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CABS TAKEN!




Empty Altec Model 15 cabs in decent condition

Did you get them to use with 32b’s?

Yeah, 32s and 414s was the plan, but I found a guy in Little Rock to build me a pr of Western Electric 753 inspired cabs out of walnut, actual furniture grade boxes.

I'm getting these made with a two piece motor board so I can pop in a few different HF horns, starting with 32s, and I'm using WE 728Bs for the woofs.

I know a guy in France who is 3-D printing 32s and a WE KS horn with 1" throats. I'll see him and the horns in Denmark at he European Triode Festival the week after CAF. I think the KS12024 should be better than the 32, but since the originals are smaller than 1" I could never compare directly.

The compact mechanical aspect of the 32 is quite attractive though. Most horns would have to go on top of the box then I would be back to ghetto rig setups, as usual.

I also have a few modern Parts Express cheap short waveguides that I want to mess with.

In any case, the Altec cabs could be modified to accept various horns. Woofer rout is front mount but one could fashion a front plate setup to rear mount a woof. Good base for experimentation.

KS12024s? Pl. share your experiences of them.



Agreed on the looks. Recently, I moved the 511Bs on top of the cabinets. Altec Home Speakers/Studio Monitors are quite small in height. Moving the 511Bs over the cabinets got them to right height and started liking them that way. Need to build an enclosure for 511Bs so them can sit permanently on top of the cabinet.

Too bad Model 15s are not horn loaded for the bass, otherwise, I would have taken them.

I know the KS12024 from the Western Electric L-8 which uses the phenolic 713 driver and a 728 woofer. Pics attached.

Not many of these were installed in this country so they are difficult to hear. More show up in India and Pakistan, maybe Australia, due to Westrex penetration of those markets. WE wasn't selling theater gear here in that era due to anti-trust actions.

The 12024 sounds really good in that implementation. The throat is smaller than 1" so I couldn't try them with Altec 802s. My friend is making a 1" version which could be interesting. He likes it better than the 32s he printed, so I am intrigued.

As I constantly reiterate, almost anything is better than 511s, which are plagued by internal reflections and consequent massive high order garbage as illustrated in the waterfall plot I posted earlier.

Altec didn't make any 12" horn loaded boxes as you desire, but I have a pr of min- VOT style cabs for 12" made by a DIYer decades ago. They are nice boxes. I could be convinced to move these out since I really need some space!

The purpose of the horn in the VOT cabs is not so much to horn load the cone but rather it functions as a lens to narrow the horizontal dispersion to approximate the horizontal dispersion of the horn at crossover. The short horn loading it does provide mainly results in a small bump at 120-150hz, but my sense is that dispersion control is really what is going on with that box.

Also, the recessed woofer allows for closer time alignment of the midrange and LF sources. That right there is a good enough reason to go with the short horn.

Joe,
I am looking to test out horn loading my 15" altec woofers.

Shashi

Can't help ya with 15" cabinets, shashi.

If you want to horn load 15" Altecs for real bass, I hope you have way more space then I do!

Have a look at Altec 816, a "sawed off" VOT cab sorta...

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/36572 ... -Plan.html

Another compromise reflex/short horn hybrid.

Keep in mind that the original VOT concept was to have that 825 box in a large flat baffle, which would begin waveshaping at a low frequency, forcing a quasi-cardoid response, then the horn would contribute to dispersion control up to xover. The huge "wings" that can help a VOT/hybrid reflex horn or an open back horn play low are rarely installed.

If I had huge space and my wife still thought I was a genius and would hold all complaints, a dynamic unlikely to recur, I'd build some giant sealed cabs. In a domestic space with boundary reinforcement of the LF, I think the bass would be crisp and deep and would hit some impressively low notes, without the usual bass reflex flab.

If anybody is looking for a pr of very solid custom-built 12" VOT style boxes, talk to me!f