AR 2ax's, good, bad, indifferent?
Jimbo18
Posts: 2,334
There are some very nice looking 2ax's close to home for $100. I owned a pair back in the early 70's and remember how good I thought they sounded then. But, honestly, I don't know how they would compare to, for instance, the Monitor 5jrs. that I have now.
Anyone have experience with them?
Anyone have experience with them?
Comments
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http://www.vintage-speaker-review.com/2012/04/acoustic-research-ar-2ax-speaker-review.html
This link may help. I didn't know the the AR-2x's are two-way and the AR-2ax's are three-way. I would enjoy listening to some of these old AR's again. I say go for 'em if in good condition and have the original drivers.:) -
For 100, I'd buy em, try em and sell the ones you dont like.....
Obviously bigger cabinet than the 5's, and I'd think better sound too, but......"....not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." William Bruce Cameron, Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking (1963) -
EndersShadow wrote: »For 100, I'd buy em, try em and sell the ones you dont like.....
Obviously bigger cabinet than the 5's, and I'd think better sound too, but......
Yeah, the bigger cabinet actually bothers me a bit. I don't have a lot of room where I have them now. And I forgot the differences between the 2x's and 2ax's. Mine were 2ax's. I never heard the other version.
One bad thing is, you can't remove the grill to check the driver surrounds.
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/411819116276289/ -
Those look very nice on the exterior Jimbo!
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aprazer402 wrote: »Those look very nice on the exterior Jimbo!
Yeah, I was impressed with their condition, considering their age, you don't see cabinets that nice often. -
I bought a pair last year, and after some tweaking, I was quite impressed with their sound. The super-tweeter in the 2ax gives just enough extra/ultra HF to provide an airiness, and the bass is superb.
The surrounds are cloth in these, and based on the condition of the cabinets, I'd bet the surrounds are in good shape as well. They will benefit from replacing the two capacitors inside, and another couple of tweaks I would recommend. The front and back panels of the cabinets are incredibly thick, and SOLID wood (not pressboard w/veneer). Sorry, I'm probably telling you things you already know since you had a pair before
Of course having the stands would be nice. "This may not matter to you, but it does to me for various reasons, many of them illogical or irrational, but the vinyl hobby is not really logical or rational..." - member on Vinyl Engine
"Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to." - Cicero, in Gladiator
Regarding collectibles: "It's not who gets it. It's who gets stuck with it." - Jimmy Fallon -
So those have two pots in the back you will have to deal with.
If you upgrade the Caps, I wouldn't go cheap. If you like the
"east coast" sound I say get them.
Speakers: Polk Lsim, ATC SCM19 v2, NHT SuperzeroSpeaker Cables: DH Labs, Transparent, Wireworld, Canare, Monster: Beer budget, Bose ears -
They are pretty good -- like all of the classic Cambridge (MA) acoustic suspension loudspeakers from Villchur, Kloss, Allison (at al.) -- mo' powah is mo' betta.
There's a truly ugly pair of AR-2ax speakers here -- someplace. Basement, I think.
As you all probably know well -- the Achilles' Heel of these is (are) the level rheostats on the crossover networks; they tend to get really nastily oxidized,causing them to function poorly, noisily, or not at all. They can be rehabbed if one is suitably patient.
http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/library/acoustic_research/original_models_1954-1974/original_models_schematicss/restoring_the_ar-3a/restoring_the_ar-3a_full_pd.pdf
or... (and I offer no warranty for this one!):
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/acoustic-research-potentiometer-restoration-guide-very-long-with-photos.306818/
1966 ARs by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
