The Altec-Lansing M500 Maestro is a largely lost and forgotten loudspeaker, but it is, perhaps, the best the company ever built. It arrived in the final days of Altec-Lansing, Inc., and production was cut short due to the sale of the company. Why is the M500 Maestro important to us today? It provides the framework for what would have been the replacement for the highly acclaimed Model 19. It has been suggested that the new model would have been called the Model 19MR or Model 19-MR3. So the M500 is of great importance to Altec-Lansing fans around the globe.
The M500 brought Altec-Lansing into the world of high power amplification, boasting the ability to handle 250 watts of continuous power, and 500 watts peak. At 250 watts it reaches an ear bleeding 120.5 db.
It’s also a rather sensitive speaker, producing 96.5 db with 1 watt at 1 meter. The nominal impedance of the system is 6.8 ohms.
The M500 consists of the MR994A Mantaray horn backed by the 909-8A compression driver. For low frequency it utilizes the very impressive model 3154 woofer.
The MR994A Mantaray combines the best attributes of the earlier 511 and 811 horns. It can reach down to 500 Hz, while rising all the way to 20 kHz (well… sort of). It’s also extraordinarily smooth across its operational bandwidth. The 909-8A compression driver boasts a frequency response equivalent to the MR994A horn, and produces 108 db at 1 watt/1 meter. It can sustain 80 watts of continuous power when used between 800 Hz and 8 kHz, and 160 watts peak .
