I was talking with my father the other day about how Altec Lansing pooped out sometime in the 80s. As I've learned the quality control went to hell where JBL was rejecting around 80% of the Duplex drivers they were receiving for the Urei Time-Align monitors. And I've also read that sometime in the late 1970s Altec began to lose money and for one reason or another nobody knows what happened.
Well my father pointed out a few other companies who broke around the same time including DeLorean Motor Cars and Low Rider Magazine (they took a dive in the early 80s). In both cases the main person in charge was addicted to cocaine which was huge at that time.
It makes sense to me that perhaps someone pulling the strings at Altec Lansing may have be snorting and partying away so much that they lost sight of the company. The timing of the downfall is dead on for what was going on at that time with many other people. The scenario points to where the Altec should have been making loads of money, but was losing out somehow. Even though JBL dominated much of the 70s many other companies made it through who weren't as popular like Klipsch and Cerwin-Vega.
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