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Acoustic Research AR-2A Rebuild

audiophile03 said:
Finally got my AR's covered today. I cut the frames and my lady cut and mounted the cloth to the frames. The fabric I used was an 18ct Lambswool that is colored a slight off white with bits of slightly darker stitching to give it a hand stitched look all for around $5.50 on sale from JoAnne's. I bought a large sheet of fiberboard from Home Depot for $7.00. So, all in all, I spent around $12.50 or so to make some very good looking grills. Also got the plates ordered tonight for $16.00 off eBay. Next week, they should be 100% done!
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On lower shelf right are those records? They will warp stored flat. Need to be vertical.

Beautiful AR restoration :thmbsp:
 
thank you for this thread.
i was inspired enough to dig out an early pair of 2ax ($30 thrift store find - woo hoo!) that had been sitting unused since i found them a year ago.
one had the expected pot issues but the other was fine.

fiddled with the tweeter pot on the affected speaker till it found a spot it liked and the tweeter came alive. the mid was ok.

they have been playing all weekend.
can't tell you how much i like these speakers!

i have been listening to New Large Advents the past couple of years and really liked them. but to my ears the AR's are much, much nicer in the mid-range where all the real action is.

when i can bear to take them out of my system i shall use your very informative thread as a guide to restoration.

congratulations on a well executed sympathetic restoration.
i hope you will enjoy those excellent speakers for a very long time.

art
 
Thanks Art! I was hoping this thread would be useful to someone lucky enough to own a set of these series of old AR's. I'm glad it payed off! Please keep me informed on how your restoration goes. If you have any questions, let me know and I will do what I can to help.
 
Hey Audiophile03:

Your wish has come to pass. :-) Thanks for this thread. It was the inspiration I needed to start the restoration of my Salvation Army AR2ax's. Mine are in much nicer shape cosmetically with the original walnut finish. Sonically the bass is m.i.a. However, treble and mid range are sweet, musical and very present. I expected to find the surrounds in shreds when I pulled off the grill cloth but they looked like yours. A little threadbare but otherwise healthy looking and very much intact. Before I do anything very drastic to them I'm going to redope the surrounds and hopefully make them acoustically tight again. My ears tell me that the tweets and mids don't need much attention. Like my daddy used to say; "If it don't stink don't stir it." If redoping and resealing the woofer doesn't do the trick I'll go back in, clean the pots, upgrade the caps and do a more aggressive search for acoustic leaks. I'm also grateful for the tip on replacing the grill cloth. One was really stained and I removed both of them, soaked them for a while, washed them gently, and stretch dried them like my Grannie used to do with her lace curtains. Now they both look like crap.
 
Question regarding pots - I have a pair of 2ax's I got at a garage sale for 15 bucks (guy wanted 30, I was going to offer 20, my mom jumped in before me with 10 and the guy said 15). The pots are crap - I tried the deoxit trick - no dice. However, I build guitars and I have a bunch of pots from guitars I've restored. Are speaker pots and guitar volume pots interchangeable?
 
spicynuts said:
Question regarding pots - I have a pair of 2ax's I got at a garage sale for 15 bucks (guy wanted 30, I was going to offer 20, my mom jumped in before me with 10 and the guy said 15). The pots are crap - I tried the deoxit trick - no dice. However, I build guitars and I have a bunch of pots from guitars I've restored. Are speaker pots and guitar volume pots interchangeable?
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What you can do here is take a 25 ohm resistor and bridge/ solder across the #1 & 2 post of a typical 15 L-Pad to get the same thing as the old AR potentiometers. This is what is reccomended in the AR resoration pages! I have done it many times with great results.
DC
 
Well, what I meant was I want to replace the actual pots with new ones, but if I can avoid just buying new pots by using some of the guitar pots I've got laying around, that would be nice. If I just soldered a resistor/bridge I wouldn't have any adjustment control. Or am I misunderstanding?
 
I m not familiar with guitar pots- sorry, but I do know L-Pads and this fix for them. 15 watt L-Pad are like $7 each! Cheap reliable fix. Maybe a more experienced person will chime on on the guitar pots that can let us know something valid.

I might add- what ever fix you use to be sure to cover those pots or L-Pads with some plastic or seal them up in baggies- this will keep that damn insulation from getting back into them and to help keep them from drying out and getting scratchy again....
DC
 
Good advice DC. I am not really familiar with guitar pots either. Thankfully, the pots in my AR's only required a bit of Deoxit and they worked as new. Good luck with the restore Dalarry! It's so worth the time invested into these fine speakers! On a side note, I got the new logo plated in the mail the other day and got them mounted on the grills.
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I have rebuilt to date probably 6~7 sets of AR2a's, etc- they are an impressive speakers for what they have in them! The last models are my favorites. Love to see them all restored and working like new again. Somethings never age- those simply do not, with good maintenance the sound is timeless!
DC
 
dc270 said:
I have rebuilt to date probably 6~7 sets of AR2a's, etc- they are an impressive speakers for what they have in them! The last models are my favorites. Love to see them all restored and working like new again. Somethings never age- those simply do not, with good maintenance the sound is timeless!
DC
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What was your experience with the crossovers and the pots in them?

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RamblinE said:
What was your experience with the crossovers and the pots in them?

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I alway recapped the x-overs and cleaned the pot reused them when I could, if I could not clean the pots then the little 15 ohm resistor trick and a new pot- as explained above- got used and worked well!.

The original x-overs were designed well for the driver compliment- but those darn original pots did have permanent problems about half the time. I found long ago that once cleaned up- if reusable- to put them in a plastic bag to keep the loose fiber filling out of them- works great!
DC
 
RamblinE said:
What was your experience with the crossovers and the pots in them?

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The crossovers in mine were fine. I cleaned the pots and used them for a while but ended up replacing them with new pots from an eBay seller that mainly sells AR replacement parts.

Cheers,
Jared
 
audiophile03 said:
The crossovers in mine were fine. I cleaned the pots and used them for a while but ended up replacing them with new pots from an eBay seller that mainly sells AR replacement parts.

Cheers,
Jared
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I'm going to have to actually plug mine into some kind of little amp before I jump to conclusions. Your work though is beautiful Jared. I'm inspired. Thanks for the reply!

And thanks for the advice DC!

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RamblinE said:
I'm going to have to actually plug mine into some kind of little amp before I jump to conclusions. Your work though is beautiful Jared. I'm inspired. Thanks for the reply!

And thanks for the advice DC!

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Appreciate the compliment! Those speakers are what actually caused me to incur this analog audio syndrome we seem to all have :D
 
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