Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Need To Know the Weight of Speaker

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 07-20-2005, 12:17 AM:

What does an Altec A4 with two multi cellular horns on top weigh?

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-20-2005, 06:34 AM:

Hello Bill,

Try this page for a start.

http://www.voiceofthetheatre.com/images/VOTTCAT.1983.P3.jpg

http://www.voiceofthetheatre.com/images/VOTTCAT.1983.P2.jpg

There is also an "unofficial" Altec page.

http://alteclansingunofficial.nlenet.net/

I think you are looking at between 650 and 700 pounds depending on the horn(s).
KEN

[ 07-20-2005, 10:14 AM: Message edited by: Kenneth Wuepper ]

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 07-20-2005, 07:54 AM:

Bill--

They are heavy! Enough to give you a hernia! [Smile]

Posted by Samuel Hynds (Member # 2610) on 07-20-2005, 09:47 AM:

The A7 weights in at 170 lbs. I would think the A4 weight more.

Sam

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-20-2005, 11:39 AM:

It depends on the vintage of the speaker since they used different woods in the later years (older ones are heavier). Also the vintage of the multicell horn will affect weight.

An A4A can be anywhere from 623lbs to 656lbs depending on horn model and single or dual driver.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 07-20-2005, 12:08 PM:

Why do i get a feeling someone is thinking of flying a trio of them
Hope you have a good arbor and lots of counterweight

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-20-2005, 12:29 PM:

Gordon,

The Fox in Detroit had their cinema speakers on a lift that rose from beneath the stage floor to expose the speakers and then lowered to make the stage floor level again. That was a lift like were used for organ consoles only much larger in scale.

Radio City Music Hall did fly their RCA speaker clusters for the cinema presentations. Huge speakers and a very strong grid.

KEN

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 07-20-2005, 03:37 PM:

At some point I seem to rembeber Radio City having dual A7's on each channel to save space in the fly loft. Pretty icky for a world class theatre.

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 07-21-2005, 12:30 AM:

Gordon, you hit it on the head, but it was 17 years ago. We flew them in '88 for one show. The guy who rented the theatre for the event wanted all the space he could get. He did the work for getting them up. As you might imagine nobody was comfortable being directly below them. After it was over, we took 'em down and disconnected them from the batten. A couple years later we hung the silver screen from that batten. We were discussing the foolhardiness of the whole adventure a couple days ago and were wondering how much weight we had overhead.

Posted by Kenneth Wuepper (Member # 1174) on 07-21-2005, 06:12 AM:

Sam,

As I recall, the RCA clusters were 3 or 4 huge cabinets with large multi-cell treble horns on top. At least 6 or 8 15 inch drivers.

Doing Radio City with A7s is like making announcements in Yankee Stadium using Rudy Valle's megaphone. [Big Grin]

KEN

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 07-21-2005, 10:59 AM:

Kenneth

I agree it was absurd but the memory lingers. This was around 1980. Is your recollection before or after that?

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 07-21-2005, 11:49 AM:

Sam, Warren Jenkins once told me that the stage shows required more fly space so smaller speakers were used he remembered it as 3 A7 base bins and a set of splayed horns per channel. At one point they experimented with a Klipsh speaker as well But then at that time they had ElectroSound Amps and a CP100/SA5 in the booth

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 07-21-2005, 12:59 PM:

My understanding is that Music Hall had 50 watts or less for P.A. until recent years because of really good acoustics. (Yes, I know how big it is.) Perhaps a small speaker was thought adequate.

Maybe also, it is that people are not as easy to please now.

Louis

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-21-2005, 01:53 PM:

Bill,

If my memory serves...you have Simplex speakers don't you? Do you have actual A-4s? The Simplexs sat horizontal.

If they are Simplexes...then the LF section (LU-1106) weighs in at 550 lbs). The HF section can have one driver with the whole horn/driver/sled coming in at 76 lbs. If you have two drivers on the HF unit then it is 132 lbs.)

The systems were called the XL532-312 or XL536-312 or XL532-322 or XL536-322 depending on the HF horn (8, 10 or 15 cells) and drivers (1 or 2).

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-21-2005, 02:08 PM:

Steve--do you remember what we had at Williamsburg before the recent upgrades? They were Simplex speakers as well, with Altec 288 horns on top and a single 515 driver inside.

I vaguely remember that the rigging guys who flew them said that they weighed about 500 lbs. I think that the rigging equipment was rated for 10-20x their actual weight.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-21-2005, 03:21 PM:

It depends on how many drivers were in the bass cabinet. They had a version with a single 15" and a version with 2 15" drivers. Then there were the horn varients. While they were essentially Altec 288B drivers...their Simplex numbers were LU-1104

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 07-22-2005, 12:47 AM:

Yep, they are the Simplexs with the 15 cell horns and two drivers. Used A4 to describe them figuring that most everybody would be more familiar.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-22-2005, 08:52 AM:

Then if you place it on your postage meter...it should come to about 682 lbs. [Smile]

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 07-25-2005, 04:23 AM:

quote: Kenneth Wuepper
The Fox in Detroit had their cinema speakers on a lift that rose from beneath the stage floor to expose the speakers and then lowered to make the stage floor level again. That was a lift like were used for organ consoles only much larger in scale.

That was "The Fox Movietone Lift" which was installed in the big Fox houses for use in the Fox theaters built in the silents period as sound shorts (like the Fox-owned Movietone process) were transitioning in. You'll find a Fox Movietone Lift in other Fox houses of the same period, like the Atlanta Fox. I can't remember if the NYC Roxy's stage construction was revised to include a Fox Movietone Lift when Fox bought into it during construction. Early RCA speakers in stage houses were often flown with the screen frame or "screen setting", & the Vitaphone HF horns rolled in behind the perf screen hanging from a track slightly lower than the top of the prosc. Modifications occurred during the transition to & optimization for sound pictures: one of the most obvious was that in the Fox houses, a 'pod' designed to integrate withe the theater's decoration containing the HF horns was added above the proscenium. Often they were hanging from cables, sometimes attached. The one at the Atlanta Fox was attached & so still there. These later-added pods were not used only in Fox houses.

quote: Gordon McLeod
Why do i get a feeling someone is thinking of flying a trio of them

Striking the screen speakers is a huge problem. A Fox Movietone Lift-like arrangement is the slickest solution, but trap space underneath the stage is just about as valuable as fly space. I'm thinking about a situation now & the best I've been able to come up with is putting casters on the bottom & back of the cabinets, then striking them by rolling them against the back wall & cranking up on a winch until they're out of the way - that will realistically be about the level of the fly gallery or about the height of the prosc. The wall at the back of the stage is probably the least critical space-area, but the speakers would need to be high enough not to interfere with backstage movement.

If you've got a crossover catwalk across the back of the stage at fly gallery level, you'd winch them to storage just below the catwalk. The problem is the stage radiators (please don't tell me they've mistakenly removed your stage radiators from the back wall, I don't want to go into how they work in the house HVAC arrangement again). Right now, the only solution presenting itself is 'tracks' of some kind of channel steel running just in front of the radiators, & neccessarily standing out from the back wall the width of the radiators. Castors on the back of the cabinets would theoretically run in the narrow tracks as the speakers were flown up the back wall. Or get all jammed up somewhere between stage level & fully out requiring some damn Spiderman act on a ladder to get them up & down.

quote: Bill Enos
Yep, they are the Simplexs with the 15 cell horns and two drivers.

The Simplex W cabinets? Blast from the past....