Acoustic Research AR 9

[harry398]

 

[harry398]

Scored these last night.

Posting this as info, and I will critique them after refoam.
They have big competition.

Ar9lsi, ar98ls, ar50, ar3a are the main contenders.

The crossovers are HUGE.

Stripped and lugged into house. Will complete in a few weeks.........life is busy.

8 inch is next to an 8 inch front ar98lsi

Enjoy the pics if you like AR SPEAKERS. I Do.

 

[harry398]

Funny thing is, my Brother scored ar9ls before I scored ar9lsi.

Then he scored AR9, then I do!

I power my systems with kenwood m2a and a few Carvery amps my Brother went through. Carver 4.0 and Carver tfm42 is what I have. My Brother is good with them and I love them. Kenwood is great too.

 

[F1nut]

Those are very nice speakers and will easily best your other ones as long as you feed them with high quality power.

 

[StimpyWan]

Congratulations, your newly acquired AR9s look great. I'd love to have a pair, or 9LS speakers, to go with my 90s. Your cabinets look to be in very nice shape. Plus, the drivers look good too. Just need foam. Though, it could be the lighting, but does one UMR dome have a crease in it? Also, do you plan on doing a recap? If not, just make sure none of the capacitors are buldging. The black and red caps are known to leak over time. The metal caps hold up better. Good luck.

 

[GD70]

Great score! You and your brother have the karma for sure!
Your 9's look gorgeous! Take your time, enjoy the restoration, and their sound once singing again!
Cheers, Glenn

 

[drbiggles]

Woot woot! Congratulations, I'm jealous! Thank you for posting images of the crossovers. You need to get the inductors remounted further apart in on a different plane. Magnetic coupling is causing your crossover points to wander. Your ears will tell you there is a remarkable difference when properly placed. Here's what Mr. Gravesen has to say about it.

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/coils.htm

Biggles

 

[satellite]

Congratulations on your score! They appear to be in pretty good shape. What a nice project!

I got to hear hear AR 9s for the first time a few weeks ago at our own Drugolf's house. He was powering them with a big Phase Linear amp and a tube pre-amp. My jaw dropped and I got goosebumps! Made me realize that my own meager systems are inadequate kid's stuff!

 

[harry398]

Thanks everyone who responded.

1 question for everyone.......What is the best option for Foam on the 8 inch woofer?

There is a member here who mentioned he used a JBL 8 inch surround on the 8 inch woofer on his ar9lsi rebuild........it has the wider 5/8 roll.

the AR9 8 inch measures 5 7/8 outside on the cone
7 1/2 to the outside glue point of surround

ar9ls 8 inch measures 5 3/4 outside of cone
7 3/4 to outside of glue point on surround

why they had to change the woofers is beyond my understanding, unless a nice BEAN counter was involved....

 

[harry398]

Congratulations on your score! They appear to be in pretty good shape. What a nice project!

I got to hear hear AR 9s for the first time a few weeks ago at our own Drugolf's house. He was powering them with a big Phase Linear amp and a tube pre-amp. My jaw dropped and I got goosebumps! Made me realize that my own meager systems are inadequate kid's stuff!

Ha. I get similar results with alot of AR speakers I own with the CARVER 4.0 The power makes the Peaks tremendous. The Kenwood M2A is also quite good, but the Carver has bigger balls.

 

[harry398]

Congratulations, your newly acquired AR9s look great. I'd love to have a pair, or 9LS speakers, to go with my 90s. Your cabinets look to be in very nice shape. Plus, the drivers look good too. Just need foam. Though, it could be the lighting, but does one UMR dome have a crease in it? Also, do you plan on doing a recap? If not, just make sure none of the capacitors are buldging. The black and red caps are known to leak over time. The metal caps hold up better. Good luck.

yes, there is a slight push in on one of the mid domes.

As of now, No recapping will occur. Maybe later if I deem the sound isnt acceptable. I will say, every speaker I recapped has improved, even the newer ar98ls's, but I will wait on the ar9. My ar50 did not need any recap. they are Tremendous and crystal clear, so No need on them. Too many great ones here anymore.

The ar9lsi.....has Tremendous Bass now. I dont know if the ar9 will surpass it, but we will see.

 

[india42]

I purchased all of my AR9 foam from Rick Cobb (rcobb@tampabay.rr.com). Actually I try to purchase all of my re-foam jobs from him, he really knows his product, and the quality is great.

 

[Drugolf]

Yes Larry and vintage AR for sure. For the woofers and the mid woofer.
You will need to shim the woofers and don't remove the masonite rings.
Easy enough. Try them before messing with the caps.
Feed them and get out of the way!

 

[harry398]

Yes Larry and vintage AR for sure. For the woofers and the mid woofer.
You will need to shim the woofers and don't remove the masonite rings.
Easy enough. Try them before messing with the caps.
Feed them and get out of the way!

I will get out of the way, lol

I heard you had a audio session with a member, and he was Floored when you turned on the ar9's with the big amp. LOL


I'm lucky.

 

[harry398]

Ar 9 woofers....vs ar98lsi woofer

Silver color woofer is the ar9.

Notice the difference in basket heights, and thus elimination of the silly masonite ring.

there have been paper changes over the years......some seem thicker, some smoother...........

 

[StimpyWan]

As of now, No recapping will occur. Maybe later if I deem the sound isnt acceptable. I will say, every speaker I recapped has improved, even the newer ar98ls's, but I will wait on the ar9. My ar50 did not need any recap. they are Tremendous and crystal clear, so No need on them. Too many great ones here anymore.

I own AR90s. I bought them factory direct, around 1980, when I was a Teledyne family employee. So, I'm the only owner, and know their play history. As such, I've been refurbing them, to get them back to 100% physical condition. So, all the drivers have been refoamed, and I damped all the driver baskets with Dynamat. I've already recapped them, and I'm now refinishing the cabinets, as my pitiful back allows. It's been a slower process than I like, but I'm in no rush. Regardless, once I did the crossover recap (using a spare set of crossovers), I did a quick A/B against a stock speaker, with only the other UMR dome wired to the new crossovers. No comparison what so ever. The recap sounded so much better. More open sounding and much clearer and cleaner. But the biggest surprise, the new crossover was so clean, with do distortion. The stock speaker had a static type distortion, that was totally absent in the new crossover. Plus, I was hearing more mids and highs from just the dome, through the new crossover, than both the tweeter and mid combined, in the stock speaker. And to me, the kicker was that I've always feed good clean power to my 90s. Never abused either, as I'm no head-banger. My caps should have been in good shape! I guess not? So don't assume your caps will be fine. Even if your don't recap right away, I'd still plan on doing it, sooner than later.


Not a final picture of the recap, as I also relocated some of the coils too, to allow better spacing.

 

[StimpyWan]

I will get out of the way, lol

I heard you had a audio session with a member, and he was Floored when you turned on the ar9's with the big amp. LOL


I'm lucky.

View attachment 993418 View attachment 993419 View attachment 993420

BEAUTIFUL...!!!

 

[harry398]

I have had great success recapping, most likely I will do these AR9's in the cold of winter.

So you worked there? Interesting!

It's a huge positive all the info sharing.

I own AR90s. I bought them factory direct, around 1980, when I was a Teledyne family employee. So, I'm the only owner, and know their play history. As such, I've been refurbing them, to get them back to 100% physical condition. So, all the drivers have been refoamed, and I damped all the driver baskets with Dynamat. I've already recapped them, and I'm now refinishing the cabinets, as my pitiful back allows. It's been a slower process than I like, but I'm in no rush. Regardless, once I did the crossover recap (using a spare set of crossovers), I did a quick A/B against a stock speaker, with only the other UMR dome wired to the new crossovers. No comparison what so ever. The recap sounded so much better. More open sounding and much clearer and cleaner. But the biggest surprise, the new crossover was so clean, with do distortion. The stock speaker had a static type distortion, that was totally absent in the new crossover. Plus, I was hearing more mids and highs from just the dome, through the new crossover, than both the tweeter and mid combined, in the stock speaker. And to me, the kicker was that I've always feed good clean power to my 90s. Never abused either, as I'm no head-banger. My caps should have been in good shape! I guess not? So don't assume your caps will be fine. Even if your don't recap right away, I'd still plan on doing it, sooner than later.

View attachment 993464
Not a final picture of the recap, as I also relocated some of the coils too, to allow better spacing.

 

[Johnny_Law]

Thanks everyone who responded.

1 question for everyone.......What is the best option for Foam on the 8 inch woofer?

There is a member here who mentioned he used a JBL 8 inch surround on the 8 inch woofer on his ar9lsi rebuild........it has the wider 5/8 roll.

the AR9 8 inch measures 5 7/8 outside on the cone
7 1/2 to the outside glue point of surround

ar9ls 8 inch measures 5 3/4 outside of cone
7 3/4 to outside of glue point on surround

why they had to change the woofers is beyond my understanding, unless a nice BEAN counter was involved....

I bought my AR9LS surrounds from Rick Cobb. The 8" woofer (AR200045) uses his part # 610-365-1. My AR200045s have the same cone OD as yours (5 3/4").

I have two spare masonite rings left over from an AR11 rebuild that I could mail you if you goof up yours.

 

[Drugolf]

A bunch of info over at the AR section at Classicsperakerpages too of course..