I've been helping a friend that owns the local electronics store, to restore some old speakers, the JBL-L200s and the Altec Lansing Santiagos. The Santiagos are a home version of the "Voice of the Theater" speaker, featuring a 15" woofer and a horn loaded (big ars) tweeter.
I will post photo's later tomorrow if I remember to bring the camera.
The L200s employ a 15" woofer as well, but have an unusual louvered diffraction grill over the midrange.
The fun thing is we are powering both speakers with a Marantz 2238 receiver with a wopping 38 watts per channel (RMS) and can drive them without distortion to levels that most sane folks would be happy with.
The one thing I have to say is that these babies have dynamic range! Both pairs needed lots of cabinet repair on the veneer, and the bases of both needed to be constructed. The Altecs were in the worse shape and even needed to have the grills and cross-overs totally rebuilt. That is one hell of a cross-over network on the Altecs. Horn crosses at 800Hz. 12db slope on the 15" woofer, 18db slope on the horn, plus a fairly exotic EQ circuit on both woofer and tweeter, plus an L pad on the horn. Well, both the Altecs and JBLs have L pads.
Anyway, tomorrow, if it doesn't rain, I'm going to bring my AVA Ultravalve (33 watts per channel) tube amp over and see how the bad boys bark. To be honest, we have gotten both pairs to almost new looking condition.
All that said, remember that big speakers need big rooms.
Here is what they look like (not ours).
And the Altecs
Wayner