Tuning Altec A7-500’s Voice of the Theater Speakers
Tuning the Altec A7-500 Voice of the Theater Speakers is that last step following the technology upgrade. Follow along as we tune our the VOTT Altec A-7’s.
We came across these worn and gutted Altec A7 Voice of the Theater speaker boxes a few years back. Being in the live sound industry and seeing the technology move forward, we decided to experiment with these boxes. Since the original parts were not in our possession we didn’t have much to lose by modernizing some of the components. Wanting to keep the appearance at least close to original we located the horns and restored them by powder coating. From there, we opted to upgrade the drivers as well as use self powered plate amps to bring the technology to current times.
Now that they are complete we are tuning them before moving them on to their new home.
More about the Altec Lansing Voice of the Theater:
Altec Lansing made the Voice of the Theatre systems. The design resulted from a collaboration between John Hilliard and Jim Lansing. Douglas Shearer didn’t hesitate to approve the Hilliard’s proposal and authorized “any reasonable budget”. Hilliard became the team leader of this new project. Hilliard immediately recruited Lansing Manufacturing, Robert Stephens, a design draftsman on MGM’s staff, and Harry Kimball. The speaker was named the Shearer horn. Later on, a more refined model, the VOTT, was introduced. The smallest model, the A-7, used a medium-sized sectoral metal horn for high frequencies, which featured dividers (sectors) to provide control sound dispersion, plus a medium-sized wooden low-frequency enclosure, which functioned as a hybrid bass-horn/bass-reflex enclosure. The most often used Voice of the Theatre system was the A-4, many of which are still in use in motion picture theaters as of 2018.
The efficiency of all of these products originally provided high sound pressure levels from the limited amplifier power available at the time. The original Voice of the Theatre series included the A-1, A-2, A-4, and the A-5. The A-7 and A-8 were designed for smaller venues. Bill Hanley used Altec high frequency drivers and horns along with JBL bass drivers in his custom-built loudspeaker system for the Woodstock Festival in 1969 Some professional Altec Lansing products remained in use well into the 1990s.
Our Altec Lansing A7-500 VOTT Voice Of The Theater, upgrades!
Full bi-amped with DSP tuning using MiniDSP IcePower plate amps and more modern components from Electro Voice and Eighteen Sound.
The components used in the build and tune are linked below:
CSA Recone Kit for EV 15″ Speaker – EVM-15L – Preassembled
DBX PA RTA Flat Frequency Response Omni-Directional Clip Case Microphone
Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD Audiophile 2×4, 24-Bit/192 kHz USB Audio/MIDI
Hosa NL4MPR Neutrik Connector, 4-pole speakON
Neutrik NL4FC 4-Pole speakON Cable Connector
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