AudioTitor wrote:
I'm new to this old audio thing and I hear comments like, "You need a
pair
of Altec 604's to go with that amp". What is so great about this
Altec 604
speaker? It looks like it belongs in a Mesa Boogie guitar amp.

LOL!

I got my pair for $50 two years ago, impulse garage sale stop after a
fruitless morning at my normal Saturday swap meet; homemade cabinets by
deceased 'audiophile Grandpa' ("You just missed his 'Big' speakers,
they sold for $100." -Jeez- I wonder what they could have been???); the
horns were out, and they were wired out of phase being demo'd with a
small Sansui receiver (BTW with no antenna; the folk threw it in for
free as they were sure it was broke too, wouldn't pick up a local FM
station 10 miles distant.)

All I had to go on was the Altec Xover plate on the side of the big
black 'ugly' boxes, I couldn't see through the dense grill cloths, and
they sounded like crap (did I have $50 to take a chance with? Sometimes
I get *Lucky*!). Brought them home, did my flexure repair on the
original diaphrams (known issue for Altec diaphrams, the flat ribbon
wire breaks), cleaned the boxes up (and remounted the Xovers in front,
now with no grill cloth, so you can see them in all their glory.) They
had sat so long, the cones had 'drooped' and the surround doping had
crawled south. The first real evidence (for me) that Mr. Lansing had it
right; turn your woofers (! every ~ten years? LOL!) They're now my
bench 3 playback monitors. Quite worth $50! (Whenever I'm depressed, I
just check eBay's selling point for stuff like this ;-)

Why are 604E's so 'important'? According the 'free' Altec Lansing demo
LP I got back in the 70's (A&M Altec promo record named "Odyssey"),
which 'hooked' me and caused my purchase of my first A-7's, 604E's were
a sort of defacto recording studio reference at the time ("used by more
recording studios for playback monitors than all others combined.");
point source, *very* efficient, and if loaded into appropriate cabinets
relatively flat (lucky for me, 'Grandpa' evidently payed attention when
he built the cabinets.) In my experience (with my pair), the first
version 604E horns/diaphrams (my pair are also true 16 ohm), there just
isn't any top end above ~14K (I'm aware that I would need to change up
to the 'tangerine' (sp?) diaphram setup to get past 14K.)

I'm quite happy, but I wouldn't pay the +$700 a pair they bring on the
'Bay.

My 2c-
-Robert
QTS
http://www.Braught.com