AR-6 restoration - expert help sought

[stevo137]

Thanks guys!

I really appreciate all of your input but these will be placed in storage at this point.

 

[GD70]

Hey stevo137, I saw your post in the photography thread - - - are you a Hoosier?

GD70 is correct about the blue Sprague caps, but he is possibly getting your set of speakers mixed up with those of the OP (radine), who was posting from Scotland in 2014. The OP's speakers were a different version with the Zobel circuit on the woofer and a switch for tweeter control.

If you have the blue caps, you might want to measure them to confirm, but they are more than likely to still measure close to original 10uF spec. I have confirmed this myself in pairs of AR-6 and AR-7 (6uF) speakers that had blue Sprague caps. My suspicion, however, is that you probably have the wax block caps (see pic), in which case you'd be well-advised to replace them.

Glenn is also right about the replacement woofer foams - - be sure to get highly compliant foam surrounds. If you do have the alnico woofer that I showed in post #11, it has exceptionally long range of movement of the voice coil - - - see pic attached that shows this coil in compressed, neutral, and extended positions.

View attachment 872493

View attachment 872494

Ah yes, mixed the two speaker sets in my sprague comment.

 

[ra.ra]

Ah yes, mixed the two speaker sets in my sprague comment.

I do that sometimes when reading these threads, but your comment was very good and correct advice anyway.

stevo, I hope to see you get back to restoring these beauties - - they are pretty special. Cap replacement, potentiometer cleaning (or replace), new woofer surrounds, and any cosmetics on cabinets and/or grilles, and you should be real happy with these. Good luck!

 

[stevo137]

I think I'll give these a shot on my own.
It really doesn't look that difficult.
Need a soldering iron and I'll start pulling that insulation out.

Need to order the surround kits.

Thanks much for the input.

Heck, all of the old foam and adhesive is mostly gone already!

The guy had the booklet that he kept for all of these years.

Ha! $81 and all of these years later we pay much more for these.

 

[ra.ra]

In case you need this for reference.