Grenadeslio
Lunatic Member
Well to be fair I do have them lifted about 6" off the floor, and about 2' from the front wall so no real bass reinforcement, and I understand these were designed to be against the wall and either on the floor or horizontally in a bookshelf. Most likely if placed on the floor and pushed against the wall the bass would drastically improve in output, but not necessarily in quality.I never found my AR's bright. Whether my AR90's or my AR58S speakers. The dome midrange is a strong driver, capable of very clear mids. And the 58's frequency response isn't tailored to deliberately roll off, like 3's and 3a's. So, they don't hide anything in the music. It comes through, warts and all. Plus, a good front end helps, due to the resolving nature of the speakers. Give them time. I hope they grow on you?
Also, I don't know if you're the type to recap vintage speakers, as general maintenance? My AR90's used red/black Callins capacitors. They didn't age well, and the sound suffered for it. But my 58's used Unicon caps. The Unicon's held up much better. They still sounded great, on first listen. They may be fine as-is for you? Though, fresh capacitors would probably help tame the brightness too. They use 4uF and 24uF series caps, and 8uF, 40uF, and 100uF parallel shunt caps.
The amplification could also be playing a role as the seller had them powered with a Sansui when auditioned. He even had the highs turned up a bit, so I adjusted the controls to flat and they sounded rather dark, I assume why he tweaked the treble.
Currently driving them with my Kenwood KA7300 Integrated, so might put one of my Belles 1 amps in line with the Kenny only pulling preamp duty. Ran my Heresys this way biamped with twin Dynacos and liked the results, especially with the twin Dayton subs.
But again, I'm trying to avoid using the subs so either these will break in and get me where I want to go, will be powered by the Belles and improve, or the Jamos and subs go back into rotation and the AR's will be moved on. I realize I'm just being picky, most would probably give their right arm to have these awesome speakers, maybe I'm just getting spoiled having subs.
It's a tough world having so many great options to choose from lol.