Pics of Altec re-cone Great Plains Audio

[robertbartsch]

Hope this works....


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[robertbartsch]

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[robertbartsch]

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[Tim Rinkerman]

I'm more of a JBL than an Altec guy....is the surround glued on the wrong side?

[stephane RAME]

The working professional, thank you for the pics.
Stéphane :applaud::applaud::applaud:

[ratitifb]

great and clean recone job except ... the foam surround probably glued on the wrong side :o:

[robertbartsch]

Well, as far as the foam surround being mounted in the correct position, Great Plains Audio is the successor to the once great Altec Lansing corporation, so I assume the re-cone work is within spec and is OK.

The weird part about these units is that I acquired them on Fleabay and, according to Bill from GPA, (1) it is very doubtful the original surrounds/cones/voice coil/spider had been worked on previously, and (2) the units I forwarded to him for the rebuild came with black WW cloth coated, not foam, surrounds (e.g., the typical black goo surrounds seen on other Altec woofers)

Bill believes the units may have been an early prototype that the factory used to experiment with various parts to come up with the final design specifications. ...sort of a one-of-a-kind very unusual animal!

The units came to me in poor condition so saving the original factory version was not an option, in this case.

[4313B]

is the surround glued on the wrong side?From a transducer engineering perspective there is only one way the surround gets attached, if only due to offset issues (which is easily measured with a Klippel (http://www.klippel.de/) machine).

From an end user perspective it more often than not doesn't matter just so long as the transducer still makes reasonable noise.

[edgewound]

Well, as far as the foam surround being mounted in the correct position, Great Plains Audio is the successor to the once great Altec Lansing corporation, so I assume the re-cone work is within spec and is OK.

Bill believes the units may have been an early prototype that the factory used to experiment with various parts to come up with the final design specifications. ...sort of a one-of-a-kind very unusual animal!

The units came to me in poor condition so saving the original factory version was not an option, in this case.

Bill's work shouldn't be doubted, really, as he is the successor to Altec Professional. He acquired the Altec tooling from EVI...sometime after EV was taken over by Telex...after Mark IV....and now EV is a Bosch company.

Your particular driver pictured, the 411-8A wasn't a prototype, though. It was the production woofer that was used in the Barcelona and Santiago...the only 4 inch voice driver Altec ventured into.

The surround is fine...it's a total recone so it's position is most likely correct from an offset reference as 4313B stated.

[robertbartsch]

Thx Edgewound...

What is weird to me is that Bill from GPA told me that all the production runs he had seen previously that used the 411 woofer (Santiago, etc.) had foam surrounds.

As I indicated above, my Fleabay versions had the folded black "gooie" surrounds you see on other Altec drivers. The spiders and cones on the old cores were very bad and a rebuild was a mandate; apparently, there were no signs of excess glue or metal file marks on the frames so Bill beleives the parts on the cores were factory Altec originals and the units had not been touched since they left the factory at least 20 years ago.

[edgewound]

Thx Edgewound...

What is weird to me is that Bill from GPA told me that all the production runs he had seen previously that used the 411 woofer (Santiago, etc.) had foam surrounds.

You're welcome robert.

Yep...411-8A were indeed foam. A speaker that is over 30 years old probably has some sort of dubious history if it didn't come out of a factory packaged system.



As I indicated above, my Fleabay versions had the folded black "gooie" surrounds you see on other Altec drivers. The spiders and cones on the old cores were very bad and a rebuild was a mandate; apparently, there were no signs of excess glue or metal file marks on the frames so Bill beleives the parts on the cores were factory Altec originals and the units had not been touched since they left the factory at least 20 years ago.

Lack of filing/grinding marks doesn't prove that it was never reconed/repaired/rebuilt somewhere down the line...it could have even had the surround replaced by someone capable of doing clean work not discernable as non-factory.

Of course, there always the Bill's theory being right.

[yggdrasil]

The 411-8A has the foam glued on the front of the cone. I did a refoam on a pair a few years back. They had been in the family since new.

[UreiCollector]

They reconed a set of 604's out of Urei 813A's for me, and did a fantastic job!

[Russellc]

I've sent a few 515 8G drivers to Bill for a recone, Fantastic work, super quick turn around time. When JBL ceases to be, I hope someone like Bill, or maybe Bill himself-will buy up the tooling and do the same for us JBL users.

Russellc