genek

It's unlikely that you'll be able to get an unstained pine to match one that's been stained and stripped. Your best bet might be to apply a bit of color to both of them and go for an "aged pine" look.

I'd thin the stain down to the point where the color is barely visible. Apply a pre-stain conditioner before staining to prevent blotching, then apply the stain multiple times to try to sneak up on the right shade.

When I lived in the NE I saw a lot of pine ARs. Most of them had been stained by someone trying to make them look like something other than pine. The difference in price between veneered and unfinished never seemed big enough to me to make all that effort worthwhile. And on top of that, they always looked awful.

What are your room dimensions, and are you putting the speakers against a long or short wall?

I think Steve's username might be a bit of a clue.

I remember listening to 5s in the 70s when I was speaker shopping. By then my list had narrowed to the KLH5 and 6 and the AR-3a and 2ax. I thought the 5 sounded bass-heavy, with mid and high end performance not up to that of the 3a, which was a shame because the 3a turned out to be way more than I could afford (for both the speakers and the amp they'd require). So that cut the list to the 6 and the 2ax, and I ultimately chose the 2ax. I notice that the new 5 has a 10" woofer instead of 12" and the same 42-20k response range as the 2ax, so this might turn out the be the 5 KLH should have

I can't help thinking that between the grill and the paint it looks like an enormous computer speaker from the 90s.

If you're not able to get it light enough to be blond, you can put a bit of color in to simulate age on heartwood. The pictures below are both natural birch.

I thought the grain in the photos looked kind of fake, like brushed-on glaze "antiquing." If you can get them clean enough, a clear-finish on birch would probably up the rarity quotient quite a bit.

I would just veneer around anything that's going to be hidden beneath the grill anyway. None of the felt or foam pieces are available as replacements. Unless you can come up with a way to make them yourself, your best bet is to preserve what you have.

Banana plugs are great if you have to disconnect and reconnect a lot, but if you don't, then think about this. A spade to banana jack adapter + wire to banana plug + plug to jack is THREE contact connections that can fail due to loosening or corrosion. Compare that to tinning the ends of some wire or soldering the wire to a spade and then tightening a knurl nut down on it: one connection.

The location of the badge is another bit of suspicion. It's at the lower left corner of the grill, vs the lower right location normally seen on ARs. My guess is that someone stuck an AR badge on a no-name speaker. Or it's an AR-branded speaker from the Audiovox era, which is more or less the same thing.

I'm guessing you didn't have to clean out the member's basement to get the speakers. That's at least $50 right there.

If they're in a basement and you can't even look at them without doing the work yourself, that translates to "free, you come get them."

One looks more like pine with a stain to me.