By George Petersen
An installment in a series of short articles about key products in the roots of sound production. This focuses on the venerable Altec 1567A portable mixer.
Launched in the summer of 1958 as a portable broadcast, recording or sound reinforcement mixer, the Altec 1567A has served a long — and occasionally famous —career that continues to this day. Essentially the 1567A is a five-input (four mic inputs, one line input) mixer with a main and a recording out in a compact, 3-rackspace chassis.
From its original design, the 1567A was intended to be easily customized with various options to suit the user’s preference. Octal sockets on the rear panel allow converting the normally high-impedance mic inputs to low impedance inputs (via plug-in 4722 transformers) or as phono inputs.
An “XL” cover assembly (seen in the photo) provided four female XLR connectors for the mic inputs for portable use. The stock 1567A was equipped with screw-down barrier strip connections for fixed live sound installation or studio applications. Besides a carrying case another option was an illuminated VU meter assembly. The tube complement included three 12AX7s and a 6CG7.
With its ease of use, rugged build and great sound, the 1567A quickly found its niche. Several racks of 1567A’s (see photo) were employed by the audio crew recording the sound for The Beatles’ August 15, 1965 performance for record-breaking crowd of 55,000 fans at Shea Stadium in Queens, NY.
Other notable users included recording studios (including Motown Studios — see picture above of Motown founder Berry Gordy in that famed Detroit control room with a 1567A over his right shoulder, with five of the Motown Studio EQs below it and a couple Pultecs below that). In an era when consoles had a limited number of inputs, the 1567A was the ideal submixer feeding the main board.
And from August 15-18, 1969, concert sound pioneer Bill Hanley used an Altec 1567A along with two Shure M67 mixers for three days of peace and love as part of his front of house rig to mix the historic Woodstock Music Festival. And throughout the 1970s and into the early-1980s, I used 1567A’s for hundreds of bread-and-butter sound gigs, dragging them along to graduation ceremonies, football games, political rallies — new-age car wash openings — you name it. And thanks to their ease of use, hundreds of 1567A found homes in churches, schools, small theaters stadiums, meeting halls and gymnasiums. Rough and tough, 1567A’s were not considered to be esoteric audio for recording studio applications — but just everyday tools of the trade.
Years later, with the tube audio resurgence, the 1567A was re-discovered, and bands such as Maroon 5 and the Black Keys (among countless others) were making the 1567A part of their studio vocal sound. Thankfully, the mixer’s simple design of almost entirely standard parts meant they could be kept alive almost indefinitely and for years, could be had for a couple hundred dollars — at most. Then, of course, with the 1567A’s rise in popularity, prices began climbing skyward.
At the same time, audiophiles discovered that the Altec/Peerless 4722 octal input transformers (see pic) were ideal as step-up (150 to 50,000 ohm) transformers for moving coil (MC) phono cartridges, and suddenly these — went from $20-$30 to $200-$300 — so filling all the mic sockets slots on a “bargain” 1567A with 4722s went from about $100 to $1,200-$1,500, Of course if you only want to use one channel (say, as a mic pre) you only need one input transformer, but yikes!
