The throats are specific to the horns, whereas the
driver is a standard 3
bolt Altec
pattern. Although the sheet metal is light, the "Aqauplas" (or whatever they called it) that coats them is a lot of the weight. When Altec used to ship them, they would come
face down on a
block of foam, with a thin (~1/4 ply) piece of wood, in a large cardboard box. There was then a thick cardboard plate at the back bolted on to the throat. These days, I would do the foam at the bottom,
face down,
cover in plastic and fill the box with injectable foam, or a ton of peanuts.
If you get sick of looking at them, I could give two a nice home
Not to worry JD - the horns I was discussing above are the JBL's, which are even more enormous than the Multicell's. The 1005B's... Well, I am getting tired of
tripping over them. I'd make you one heck of a deal on my two nicest ones - I'll even include Altec mounting brackets! The drivers are 288-16mhz. Apparently not the most preferred model, but not terrible either. I can say that at least one has an aftermarket
diaphragm installed.
Idle curiosity. Are these perforated for sonic
transparency?
Do they require a four sided frame to stretch them
flat?
Are they coated in an even layer of yellow nicotine from the days when people smoked during films?
Do they require lacing and / or springs on all four sides?
Just in case anyone's seriously interested, do you have any idea of their basic sizes before
masking?
And that's going to be the next questions; do you have automated tracks for their
masking legs and borders?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
Yes, they are perforated, and actually are pretty clean from what I have seen. The theater these came out of was a cinema from the 70's to the 90's and then sat vacant for a while. In the early 2000's, it reopened as a Movie Tavern. Corporate has been slowly upgrading the facilities, hence the renovation. I'm not sure if the screens date back to the original cinema or when Movie Tavern bought it. I know the sound equipment must date back. They were mounted with springs on all sides, and I'm still finding those springs stuck to my speakers every once in a while. I'm not sure of the sizes – one is from a smaller room, but the other is huge and was curved like a
cyclorama. I'd guess
at least 60' wide and 20-30' high. It's the one that
hid the 6 A7's and Multicell's.
Unfortunately I have no
masking. The
theatre teacher friend of mine who introduced me to this deal actually took as many black
curtains and tracks as she could find. There was a wall panel upstairs with open/close controls, but the motors must have been removed much earlier; perhaps when Movie Tavern took over, or maybe when they switched to digital about five years ago. From what I saw, they just had pull-ropes dangling. That said, I am concerned about the condition of these since being folded and allowed to crease. I'm not sure how well the material handles that kind of stress. I thought about cutting them up and selling the pieces as home theater material, but I don't know how well it would work for near-field viewing since they are perforated. It seems like they wouldn't have replaced the screens had it been easier to remove/store/reinstall them without folding them up. The manager said that the new screens come tightly rolled up in a large tube and once you open it up, that's it. Kind of a Pandora's Box.
Used to use those JBL 4675's at the Skirball in LA. Good speakers... THX approved like funkcity said. Far as I know... they're still using them. In fact when I redid the sound in that space I added an L-acoustic Kiva
line array for live events, and kept the JBL 4675's as is for film screenings.... particularly classic film screenings. The reason that the
horn is so big is that it helps give the upper midrange and treble like a 5-10db bump that those frequencies need to push through the perforated movie
screen. The low end frequencies from the cabinet go through the
screen without a problem. So yeah... those are totally legit movie speakers for any medium or large size movie theater. Probably worth finding the right buyer for.
Thanks for the info! I need to join some AVS forums, although they may have rules for posting in the classifieds like we do here. If anyone knows someone, let me know and I'll try to get in touch. As a clarification, you mentioned 4675's. My horns are (9) 2360 with 4445H drivers. What's the difference? I know the trend usually leans toward lower model numbers = lower end. All this (JBL) gear seems to be good, but perhaps on the "economy" end of the spectrum (2035HPL woofers, 4445H HF drivers,
etc).