As many of you know the brand name of Altec Lansing or Altec as it is sometimes called Has gone through many changes over the years. The company that made professional audio products from the 40's through the mid 90's was officially broken up and sold off into its component pieces in the late 90's.
In the late 80's Altec Lansing sold the rights to use its name for the home and car audio market and ultimately the computer speaker market to Sparkomatic. Sparkomatic has since then adopted the Altec Lansing Technologies name totally and have completely dropped the Sparkomatic name altogether. I have been told that most of the support information for this period of home and car audio products was destroyed in a fire at one of Altec Lansing Technologies locations. Since the fire Altec has made exclusively computer speakers and info on these products can be found at the following link www.altecmm.com
In July of 1985, Gulton Industries bought the assets and businesses of Altec
Corporation (which had filed bankruptcy after Larry Ling's financial dealings
with Altec) and renamed the company Altec Lansing Corporation. Then, in May
of 1986, Mark IV Industries bought Gulton in what started out as a hostile
takeover, but eventually the Board of Directors decided to accept the offer
from Mark IV.
In the late 90's Telex bought out the financially troubled Mark IV (the parent company that bought altec's assets out of bankruptcy in the late 70's). Telex relegated Altec to a ceiling speaker manufacturer for a couple of years, then sold the name outright to Altec Lansing Technologies.
Since the purchase of the Altec Lansing name outright from Telex, Altec Lansing Technologies has hired some of the original Altec Lansing management and opened a Pro Audio Division. The new division can be found at this link http://www.altecpro.com/
Although mainly still a ceiling speaker manufacturer Altec Lansing Pro has come out with some component parts that are of the caliber of equipment that the original Altec Lansing once made. These can be found under the products section and click on components. Our company has been assured that Altec Lansing Pro has future plans to further develop this initial offering into a full line of Pro Audio products over time.
This page is our effort as both old and new Altec dealers to keep our customers (and any former customer of the original Altec for that matter) apprised of the available information on the web for fixing and maintaining their altec professional equipment for years and years to come. Below is all the links that we are aware of pertaining to Altec Lansing's professional sound equipment and their audio research.
If you locate any additional resources out there on the web, our webmaster would appreciate the address so he can create a link to it.
If any of the above story is incorrect, we would appreciate a message to the error so it may be corrected.
Let me say ahead of time, the following links are run by completely independent individuals, Sound and Communications Inc. assumes no responsibility for the content or opinions expressed in the linked pages below. Some of these people feel very strongly about the way that the Altec Reputation has been treated over the years.
Altec Lansing's (unofficial) Homepage (run by a former Altec Lansing Sound Contractor)
Cannon Sound Systems - Australia (Makers of Aftermarket Altec Diaphrams)
ElectroVoice (some of the orignial remnents of Altec are still made under the EV label like the VIR horn)
Great Plains Audio (Run by a former employee of Altec Lansing) Repairs Loudspeakers
James B Lansing history (from JBL website)
Audio Heritage.org (run by Don McRitchie has lots of Technical info and Pictures)
Sound Practices (Has an Altec Users Page)
Triode Electronics Altec Lansing Schematic & Literature Archive
Voice of the Theatre.com (run by Scott Pratt )
As a Final Resort after checking all the above links, Click the Webmaster email link below and ask your question. We do have alot of info available and will try to help in any way possible but a speedy reply is not guaranteed.