Altec 2000B
A fifteen-dollar high-frequency speaker that punched far above its price — and turned up in some of Altec's most fondly remembered systems.
Overview
The Altec 2000B is a high-frequency speaker component, and the first thing to understand about it is the price: fifteen dollars, network included, per the Altec component listings reproduced in the pages of Audio (August 1961, p.51). That figure is the key to the whole component. It was not the driver you aspired to; it was the driver that made a two-way Altec system possible on a real budget, and Altec leaned on it accordingly.
What the 2000B actually is, in Altec's own component-system architecture, is the top end of a two-way build. The company's custom-system guide — reproduced in period advertising — paired it with the 402B low-frequency speaker and a built-in dividing network at a 2,000-cycle crossover, the whole system listed at $34.50. That is the 2000B's natural habitat: a small, efficient two-way for the listener who wanted Altec sound without Altec money. The crossover point tells you a lot about the design intent. Two thousand cycles is a high handoff, which means the 2000B was never asked to carry the lower treble — it sits up top where a modest high-frequency unit can do the most good.
The most revealing description of the 2000B's construction comes not from a component listing but from Altec's own advertising for the 845A Verde, a compact system built around it. There, Altec described the high end as being handled by a 2000B "with unique gapsuspended radiator" — and claimed highs to 18,000 cps from the Verde as a whole. Whatever one makes of the marketing language, that phrase is the closest thing to a design description the period material preserves: the 2000B's radiator was suspended across its gap, and Altec considered that worth naming in a national ad. The Verde's own figures — 8-ohm impedance, 20-watt power rating, a 2,000-cps built-in crossover — describe the system rather than the raw component, but they establish the electrical context the 2000B was designed to work in.
The component's reach is the real story. The 2000B shows up across Altec's late-1950s and early-1960s catalog in places a $15 unit has no business appearing. The 835A Monterey Jr., a compact bass-reflex system, housed a 402B woofer and a 2000B high-frequency unit — Audio (1961, p.51) lists the 2000B among Altec's high-frequency speaker components. The Verde, at $96, was built around it. And in the custom-system tables, the 2000B is the entry point: the least expensive way into a genuine Altec two-way. Collectors who have spent time inside these systems tend to describe the 2000B as the component that made the budget Altecs possible, and the catalog record backs that up — it is the high-frequency unit at the bottom of the price sheet, and it is doing real work in systems costing several times its price.
What the 2000B is not, at least on the documentary record, is a standalone high-frequency driver in the manner of the 3000B sectoral-horn units that sat above it in the line. The 3000B appears in the same system tables at the next price tier, and the 2000B's role as the cheaper alternative is explicit in the way Altec structured its two-way guides. Buyers who wanted horn-loaded high frequency paid for the 3000B; buyers who wanted Altec two-way sound on a budget got the 2000B.
Condition and service notes are thin. The component is simple — a high-frequency speaker with an integral network in the systems that used it — and the usual cautions about decades-old Altec high-frequency units apply, but the available documentation does not record specific failure modes or service procedures for this model. What can be said is that the 2000B's value today is tied almost entirely to the systems it lives in: a Verde or a Monterey Jr. that still has its original high-frequency unit is worth more complete than parted out, and loose 2000B units surface mainly as spares for exactly those systems.
For anyone assembling a period Altec two-way on a budget, the 2000B remains the honest starting point — the component Altec itself used to get listeners into the fold, priced so that the jump to real Altec sound was a $34.50 decision rather than a $200 one.
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