worse, I am saying that pretty much all speakers and speaker companies that begin with the letter "A" are garbage. I don't know if this is scientific, or just how it worked out. In general, you want to avoid vowels at the helm of your audio monikers, if at all possible.

-k
 
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