Category: Western Electric

Western Electric 43A Homage Amplifier

Post author By admin
Post date 11/29/2018
5 Comments on Western Electric 43A Homage Amplifier

The piece you see above is my homage to the Western Electric 43A. The 43A, as far as I can determine, was the first audio amplifier developed specifically for cinema sound. According to online sources, it was released in 1928 or 1929 – a year or two after the first optical-track sync-sound film was shown publicly. (source, and source).

(image source)

Above is the original context in which the 43A would have been found – it’s the piece on the bottom – and this entire massive apparatus represents a single 20-watt audio playback channel, with all associated power supplies, preamps, and control devices.

Above, a pair of these systems, as seen recently via a dealer in Japan.

I don’t have a clear sense of how many 43A were made, so I don’t want to add to internet ‘swirl,’ but there can’t be too many out there. Above is a pair of 43A that sold in 2016 on eBay for $32,000. IMO This is a very fair price for such an incredible piece of history, but it’s not a sum I, or many people, are prepared to spend on a hifi amp; hence the idea to create this tribute piece.

Back to my piece (above)… my goal was not, in any way, to make a copy of a 43A – it would be a fool’s errand, and not very practical – but rather to create a great-sounding and powerful stereo amp that honored the aesthetics of that iconic piece.

I wanted to use large, dramatic NOS tubes, but at a low cost; coke-bottle 6L6G would be nice but two matched pairs of those would be very pricey. So I subbed 6BG6GA instead. Basically a 6L6 with the plate in the top-cap. I chose the Altec 353A circuit (above), as I have built several Altec 323 and they sound great, and this is essentially the same circuit but using one fewer tube per channel. Since the mechanical construction of this thing was going to be a major PITA, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible electrically. The nameplate is a beat NOS “Northern Electric” mirror-finish plate that I found at Radio Hovsep a few years back.

Here’s a shot of the rear. In order to keep hum induction to a minimum, I used aluminum wherever possible in the build. The output transformers (awesome nos 70s40-watt Schumachers with a great vintage look) are suspended from the top chassis in order to keep the plate leads as short as possible. The PT is a pull from an Eico ST70, which has more than enough current-handling ability for this device. The meter is a NOS 1930s 500VDC meter that displays plate voltage. The knob in the center is simply an on-off power control. I am assuming that this will be used with a preamp – probably a ’42 homage’ when I get around to it -although it gets plenty loud as-is with just a CD player connected to the RCA inputs.

This was a very difficult build in terms of the metal work. Getting all the various subchassis to line up was difficult but worth it in the end. It’s incredibly solid and has an imposing aura to it. The use of all Hammond-brand metal components ensured that the black finish(es) would all match and thereby present a unified appearance.

Western Electric

Western Electric in the late 40s: Audio Engineering Mag pt. 5

Post author By chris
Post date 05/08/2011
7 Comments on Western Electric in the late 40s: Audio Engineering Mag pt. 5

The Western Electric 755A speaker

In a previous post, we looked at some early Western Electric cinema-sound equipment and the cult that surrounds this early kit. Here’s a series of print ads from 1948 that describe some of the last-ever pro audio offerings from Western Electric. WE was soon to be broken up by the government, and many of these products would then re-surface as Altec-branded components.

The Western Electric 756A speaker

The Western Electric 25B mixing console

The Western Electric 141, 142, and 143 audio amplifiers

The Western Electric speaker line up, featuring the 757A

Tags mixers, speakers, western electric

Custom Fabrication History RCA Technical Western Electric

TECH: antique theater equipment

Post author By admin
Post date 09/25/2010
12 Comments on TECH: antique theater equipment

It’s a sign of real accomplishment for an artist to have a monograph of their work published. I would imagine that a few hundred are published worldwide by recognized publishing companies each year. But much more rare is the collector’s monograph. That’s right. You have amassed a collection of (x) that is so stupendous that “let’s make a book about it!” And the book costs like $60.

Of all the cults and sub-cults of audio-equipment collecting, few are more rarefied and costly than collecting antique movie-theatre equipment; especially equipment made by the Western Electric Company (hf. WE). I won’t go into WE; the company had such a complicated history filled with intense government regulation, so tightly intertwined were they with the communication industries in American life; check out wikipedia for the details. Suffice to say that, along with RCA, WE was a main manufacturer of the equipment used to playback sound in movie theatres at the dawn of the sound-film era (late 1920s). Since the equipment was designed for such purpose, quality and reliability was very high. Also massive.

(from “Recording Sound For Motion Pictures,” McGraw-Hill, 1931)

Here’s RCA’s theater system from that era:

(from ‘Audels New Electric Library,’ Audel+ Co, 1931-1958)

Mr. Yashima had quite a collection of this stuff.

(scanned from “Makoto Yashima Collection,” Seibundo, Japan)

It’s hard for me to say what the value of these WE components is, but i can easily imagine single pieces trading in the 5 figures.

Getting back down to earth, WE stopped making theatre-sound equipment in the late 1940s due to anti-trust regulations (complicated, right?), but RCA kept on building it.

This brings us into the realm of more accessible (even downright cheap!) devices. Even though this later hardware may be inexpensive nowadays, we are still dealing with equipment that is designed for ultimate reliability, and really very good fidelity. After all, tens of thousands of people sat in these theaters every year, paying a good fee in order to watch and listen to the latest films… this is a case where quality really matters.

I picked up this circa 1960 RCA 9362 booster amp for… maybe… $70? on eBay a while back. I had no idea what it was, but it looked like it might be useful in the studio. And here is where it gets technical….