If you were cool in 1970 you had one of these!

[Mike Caldwell]

What more could you ask for, built in reverb complete with bright-soft contour switch, about 50 watts output, unbalanced inputs with a high and low gain switch.

It has a few battle scars but it still works short of some noisy pots and an intermittent jack on channel 4. It's actually remarkably quiet as far S/N.

 

[Art Welter]

Re: If you were cool in 1970 you had one of these!

Cool, never saw one of those before, wonder if the Tapco 6200 and 6200R led to it being "withdrawn" by May of 1971.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: If you were cool in 1970 you had one of these!

Cool, never saw one of those before, wonder if the Tapco 6200 and 6200R led to it being "withdrawn" by May of 1971.

I have one of those in my office as part of my collection.

Not a bad little mixer-UNTIL you had a volume pot that had a bad connection. The volume pots were actually in the feedback loop of the opamps-with no bypass resistor.

So when one leg would "open" (due to a cracked connection for example) the op amp would go into open loop gain-and the result would be quite "interesting" to say the least------------

I wonder how many speakers were taken out because of this?

Of course then there were the Tapco that used some sort of grease in the pots that would seize up after a couple of days. It would take a pair of channel locks to "break them loose" so they could be turned. THey would be fine for a couple of days-but at the next weekend gig-you would have to break all the pots loose again.

But overall they were pretty reliable mixers that did the job. I have used many of them (back in the day).

 

[Mike Caldwell]

Re: If you were cool in 1970 you had one of these!

In a 1972 Altec catalog they show a model 1210 powered mixer, it looks like the same mixer only with the addition of four selectable notch filters / EQ on the main output.
The two arms sticking up on each side of the mixer push down when you put the the lid on to lock the springs in the reverb tank. I mixed a band that had a Altec 1220 mixer complete with original chrome legs that screwed on the bottom and that mixer had a reverb locking lever that caged the reverb tank springs for transport.
I like the names Altec gave to their system packages!!

In very early 80's I had a Tapco 6000R used in conjunction with a Bi-Amp 6702 that I had built into a all in one case 12 channel mixer. I used the 6000R for an outboard reverb unit until I bought a barely used Lexicon PCM60, I still have the PCM 60 the 6000R is long gone.
The pots on the 6000R became all but impossible to turn, the pots on that Altec mixer still feel really good and smooth. My guess is some of the scratchy pot noise is from some of the old caps leaking a little DC here and there.

 

[Mark Phillips]

Re: If you were cool in 1970 you had one of these!

That unit brings back a lot of memories Mike, I have the 1220 unit as well as the matching tower speakers. The tolex is in near mint condition and it sounds great, I was planning on putting it on ebay at one time but never got around to it. Out of all the Altec items that I have in my collection, my model nineteens will never be sold.