How many Watts will these handle ?? Help

[mxrocker]

I bought these Huge Altec’s that appear to be DIY cabinets that have (2) 416-8A’s each, (1) 808-8A Driver and 511B Horn each they each have a 501-8A X-Over, I am curious to know how many watts these will handle ?? As I don’t want to blow them ! Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

[JeffW]

http://www.altecpro.com/pdfs/vintage/SpeakerAndMics/speakers/416-8A%20LF%20Speaker.pdf

http://www.altecpro.com/pdfs/vintage/SpeakerAndMics/drivers/808-8A%20HF%20Driver.pdf

Looks like both types drivers are rated for 30 watts and are pretty efficient, so you won't need a lot of amp to make them sing.

[Progneta]

No that there is beautiful! Theoretically each woofer is rated at 30 watts while about 99db 1/1 and the 808 30 watts is around 111db 1/1 if my memory serves me right...

With those horn cabinets, we are increasing the efficiency even more.

I bet with a 30 watt stereo tube amp (15 wpc) these may rip your face off :)


Best thing to do is not hook them up to a crappy amp. Crappy amps put out crappy signal (clipping) that destroys nice speakers.

Ive used an Alesis RA-100 (50 wpc) with a setup similar to this and it was pleeenntttyy loud and clean!

-G

[rgrjit8]

Oh, those look nice!

I have the same components, but with just one woofer per cabinet.

They are my garage/patio/Halloween speakers and they get louder than I can stand with a little 30 wpc receiver.

If these were my mains, I'd probably hook up a GOOD 40 to 100 watt amp for transient peaks. Continuous power delivery is a NO-NO. As long as you don't feed a clipped signal, these old ALTECS are pretty tough old birds.