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So a couple years ago I inherited some speakers from my dad, who's had them since the 70s. They were a pair of duplex Altec Lansing 604-8Gs that he had in some JBL cabinets. The cabinets were pretty trashed but awhile ago I tore them down and re-veneered them in a nice walnut and they've since become my main home speakers, and they sound great. That sort of kicked off my journey into vintage audio gear and Altec gear in particular. Around the same time, I started coming across this guy named Devon Turnbull more and more, who I had known about years ago for WAYWT-related reasons when he ran his own clothing line called Nom de Guerre, who had sort of gone into this extreme niche of high high-end audio engineering intersecting with immaculate product design. Devon has all kinds of amazing gear, almost all of which he's built himself and as I read more about his stuff it got me going deeper into tube gear and coming back again to some vintage Altec designs. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, and I've managed to slowly accumulate all the components for an Altec voice-of-the-theater build with some updates; everything, except the cabinets. I had originally thought about trying my hand at building the cabinets from scratch, since the plans are widely available online, but realized that might not be a project very well suited for a woodworking beginner. I reached out to a few cabinet makers to get estimates on a commissioned build, but they were extremely pricey, with eBay and Reverb pricing for empty vintage cabinets being similarly absurd for what amounts to a big plywood box with some moderately fancy bracing and shaping. Then, randomly, I find a guy on craiglist a couple hours away who literally found a pair of Altec A7 bass reflex theater cabinets in a barn. I drove a six hour round-trip to pick them up, and boy, had they ever been in a barn.  There had definitely been things living inside these. Bees? Bees.  All the structural bracing looked good though, the boxes had solid bones. Did I mention things were living inside these?  They were pretty trashed on the outside though, especially the corners. Lots of dry rot too.   I started out with lots and lots and lots of stripping and sanding. I wanted to resheet the exterior with more plywood, to increase the weight and rigidity of the cabinets, but before doing that the surfaces needed to be pretty clean and flat, and solid. I also made extremely liberal use of Minwax wood hardener, to help with a strong enough foundation for filling and repair.      After many, many hours of more sanding, stripping, and filling, I was ready to resheet the exterior.
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May 22, 2023 23:09
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| # ? May 9, 2024 16:27 |
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New plywood time!    I remember a friend of mine telling me you never have enough clamps, no matter how many you have, and it was definitely true. I used 3/4" for top and bottom, and 1/4" for the sides.  I used a flush cut bit in a router to get some nice clean edges all the way around. Starting to look respectable. Added some internal bracing to help with the rigidity some more. 
ephori fucked around with this message at 23:16 on May 22, 2023 |
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May 22, 2023 23:12
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After some more sanding and filling, I decided to throw a coat of automotive filler primer on there since I had some kicking around. It definitely helped highlight some more of the flaws.  This is also where things started to go sideways. There was some pretty significant damage to the edging where the plywood splays out from the woofer, and I wanted something I could use to 'build up' the surface again since replacing the wood wasn't feasible without replacing the entire curved sheets, which I didn't want to attempt. I started with Bondo! Big mistake!   The Bondo either cured too fast, or never cured at all. I ended up having to basically chisel out Bondo residue for like two days after this to get it back to where I started. It made a huge mess and I regret even attempting it. It took forever to get it all off and get it back down to a clean surface. At this point, I also added some extra wood along the bottom of the cabinets to reduce the port size. There's a magic number of square inches for the port that changes depending on a ton of variables, so I took all the ideal values and sort of went with a median for the gap, and will tune it by ear later once these get finished.  I also took the suggestion of the Fix it Fast thread and decided to use the plastic wood filler rather than Bondo to try and clean up the worst parts of the damaged edging. It worked wayyyyyyy better, even if it's somewhat less clean in the end. I also got the sectoral horns back from being sandblasted and powder coated. They turned out great.  Next up, priming! Originally I was gonna roller these, but a week or so ago there was a deal on Amazon on an electric sprayer for $50 and I was super curious about it. I don't really have space in my garage to setup a proper spray room, but I bought a cheap painting tent and set it up in my driveway so that my neighbors don't hassle me about overspray or a bunch of dead plants.  The sprayer was pretty amazing. I was very surprised at how easy it was, and how much faster it was than rolling with a way nicer finish. I used a shellac-based primer to really seal the wood, both original and new and give a good base for a nicer oil-based cabinet paint.  They look pretty cool in white, and it took all of my willpower not to wire them up just with the primer coat, but I really had my heart set on a nice dark grey or warm black. ephori fucked around with this message at 23:37 on May 22, 2023 |
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May 22, 2023 23:19
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Today I managed the first coats of black. Its really a super dark gray-green in the sunshine but looks almost blacker-than-black under normal lighting inside the house. A few coats with the spray, and then pulled them out to sand some more.  You can still see some of the gnarlier spots on the cross beams even under the paint and filler, but that whole bottom area is going to be covered up with a grill cover so I'm not too concerned. My main goal was getting the smooth finish on the plywood curves for the woofer since it's the most noticeable, and it turned out pretty good. The satin finish is pretty forgiving.  This is probably all I'll get done until next weekend, other than maybe some opportunistic extra coats here and there, but I think I have a shot at getting this mostly assembled next weekend. The only other big thing on the to-do list is using some of my leftover walnut pieces to make a bracket for the top-mounted horns and compression drivers.
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May 23, 2023 00:23
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Oh gently caress yeah. I've heard a pair of these a long time ago. They are totally awesome and absolutely worth a proper restauration. Do be aware that they will not handle high power levels. Not that you need high power levels - if you have anything like the original drivers, they have a very high efficiency - but you can pop them pretty easily if you go over 200ish watts.
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May 25, 2023 12:13
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LimaBiker posted:Oh gently caress yeah. I've heard a pair of these a long time ago. They are totally awesome and absolutely worth a proper restauration. Yep, you’ve got that right. They’re paper cones and better suited to low wattage for sure. I’ll be using this with a McIntosh 225, which is ‘only’ 25WPC but more than enough for these guys. It was a slow week but I got some more sanding in and few more coats on today. I hit up Harbor Freight and grabbed some nice clear poly wheels which’ll make it way easier to manage these things especially once the heavy drivers are inside.   Definitely ready to wire up, I think. I also cut up some leftover walnut to build a horn bracket as a stretch goal for this weekend.  I also found on eBay for eight whole dollars an excerpt from the June 1963 issue of Hifi/Stereo Review that had an advertisement for the speakers! 
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May 27, 2023 01:12
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Used some leftover scraps to make horn brackets today.  A little sanding and a bunch of wax and the color turned out great.   To help with dampening, I used some leftover IKEA carpet underlay with 3M spray adhesive before securing the mounts to the tops of the cabinets.   The fit in the grooved is perfect, but since I was using scraps I was a little short; normally the bracket is supposed to be longer than the horn itself but whatever. It works!  Nice and snug. I managed to get the drivers in today too, but ran out of time before I could start wiring everything up.   So close!
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May 29, 2023 04:31
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Today was some more cosmetic work, starting with some hot glued grill cloths as a temporary solution until I make some proper grill frames later.   After that, applying some vinyl repros of the original Altec VOTT decals on each side of the cabinets.    Next up is some insulation for the interior, and then final assembly, minus the crossovers which I’ll be keeping external so I can fool around with a few different options. I may try and find some nice brass locking clips for the rear panel rather than just screwing the backing board on, but we’ll see how it goes.
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May 30, 2023 02:49
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Auralex went in this weekend, which meant I can finally close up the cabinets. Demo time! Tried them out with an active crossover first. They sound phenomenal. Like an auditory hallucination. The sense of space and presence is wild with the right recordings. I'm not big on audiophile bullshit, but that feeling that the artist is right there is legit.  Since I want to try and stick to original components where I can though, I'm not actually finished. Next up was substituting the active digital crossover for a pair of N800-F crossovers that I took a gamble on for really cheap... but untested. These crossover at 800hz and are supposed to be viable for either the 8 ohm or the 16 ohm versions of these drivers.  Turns out, one sounds great, and one didn't work at all. RIP. These crossovers are tar/wax filled, and an enormous headache to try and repair even though the circuit is really simple, so that'll have to wait for another day... and probably another person. Next up, is trying the older (and wayyyyy bigger) N500-F crossover network that should also be well suited to the 16 ohm drivers I've got. My original plan was to try both and see which I preferred, but looks like I'll be stuck with a 500hz cut, but I ran out of time before I could get this one setup. That'll have to wait for next weekend.  
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Jun 5, 2023 17:35
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| # ? May 9, 2024 16:27 |
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Super neat thread… keep it up!
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Jun 5, 2023 21:50
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