Just Picked up Pair of Heathkit Altec "Legato" System better than Lagunas?

[vinny]

Does any of you have any personal experience with Legato infinite baffle system by Heathkit speaker box design? Very unusual system i cant find any inf on it. It uses pair of 511 horns with 803b drivers and 2 pairs yes 2 per cabinet of 830b Woofers and custom designed crossovers with peerless transformers used. Never heard of anythng like these before. Maybe someone in this group does. Id say its a rare find.

[vinny]

very odd no on here knows anything about this altec system

[Horn Fanatic]

Does any of you have any personal experience with Legato infinite baffle system by Heathkit speaker box design? Very unusual system i cant find any inf on it. It uses pair of 511 horns with 803b drivers and 2 pairs yes 2 per cabinet of 830b Woofers and custom designed crossovers with peerless transformers used. Never heard of anythng like these before. Maybe someone in this group does. Id say its a rare find.

Google is your friend.

http://www.heathkit-museum.com/hifi/hvmhh-1-c.shtml

https://www.google.com/search?q=heat...w=1680&bih=922

https://www.google.com/search?q=heat...cTDggQ_AUIBygC

[vinny]

wondering if anyone listened to them? The detail and bass quite impressive..female voice and piano amazing..patsy cline and the guitar came out to you with astonishing clarity warmth and realism even from a cd. Thats the main reason i forked out the money. Never owned anything altec besides 604e which I sold long ago not in same league. Way overrated and sound terrible even compared to cheap coral, jensen, goodmans speakers.

[audiomagnate]

A friend of mine has a mismatched pair, one blonde one walnut. Very impressive. They are worth a lot to the right buyer in the right condition. Someone on AK was asking $3500 for a beat up unrestored pair recently IIRC.

[Ed Kreamer]

Hello Vinney and greetings from the peace loving Peoples Republic of Washington State;

It would appear that you have made quite a find, and with the good links our colleague Horn Fanatic has supplied us, we can deduce some of the mystery of this Item. The LF speaker is the 803, which I recall, was the direct ancestor of the 416.
The horn is the venerable 511, and the HF driver the 802. All of these were excellent products in their day, and even today sound pretty good. Don Davis and Alex Badmaief in their book How to build Speaker Enclosures, pgs 38, 39 and 40, ( Sams 1966 ) show an Infinite baffle speaker using the exact components in your legatos. By the dimensions noted in one of the links provided by Horn, Your box is about 13 cubic feet in volume. BIG!! I would bet that they sound like the classic Altecs of the past.

As I have mentioned in other threads here, I built a pair very similar to your speakers in the mid '70's using two 416's the 511B, the 802-8d,the N501, and I also used the attenuator /EQ that Altec devised for the 9846/873 speaker to extend the High's. The box was 11ft3. If you look in the Altec section of the library and find the A-6 They looked similar to those.

So how did they sound? Hugely efficient, they reproduced orchestral tuttis and organ pedals effortlessly, and the stereo spread was magnificent. So why don't I have them still you ask? I got married.

So what do you do with yours? NOTHING, except maybe recap the xovers, and maybe a little cabinet refinishing if they need it.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Ed

[Joseph Smith Jr]

So what do you do with yours? NOTHING, other than recap the xovers, and maybe a little cabinet work.

Caps, yes, maybe, depending on what's in them now, but do they need cabinet work or did I miss something?

[vinny]

Hello Vinney and greetings from the peace loving Peoples Republic of Washington State;

It would appear that you have made quite a find, and with the good links our colleague Horn Fanatic has supplied us, we can deduce some of the mystery of this Item. The LF speaker is the 803, which I recall, was the direct ancestor of the 416.
The horn is the venerable 511, and the HF driver the 802. All of these were excellent products in their day, and even today sound pretty good. Don Davis and Alex Badmaief in their book How to build Speaker Enclosures, pgs 38, 39 and 40, ( Sams 1966 ) show an Infinite baffle speaker using the exact components in your legatos. By the dimensions noted in one of the links provided by Horn, Your box is about 13 cubic feet in volume. BIG!! I would bet that they sound like the classic Altecs of the past.

As I have mentioned in other threads here, I built a pair very similar to your speakers in the mid '70's using two 416's the 511B, the 802-8d,the N501, and I also used the attenuator /EQ that Altec devised for the 9846/873 speaker to extend the High's. The box was 11ft3. If you look in the Altec section of the library and find the A-6 They looked similar to those.

So how did they sound? Hugely efficient, they reproduced orchestral tuttis and organ pedals effortlessly, and the stereo spread was magnificent. So why don't I have them still you ask? I got married.

So what do you do with yours? NOTHING, except maybe recap the xovers, and maybe a little cabinet refinishing if they need it.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Ed

Thank you and greetings Ed. This system has 2lf woofers per cabinet. Apparently according to an old hkit manual its dated at 1958. Cabs need reveneering. Sound is big and highs airy no distortion. Bass sounds natural. Thank you all for the links.