Why are the AR 3 series considered so much better than the 2 and 4?

[sberger]

Many great deals at yard, tag and estate sales. I found both sets of my 3s at Good Will, 50 bucks, and Salvation Army, 19.99.

Not anymore.

 

[GD70]

Not anymore.

Oh you’re be surprised. In the AR FB group, plenty of finds have been posted.

 

[Nat]

Yeah - stuff still shows up. And often if works perfectly well, though usually the pots and surrounds need attention, and recapping is probably a good idea. But I don't think that hundreds of dollars are required for that unless you insist on using the most expensive boutique caps in the world. Certainly if the drivers need rebuilding (and in the multiple versions I had, one midrange did need work), then it gets more expensive, but still, two grand seems way high.

 

[spark1]

The big classic ARs were highly dependent on room dynamics, because the dome tweeters need a big space with hard surfaces to create a reverberant field. Added to that, the 3 and its cousins with 11" woofers need a lot of power and amps that can handle impedances down to around 2 ohms. So if you have less than 100wpc to play with and a small listening room with carpets, heavy drapes and overstuffed soft furniture you'll probably never like 3s very much. The 2 series outsold them by leaps and bounds. The 5 was a happy medium for people with lower power amps and smaller rooms, but AR priced them badly; they were too expensive for the people who shopped 2s, so their appeal was mostly to people with lots of money and small rooms, except that people with lots of money tend to get big rooms.

The AR5 is actually less sensitive than the 3/3a, so needs more power, not less, to achieve a given loudness.

 

[sberger]

Oh you’re be surprised. In the AR FB group, plenty of finds have been posted.

Maybe in your part of the country. Not in the San Francisco area where I am. Have never seen 3 or 3a’s go for less then several hundred when they do show up. Not as common obviously as they are on the East Coast and my experience is people know how to get on a computer and do 5 minutes of research.

 

[gkimeng]

The AR5 is actually less sensitive than the 3/3a, so needs more power, not less, to achieve a given loudness.

People who bought 5s generally had smaller spaces and were not trying to achieve the same loudness. Also, the 5 was an 8 ohm speaker whose woofer didn't dip down into the 2 ohm range the way the 3's did, so it wasn't as picky about amplifiers.

 

[gkimeng]

Maybe in your part of the country. Not in the San Francisco area where I am. Have never seen 3 or 3a’s go for less then several hundred when they do show up. Not as common obviously as they are on the East Coast and my experience is people know how to get on a computer and do 5 minutes of research.

Classic era ARs were always more expensive and less plentiful in the western part of the US than in the east. AR had a higher list price "west of the Rockies" and a much smaller network of dealers.

 

[spark1]

People who bought 5s generally had smaller spaces and were not trying to achieve the same loudness. Also, the 5 was an 8 ohm speaker whose woofer didn't dip down into the 2 ohm range the way the 3's did, so it wasn't as picky about amplifiers.

I agree about them being less demanding from a load standpoint, but see no reason to think prospective buyers were those with smaller spaces.

Regardless, I was only clarifying that all other things equal, the AR5 required less power. While I've moved on from the classic AR speakers, I've had them all. I preferred the AR5 over the 3a, and the 3 over the 5. To my ears, none of the 2 series was as good as the 3 series or 5's (or LST's).

 

[gkimeng]

AR actually aimed the marketing for the 5 at people who would have preferred the 3a but didn't have the power or the space to get the best performance from them. It failed because those people didn't see enough of an improvement over the 2ax to justify the added cost.

It's always been my opinion that they would have been better off working out a way to put a dome mid in the 2ax for a small price increase instead of introducing an in-between model.

 

[Nat]

I remember Mark Toback in his prescient Audio Alternative coffee table book of the early 70s, which was a very early voice for the virtues of vintage equipment, commenting that the 5 was, in most situations, a better balanced speaker than the 3 (and, if I recall correctly, Julien Hirsch of Stereo Review, had the same view (which flies in the face of the common (and unjust)) view of him as a cloth ear or voice for advertisers - but that is an issue for another time).
And my recollection, which may not be correct, is that, when the 5 came out, it had a cabinet similar to the 3, which was stouter than that of the 2, and all of which, I think, started out made of plywood. But the late pair of 5s which I was given because some drivers were missing were utterly standard vinyl covered 3/4 inch particle board. I am inclined to believe that cheaper, less rigid, cabinets are likely to color the sound more, and a comparison of the 3s and 5s will only be accurate if both speakers have the same cabinet materials.

I believe that the mids and maybe also the tweeters of the 3s were significantly more expensive than the drivers in the 2, and the 5 was actually exactly what gkimeng suggests, but the cost difference was more significant than he assumes. Remember that when these speakers were made, there were very few dome tweeters, and I don't think there were any other dome midranges. So a speaker with the 2 woofer and domes for the mid and tweeter was going to be just as expensive as the 5 was.

 

[gkimeng]

One of the reasons the 5 was so expensive was that its dome mid was a one-off. At the time the 5 was introduced in 1968, it was used nowhere else in the entire AR line (six years later, it would finally be used again in the LST/2). So it lacked the cost saving advantage that comes from being made in large quantities and used in multiple models like the cone mid in the 2ax. The mids in the 3 and 3a and the 3a tweeter had similar cost disadvantages, but not as severe as the 5's drivers because AR sold more 3 series speakers.

The dome tweeter in the 5 was the same one that was used in the 2ax.

I've only opened up one pair of 5s. The cabinets were pretty much the same as plywood 2ax cabinets of the period, except for a bit of extra bracing here and there and the different-sized opening for the mid driver. The 5 wasn't discontinued until 1976, so AR probably transitioned them to MDF construction along with the rest of the classic line, but I've never seen the inside of one.

 

[Nat]

That's interesting - I had assumed that the midrange dome in the 5 was the same as in the 3/3a. And, in accordance with the common wisdom that the 5 was essentially a 2a with the 3 mid and tweeter, I hadn't considered that the cabinets might be different.
Thanks for the info.

 

[Blue Shadow]

I had assumed that the midrange dome in the 5 was the same as in the 3/3a.

The 5 was an 8Ω speaker the 3/3a was a 4Ω speaker so different drivers although very similar.

 

[gkimeng]

That's interesting - I had assumed that the midrange dome in the 5 was the same as in the 3/3a. And, in accordance with the common wisdom that the 5 was essentially a 2a with the 3 mid and tweeter, I hadn't considered that the cabinets might be different.
Thanks for the info.

The 5's tweeter and mid were 8 ohm versions of the 4 ohm drivers used in the 3a. The crossover was a modified version of the 3a (more complex than the 2 series crossover), and the 10" woofer was also different from the 10" woofer in the 2ax, though eventually AR only offered one service replacement for both models. So it was more that the 5 was an 8 ohm 3a with a 10" woofer and a different cabinet.

 

[Nat]

Again, helpful information.

 

[gkimeng]

Another bit of trivia. Toward the end of Teledyne's ownership of AR, when they used up the last batch of 8 ohm drivers in service parts, they started shipping 4 ohm AR-11 tweeters and mids along with a jumbo resistor to bring them up to the necessary impedance to go in 5s and 2ax's. Makes you wonder if they couldn't have just used the 4 ohm units in the first place.