AR-17

[JKent]

Found a pair of AR-17s that I "thought" needed a lot of work but it turned out to be a pretty easy restoration. These apparently had been in a closet for 20 years. The photos should tell the story. The "Before" shows some water damage but thankfully not black stains!

The xo is simple: a 6uF cap, a 3 ohm resistor and a switch. Roy says this is typical of this era 8" 2-way AR speakers. The cap is the dreaded PVC type. It had drifted to over 7uF. Not too bad, but in need of replacement. I did not have any 6uF caps on hand so I went through some 4.7s and 1.0s until I found some that combined measured about 5.9uF on my LCR meter. Close enough!

One of the T-nuts had torn loose and it took a chunk out of the particle board. An easy fix with one of those epoxy "tootsie rolls".

The drivers tested out fine. Woofers had apparently been re-foamed. The word "Eastern" is written on the baskets and there was (is?) a stereo repair center in northern NJ Called Eastern Stereo so maybe that's where they were done. One tweeter is a "Service Replacement"--same part number as the other one.

The fiberglass was all crumbly but Roy says that's fine so I just re-used it, along with the original Kimpac.

The foam gaskets were pretty squashed and one was twisted so I used adhesive foam gasket tape from Parts Express. This stuff is great but you must be careful when screwing the speakers in--it's easy to catch the foam tape and pull it, causing an air leak. That drove me crazy with my Cizeks. A good tool for any "speaker doctor" is a cheap stethoscope. Do the 3-finger woofer test and listen all around the drivers for air leakage. The 'scope is also handy for listening to tweeters.

There were a couple of very tiny chips in the veneer. I debated just leaving them but ended up patching with brown epoxy.

I cleaned the cabinets with lacquer thinner, then applied Howard Restor-a-Finish with steel wool and wiped it off.

Hope to get photos of the finished speakers tomorrow. Did a quick listen today and they sound good!

Kent

[Tom H.]

Looking good Kent. I love the ADD speaker line. I'm not used to seeing woofers with front-gaskets on that vintage of AR speakers. Are they correct?

[JKent]

Possibly not, Tom. But these were re-foamed and some speaker experts (Millersound for one) put gaskets on all re-foam jobs. Bill LeGall told me it was to prevent the customer from slipping and putting the tip of an electric screw driver through the cone (been there done that )

Kent

[Tom H.]

Oh I see. That's a good Idea putting gaskets on the front to reduce the chance of screwdriver slippage.

If my wife would let me, I'd love to expand my speaker collection with more ADD series speakers.

[Carlspeak]

Keep in mind the gaskets only are a help for that last 1/8 inch or so of the screw's travel. Prior to that all bets are off related to the potential for cone damage.

It's not just cone damage though. I wonder how many brand new foams get punctured by a slip of a screw driver. I always place a finger between the driving screw & bit and the foam/cone. In the early days of my business, I learned that lesson the hard way.

[michiganpat]

the 6uf cap xover is common to the 17,18, and 25....earlier models have the switch, later models do not (I have 2 pair of 18's that my uncle bought new on the same day in 1977. 1pr has the switch, one does not)...oh and both pair of my 18's came factory filled with polyfill, not fiberglass.

ADD 8" woofers had an open cell foam gasket for appearance more than anything, just like their larger brothers and the verticals

my tonegen 8" woofs in my rock partners have a similar looking, but more rigid closed cell foam gasket that's 4 pieces, with the joint at the screw location, they're about 1/8" thick

I glued 2 or 3 layers of felt together and made my own close facsimilie

these foam rubber gaskets,

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-sets-of-8-inch-replace-to-bass-speaker-gaskets-100-new-/271005110241?pt=US_Speaker_Parts_Components&hash=item3f1929cfe1

if split to about 1/8" thick would probably look much closer to original

Jkent, I'm jealous, you find a bunch of great AR's around you....I'd love to hear my 18's bigger brother, it should sound the same but with more of that last octave of bass I'm missing, and I'm jealous of the 17's real walnut veneer--18's only came in vinyl walnut grained.

[JKent]

The 17s are basically finished. Patched some very minor chips with brown epoxy. Applied the Howard RaF twice. If I look very closely there are very slight 1/2" dark spots where there were apparently felt feet applied (better than scratches!) and one superficial scratch on top of one.

I applied one coat of Minwax Antique Oil and will probably do a couple more.

Roy tells me the foam grilles with the checkerboard pattern are not original--probably stuff Rat Shack used to sell. I think they look fine. Vintage AR sells some nice looking replacements but they cost more than I paid for the speakers, and http://www.foamspeakergrilles.com/ could certainly make the plain-front bevel edge foam grilles like the originals but as I said--I think these are fine.Total cost: $40 + some caps I had in my parts box + a few hours' work. I'll probably give these to a friend who regrets replacing his AR-2ax's with some teeny little (high WAF) CSW speakers.

Kent

[ra.ra]

Very nice job with a somewhat obscure speaker model. The x-o couldn't be much simpler, the cabinets look great, and I think the grilles look fine, too. Those waffle foam grilles always remind me of the early 70's JBL 100's (see attached) that occupied one spot in my teenage dream world.

I'm sure you have the attached AR info, but just in case, here's a pic of the whole line. Just like the marketing dilemma created in the earlier Classic models, when the two-way AR-6, AR-7 and AR-4xa existed simultaneously with the same drivers, the AR-17 and AR-18 are very similar in size and performance specs. You don't see too many 17's around, and yours have the nice walnut.

[ra.ra]

Oops, forgot to ask - - - are those the p/n XXX038 tweeters?

[JKent]

thanks ra

Tweeters are P/N 200014-3

You may find this comment from Roy informative. I had described these as sort of an updated AR-4x. Roy told me that to be accurate;

"Actually the 17 is more like the 4xa, 6, and 18, in a slightly larger cabinet. They all use the same post AR-4x tweeter first found in the 4xa, 6, and 7, which was later used in a bunch of AR models into the 80's."

So we learned something.

Kent

The 17s are a tad smaller than the 4x, as shown below.

[ratm22]

First of all, sorry for a little offtopic.

I ordered foam gaskets from ebay which michiganpat recommended,and they look wonderful on my ar25. Big thanks for ebay link!

Here are a few pics