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Hi, Vintage Altec and JBL have a lot in common. What would you say are their differences? Can I use JBL parts in Altec cabinets and vice versa? LnL
This simple explanation is that JBL speakers are really designed for bass-reflex cabinets and horn loaded tweeters, while Altec woofers like horn loaded cabs. The woofers are basically not easily interchangable.
HI, I'd measure them first for parameters. If the parameters are similar, then you can interchange. -akhilesh
That's not unusual, since Jim Lansing was the head designer of both outfits, first at Altec, which eventually became called Altec-Lansing, and then JBL. The drivers are very similar and since they were pre-T/S all the boxes they went into were empirically designed. With some tweaking to account for the differing specs of different drivers there's a lot of interchangability options. The main difference is that the older Altec designs tended to use Alnico magnets, while the later JBL drivers tended to use ferrite, which came into common usage only after WWII.
Is it true that JBL drivers have a high BL no. therefor prefer bass reflex loading? I just assumed due to there being no front horn loaded JBL in my experience while most Altec woofers appear in front horn loaded cabinets. And the Altecs favoring larger cabs in the 8/9 cu. ft. range while JBL's somewhat smaller 3/6 cu. ft. seems to predominate in home speaker applications. Even the JBL home 15" D 130's are rather different than 2226h/j's in their specs. I only ask since there seems to be varying opinions on how each driver should be used over the past 40 yrs of experimention.
JBL drivers were used extensively in horn loaded cabinets, but they were professional models seldom seen by the public (as they were mostly hidden behind theatre screens) and were never actively promoted for home usage, as opposed to the Altec A7, for instance. D130s, as well as the rest of the D series and E series, were all originally designed and marketed as musical instrument drivers, with their aluminum domes intended to extend the midrange response. There were/are many cases where the D and E series shared their frame and motor structures with other models that had different specs for different applications.
Thank you. The Altec 515 series and 416 series: The 416 has usable energy up into the 4k rangs as opposed to the JBL which rolls off around 2k. Is that correct? I expect this might help our poster on this thread. While the 515's are expensive and really need to be horn loaded. I use those as example since they are readily available.
Back when I used them in the '70s I greatly preferred Altec 416s to JBL E130s for the reason that the Altec ran about an octave higher. The 515 is good for horn loading, but it's Qts/Fs figures aren't too skewed to make it unusable in a reflex box. The biggest problem with many of those old Altec drivers is the very large Vas; remember, these were empirically designed to operate best with reflex sections that had large ports (equal to Sd or larger) with no ducts, and therefore really big rear chambers. The JBLs had smaller Vas, so they could in theory use smaller boxes, but very low Qts figures as well, so in order to get bass out of them they ended up in large volume jammed alignments anyway.
I know this is an old post, but as long as the parts and pieces match up, then they should work fine. Both products are a good brand.