Should I bother?

newbie308

I was in a local thrift shop yesterday, and I found a pair of Acoustic Research 2Ax's. They are in rough shape, and would require a lot of work. The price was reasonable enough at $5 for the pair, but after doing some research, the rebuild would approach the $100 mark. I'm just wondering if it would be worth the effort, cost, and time to restore these speakers. The cabinets are scratched and dented, but the drivers appear to be unscathed.

westmassguy

newbie308 wrote: »

I was in a local thrift shop yesterday, and I found a pair of Acoustic Research 2Ax's. They are in rough shape, and would require a lot of work. The price was reasonable enough at $5 for the pair, but after doing some research, the rebuild would approach the $100 mark. I'm just wondering if it would be worth the effort, cost, and time to restore these speakers. The cabinets are scratched and dented, but the drivers appear to be unscathed.

Everything depends on how much time and money you're willing to invest in them, and ultimately, if you like the sound of the early ARs. The cabinets aside, the drivers should all be checked. Depending on when they were produced, the woofers may have treated cloth or foam surrounds. The cloth variety are ugly as sin, but are usually functional. Keep in mind, that unlike modern woofers, the voice coil formers were most likely made from treated, rolled paper. Paper deteriorates, and if they were operated beyond their capacity, the formers can collapse, requiring a re-cone. New Replacements for the Tweeter and Midrange drivers are non-existent as far as I know, so you'd have to find salvaged parts from eBay or somewhere else if they're defective. The crossovers will definitely need work, capacitors replaced, and the L-Pads, which generally corrode, may or may not be salvageable. It could be a fun, rewarding project, or a nightmare.

mhardy6647

The AR2ax is a good sounding loudspeaker but it's not an AR3 nor an AR3a. I'd be hard pressed to turn down a pair for 5 smackers (but, then again, my pair was a dump find). They have reasonable resale value and they do sound good but they're likely to be kind of 'relaxed' sounding to modern ears.

They were in production for many years so there are several variants of the woofers AR used. I think later ones used foam surrounds; the earlier ones didn't.


1966 ARs by mhardy6647, on Flickr

boston1450

I went to purchase a receiver once. Walked in & was blown away by the sweet sound coming from a beat up pair of speakers. Dont let looks fool ya-your ears dont care how they look-just the wife/husband does. If they work good cosmetics can be relatively reasonable.if your on a budget search

newbie308

Most likely, they would be used in my garage rig or in my gun room, so I guess the cabinet condition is less of an issue for me. I was considering a rebuild for resale, in which case appearances are critical to most interested consumers. Especially since I would want an ROI+. That puts them in the $140 range where there will be a lot of competition. To top it off, I truly do not need another set of speakers!

halo71

DSkip wrote: »

If they're shot, part out the working components and help keep other speakers alive. You'll turn a profit and make people happy.

Yep....be an organ....I mean driver donor! lol

mhardy6647

I owned - for quite a few years - the world's ugliest pair of AR-3 loudspeakers. They sounded just fine though. Just fine.

(from my favorite local emporium, of course... one of my first loudspeaker finds there, actually... twenty-ish years ago)

EDIT:

DSkip wrote: »

If they're shot, part out the working components and help keep other speakers alive. You'll turn a profit and make people happy.

actually, this is very good advice. One needn't feel ghoulish in enabling other speaker reanimators...

gmjungbluth

At least in the DC area, good AR2AXs have quite a following and will sell well. I had a beat-up pair which I sold on for $150 after having them on CL for less than 2 hours, and that was with non-operable tweeters!

As for a simple revamp project, there are lots of other speakers which are much simpler to restore. The ARs used a putty to seal the drivers into the cabinets, making them a real pain to get out. The grilles are also glued to the cabs, meaning removal, if not done carefully, could break the grille frame or mar the finish on the cabinets.

The potentiometers on the back of the speakers corrode horribly, killing sound to the drivers. They need to be lubricated and cleaned at the least. In many cases they are unsalvagable, meaning you have to reverse-engineer a new solution using new l-pads or setting appropriate fixed resistance using new resistors.

Add all these landmines to the issues noted above with voice coils and cones.

Unless you're really interested in learning to how restore these speakers, I would wait for a nice pair of KLHs to come by. They sound very similar (good!) and are very easy to work on. And the components are way cheaper.

Good luck either way!

G