New speakers ! Altec A5 !


https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9054

I wanted to share my new speakers. We had a pair of Altec A7s but wanted nicer cabinets. We hired a local cabinet shop/speaker fanatic to rebuild a set. He doubled the original thickness and veneered them in Osage Orange. The Drivers are Great Plains 416c for the woofs, Altec 288 with new GPA aluminum diaphragms for the mids, and Faital Pro HF10AK for the tweeters. The Large 1505 clones are walnut and come from Vietnam, and the small multicell horns are from Markus Klug in Germany. Crossovers are Jean Hiraga inspired 3 way designs by Pete Riggle with the crossover points at 500hz, and 10Khz. Bass is augmented with an SVS PB16 ultra, and a GSG Devastator with a Lavoce 21" driver. We power the GSG sub with a Behringer 3000dsp amp. I'm currently using a Sun Audio 2A3 clone. Front end is a Thorens TD318 with an Ortofon 510 MK2, as well as Tidal through PC via the DAC in the Mcintosh C47 preamp. It sound great, and the crossover allows the tweeter to be turned off, to revert to the 2 way design. It also has a notch filter around 1Khz with 0,2,and 4 db negative attenuation to tame the mids. The Tweeter Lpad is slaved to the midrange Lpad so that it remains in sync if you adjust the mids. I still need to add some damping material inside the cabinets but I'm quite pleased so far. Just wanted to share, in case there are some Altec guys here.  Thanks for looking. Adrian
128x128adrianleewelch
It makes music so effortlessly. I would like to demo some 300B amps as well as some small McIntosh like the MC30 just to see what I may prefer. My 2A3 Chinese amp has great tubes in it and upgraded caps but I know there’s a lot of room for improvement there. 
Never seen anything quite like it. I love those multicell horns! A lot of air moving capacity in that system. Pretty veneer too.
I too am an Altec fan! Had the Madrid's and Valencia's. Now have Bolero's, Santana 1's, Segovia's and Stonehenge 1's. The last are particularly adept at rockin' out! Now where did I put that Led Zeppelin II ?
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It really is. Moving from 802 drivers to the large 288s helped a lot as did the wooden horns. It took away a lot of the honk. I did learn though how important interconnects are.  We went from crap RCA to audio quest, and used XLR wherever we could and I swear it did more than any equipment upgrades. I wish I would have known early on.  It can’t be stressed enough.