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AR-4x Rehab - Worth it?

teleking36

teleking36

Active Member
My brother gave me an old pair of AR-4x's today. Trash find. I opened them up to find they've been messed with. Replacement Radio Shack woofers that are disintegrated, possible replacement tweeters, as they aren't properly mounted onto the baffle (two of the four screws are being used to pin down the frame as opposed to being mounted through the mounting holes). Looks like the crossover was removed and the pot pulled out and bypassed? I don't know enough about speaker schematics to have a great understanding of what the AR-4x is supposed to look like stock.

The cabinets are sound, the grills are tear-free. I wonder if it's worth the time to get these functioning? I have a Marantz 8B tube amp, 7T preamp, and 6300 TT, and I'm currently without speakers. I don't mind the project if the work isn't crazy or overly pricey. I'd love some suggestions. Here are a couple of pictures of the inside. I've gone ahead and pulled all of the batting and fiberglass out and bagged them up, with plans to just replace it all with new fiberglass.

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We could use some more pics to evaluate more fully, but from what you've stated and shown, you've currently got no authentic AR audio components remaining, so it cannot accurately be described as a 4x speaker anymore. All original drivers have been removed and all of the crossover as well, and now you also have a small hole (where pot was removed) in the backside in what is intended to be a sealed cabinet, so I would refer to them as mongrels.

This is not to say that everything should be discarded, especially if you have nice original cabinets and grilles. It is not all that difficult to assemble an authentic AR speaker, but at a minimum, you will need to (patiently) assemble all of the necessary parts: (4) drivers; (2) coils; (2) capacitors; (2) tweeter controls; and misc. hardware. Alternatively, you could cobble together any number of unique frankenspeaker designs in order to make use of those great-looking cabs and grilles.
 
These could be restored. Before you make any decisions, look for original drivers and crossovers on fleabay to get an idea of the average cost, also how much work will the cabs need to look good. Lots of these were made, so parts shouldn't take long to track down.

A proper working pair sound great, sound that's bigger than their size would suggest.

Glenn
 
Hey man,

Yes and no. It all depends on how much inspiration you've got tucked inside to see the project through. Finding the necessary parts off the bay is going to be cost prohibitive. If you are interested in reviving them, I would suggest looking for a haggard pair locally. Something that has all the guts, but in cabinets that look like they've rolled out of the back of a pickup. AR made so darned many of these things, they pop up all over the darned place. Another suggestion is to pay the 25 dollars and become a member here. This will give you access to Barter Town. There you can place a wanted to buy ad for what you need. This will cost you far less than the fleabay alternative.

Or if you're local to the San Francisco Bay Area, I'm interested in good AR4x cabinets. I have a pair with all the guts and horrible cabinets.

Another thing to consider that they're very power hungry little dears. Mine didn't give me their full potential until I jacked them into a 140 watt Hafler power amp. An 80 watt amp is about as small as you can go, they love headroom.

Biggles
 
Here in the North East, 4x in nice shape are about $170 a pair, so unless you can get some original driver cheaply, it may not be worth it.
 
teleking36 said:
Damn :/ Sounds like I should just sell them for parts then.
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Depends, are you interested in a restoration project? Have you restored speakers already? A project like these could just be about the restoration process itself, that you did yourself, the learning experience, satisfaction that comes with it. This may be more important to you than the cost.
 
I don't really have the time for it unless I can keep things very simple and skip doing an OEM restoration. I like the idea of just replacing the drivers and recapping along with whatever needs to be done with the crossover. It would be my first project like this. I have a lot of experience working on guitars, effects pedals, some limited tube amp work, so I'm no stranger to a soldering iron, working with caps, resistors, pots, etc.

I don't necessarily care about the physical appearance of the cabs at the moment. Clean corners, good grills. They look decent from a few feet back. Down the road I could sand back the veneer a bit and re-stain it, but that's not my concern at this moment. I just looked at these as a cheap opportunity to give me something halfway decent to work with while I save up for some Falcon Acoustics LS3/5a speakers. My other thought was to try and grab a pair of Dynaco A25s and just ditch these AR-4x's.
 
Well, it looks like you're missing original woofers, tweeters, and crossovers. So if you wanted an AR-4x restoration project, you'd need to go find those things. That doesn't seem worth it.

As a coincidence, I'm listening to my AR-4x's at this very moment - Alessandrini's rendition of Vivaldi - Four Seasons - and with the original woofers, phenolic tweeters, and re-capped crossovers, they sound fantastic. So it's too bad you don't have anything original other than the cabinets.

HOWEVER, it seems like a prime opportunity to build a pair of econowaves. http://audiokarma.org/forums/index....esign-collaborative-econowave-speaker.150939/
 
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