Back in 1969 I went to a concert up in Bethel, NY and there were between 300-500K people there. Towers of speakers all over the field and they all said Voice of the Theater. After Vietnam I was setting up my system and had to have hard rocking speakers. No room for the plain Altec A-7s and could not afford the Magnificents so I settled on a pair of Altec Model 19s.
I know the plan here is to spend major dollars on the prettiest and most expensive speakers one can buy but after 45 years with my original pair of Model 19s I have not found a better hard rocking speaker yet. Sure, they do have some disadvantages with various types of music listening but you did say Hard Rocking. The 416-8B woofers are solid and fabulous. The 802-8G horn drivers are a perfect match and the one thing that keeps me a fan of Altec is the fact that Altec is still very much alive and well out at Great Plains Audio where you can have all these components updated, restored, remagnetized and brought back to good as new for pennies on the dollar in today's high end audio market. Audio Geeks play around with various crossovers and bi amping to make them even better while others hook up all sorts of fancy cables and wires in search of audio nirvana but I just turn them on a crank them up and find more issues with the source music than I ever have with the speakers playing it. To each his own but a company that has been around since forever and is still right here supporting us IMO is worth it's weight in gold.
I know the plan here is to spend major dollars on the prettiest and most expensive speakers one can buy but after 45 years with my original pair of Model 19s I have not found a better hard rocking speaker yet. Sure, they do have some disadvantages with various types of music listening but you did say Hard Rocking. The 416-8B woofers are solid and fabulous. The 802-8G horn drivers are a perfect match and the one thing that keeps me a fan of Altec is the fact that Altec is still very much alive and well out at Great Plains Audio where you can have all these components updated, restored, remagnetized and brought back to good as new for pennies on the dollar in today's high end audio market. Audio Geeks play around with various crossovers and bi amping to make them even better while others hook up all sorts of fancy cables and wires in search of audio nirvana but I just turn them on a crank them up and find more issues with the source music than I ever have with the speakers playing it. To each his own but a company that has been around since forever and is still right here supporting us IMO is worth it's weight in gold.