Oct 07, 2012 I just obtained a Altec 9300ACD console, but I can find very little info about it. The EQ's look a lot like the Langevin passive 2-band but with rotary controls.
![Diy Diy](http://www.preservationsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Tube_mixing_console_2.jpg)
When I visited vintage audio dealer up in Vancouver, British Columbia, I noticed several giant Altec Lansing horn speakers sitting in the back room, each one standing about 4 feet high and 3 feet wide, with an imposing multicellular horn perched on top. I asked Innovative founder Gordon Sauck if I could give them a listen. Fortunately, he was just getting ready to hook them up for the store's annual Garage Sale, so I heard them driven by a roughly 20-watt-per-channel tube amp - more than enough power considering the speakers' high efficiency. Normally, I would think using vintage speakers is a dicey decision because speaker science has evolved so much since the late 1970s. But the Altecs sounded, to my ears, shockingly modern. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of energy in the top octave of treble, but everything below that seemed remarkably uncolored and natural.
![Table Table](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/64/9c/bc/649cbc34528adddb30129040b0f8f709.jpg)
That's probably in part because the low-frequency response of the horn allows the crossover to the woofer to be shifted down to 500 Hz or so, where any sonic artifacts would be much less noticeable than they are at the usual woofer/tweeter crossover point of about 2.5 to 3 kHz. We sandblast the horns with crushed walnut shells, which removes the paint but doesn't damage the metal, and then we powder-coat them.
For the cabinets, we sand off the original gray orange-peel finish, which is usually very nicked and scratched. Then we fill all the divots so the whole surface is perfectly smooth. Then we repaint them with several coats of a nice satin finish. We also add a plinth to lift them off the floor slightly, plus a teak base for the horn and a fabric grille for the open area below the woofer.