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AR 2ax rebuild

D

darrelb

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
I have a pair of 2ax's the woofers are rotted out,the tweeters are dead i don't know about
the midranges. the cabinets have been refinished and look wonderful, so instead of hunting
down 50 year old parts of questionable quality i am going to use new drivers and crossovers.
i have the recommended woofers from simply speakers,The tweeters and mids from parts
express . I can use the crossover chart from the net,now the question is which crossover
type would give the best results?. the are lots of choices available to decide on. any help
getting me pointed in the right direction would greatly apricated. the tweeter is the hivi 1qr with the coil the mid is the hivi 2 inch dome or the hivi b4n midrange.
 
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darrelb said:
I have a pair of 2ax's the woofers are rotted out,the tweeters are dead i don't know about
the midranges. the cabinets have been refinished and look wonderful, so instead of hunting
down 50 year old parts of questionable quality i am going to use new drivers and crossovers.
i have the recommended woofers from simply speakers,The tweeters and mids from parts
express . I can use the crossover chart from the net,now the question is which crossover
type would give the best results?. the are lots of choices available to decide on. any help
getting me pointed in the right direction would greatly apricated. the tweeter is the hivi 1qr with the coil the mid is the hivi 2 inch dome or the hivi b4n midrange.
Click to expand...

Can't help with the crossover, but would appreciate pics of the rotted woofers. I've heard of such, but never seen it. Thanks!
 
Cookbook crossovers from a chart might get you a few miles from where you really need to be. But they make several assumptions regarding driver behavior that are mostly true, but not close enough for a good crossover design. Roughly speaking, you start with a suitable woofer, and design a cabinet for it, mount the drivers in the cabinets, take impedance and frequency response measurements, then enter those in a suitable design program. The results will tell you what the most likely crossover design should be.
 
If you have 'recommended' replacement driver, why not try the original crossover? You might need to recap it, but I hope that the drivers were recommended as appropriate replacements for what was there. In which case, they were chosen with the crossover in mind.
 
Nat said:
If you have 'recommended' replacement driver, why not try the original crossover? You might need to recap it, but I hope that the drivers were recommended as appropriate replacements for what was there. In which case, they were chosen with the crossover in mind.
Click to expand...

Yes.

The crossover mod for the HiVi tweeter is well-documented, and perhaps the original mids are in good working order? They are fairly robust.

Are the mildewed woofers the early, cloth-surround version or the foam surround version?
 
darrelb said:
the woofers are the early paperlike stuff
Click to expand...

Both of the woofers used by AR in the AR2ax have paper cones. The earlier version has cloth surrounds (and a damping ring on the cone), while the later version has foam surrounds. Which do you have?
 
Those are the more desirable woofers. Are you sure they can't be cleaned up? They are quite good.
 
They will not be 2AX's anymore in my opinion if you replace all the drivers. If thats your goal then great.
When working correctly with the original drivers they are a freakin great speaker.

Not hard to make them work

Just saying, good luck and post pics of whatever you decide. :thumbsup:
 
If replacing drivers, the first task is to accurately measure the internal volume of the cabinets. Then select a woofer made for, or will work well, in a sealed cabinet. Using the new driver specs, load into a sealed box modeling software. Once you get your model to look the way you want, select the midrange and tweeter to complement that model. Choose XO components to support that full range model. But after selecting and buying all components, there still remains the real world testing…
 
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