Jeff:

I think the professional division of Altec has risen from the ashes somewhat and is in Oklahoma City, OK. When they went belly up in Calif, they moved there only to be gobbled up by Electro-Voice. Then they were bought by somebody else. The consumer division is nothing but the name. It's a real shame. I used to love rummaging through their "museum" collection which was basically the history of modern sound reproduction right there for me to play with. The factory itself was real old school workmanship. They had a metal shop supervisor from Germany who trained in the "old world" way. One thing he told me is that students were handed a chunk of metal and a file, which they had to transform to a precise cube of a certain dimension within close tolerances. He built me some chassis and faceplates that would bring tears to your eyes.