Aadams

You made me look. You were correct. Until the mid 1960s Jensen was known for state of the art sound reinforcement and home music systems. Altec, JBL, Bozak, Klipsch, all competed with Jensen on the high end. When the founder, Peter Jensen ,died in 1961 the company began to slide and eventually was sold and resold into oblivion. Exact copies of Jensen speakers for a variety of vintage electric music instrument applications, Fender for example., are still made an sold. https://www.jensentone.com/history-jensen-loudspeakers https://www.psaudio.com/blogs/copper/jensen-the-man-the-company-conclusion

This question was addressed by @Pete B sometime last year in another thread. He surmised that one obstacle to choosing a 100hz passive crossover point for the AR9 was the already very large components used for the network @ 200hz would need to be even larger @ 100hz. Aadams

A few AR9s were delivered with rubber surrounds on the 8inch. There has never been a mention of original rubber surrounds on any AR woofers up through the Vertical Series. Assuming they are installed correctly, the woofers will be less compliant at the lowest frequencies but the AR90 bass is so prodigiously strong you may not be able to hear a difference unless you had a correct 9 or 90 in the room to compare. Regarding efficiency, are you sure you don't have leaks, are you sure the white wadding inside the cabinet above the woofers has not been disturbed or removed, and are you following placement guidelines for the AR9 and 90. Adams Forgot to mention, Are you sure the woofers are wired in phase externally and internally?

I have three pairs that were in same condition as your tweeters when I got them. My speakers sounded warm, luscious, rolled-off, beautifully retro, but not modern. The difference in rebuilt tweeters and merely working 50 year old originals is enormous. Freqs from 2500hz to 5khz, the last octave of musical instrument range, are all effortlessly reproduced by your midrange driver. You are missing the sparkle of the natural second harmonics from 5khz to 10 khz, added by the 3a tweeter, that your ear was originally expecting. They should sound modern, as your ear expected.

Did you have the tweeters rebuilt? Rebuilt tweeters add a lot of output at the 5k crossover region.

Are you using them above 3.5k or 7k?

I have been watching this thread and thought you would have had a response by now. You can get the angled inner radius surrounds from Speakerworks https://www.speakerworks.com/8-inchmay-speaker-repair-kit-p/swk8adlx.htm Call them, tell them what your are working on and they will tell you if it fits. It is not a good idea to cut and glue surrounds to achieve a fit. Your woofer is an acoustic suspension design and therefore relies on the foam surround to help the spider suspend the cone. Now that the surrounds have rotted away the cone is sagging below the frame which is normal for the type. In order to get the correct foams installed with the cone at the proper height and insure voice coil centering, the safe method would be to use shims. The Speakerworks kits come with shims and the correct white glue. If you are not familiar with how to shim, there are videos on youtube and several threads in the AR speaker forum here at CSP. You could always send them out to be refoamed. You might try @Royc. Playing music through those woofers at normal levels without surrounds will damage them. Allisons were wonderful designs. The AR world benefited greatly from his ideas. Good luck.

Bogden don't toss out the face plate assembly with the metal screen over the dome, you might need it later.

Provided no new developments in the last few days, the answer is no. I have had one with the same problem in a box for several years waiting for RoyC to say he could fix it.

If this is the style of pot to which you refer, I don't recall overheating ever being an issue in CSP.

City/State location of speakers?

The AR5 was designed to sound identical to the AR3a above 500hz. Below 500hz, both speakers could sound identical down to the limit of the AR5 if they were recessed at midway height in a wall or wall sized bookshelf filled with books. If they are placed sufficiently away from the boundaries of a large enough room, where boundary influence will not favor the 3a, they will sound practically identical. For all other placements the 3a usually sounds bassier and bit thick in the low mid range because of what Roy Allison called "mid range suck out" due to compromises in speaker placement and listening position. The same rules apply to the AR5 but the suck-out doesn't lead to thickness in the low midrange. If the tweeters have not been rebuilt both speakers will sound a bit dull and rolled off. Some call it "warm" but it is actually dead or moribund tweeters. Adams

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant multi band like 5 to 10 band equalizer? Music is CD; Is it Rock, Classical, etc?

This has my interest. Two questions. Do you use an equalizer? What kind of recordings?

I agree. I misunderstood what you are doing. The good news is, now you have pair of speakers for listening to music and a pair of speakers for listening to cartridges.

Yours may be 1400hz the early models with your woofer had 2000hz. I doesn't matter. Either way you are trying pick detail out of a fairly narrow band by using the pots to raise or lower, in mass , every frequency that is passed to the mid range driver. The later model 2ax was 1400hz. There were many thousands of 2axs purchased instead of AR5s because they sounded so much alike in the showroom for a lot less money. All 2axs have the same mid. Within a range of listening criteria and given identical placement,the AR5, 3a and 2ax could sound identical. The dome mid of the 3a and 5 is potent, yet the total power response curves of all three speakers show they have a very similar sound. If you read the thread I linked, user Soundminded discusses how difficult it is to make a 2ax sound "right" in a real room because of crossover points and the need for an equalizer. That is my experience as well. All domed ARs from Roy Allison days to the last of the 9 series sound virtually the same when set to zero db attenuation before an equalizer is put to them. The differences are power handling and ease of setup to get the smoothest response. The 9 and 90 are the easiest to setup but they still sound a lot like a correctly operating 3a which sounds a lot like a correctly operating 2ax. A 2ax, within limits, will sound as modern as an AR9. You didn't say what your B speaker is

OK here is the full three pages from 2012. It is informative, entertaining and lots of words.

It is not the mid driver but your span of control. You have zero control over 3 1/2 octaves of mid range starting at 200 hz, while using the mid pot is a gross adjustment of the entire range from about 2000hz to 10khz. You probably need finer adjustment and may be able to get it with your preamp tone controls. A 10 band graphic equalizer would probably give you the single nudge you crave. Edited to reflect Early 2ax crossover frequency.

I knew the answer was deep in early CSP posts. The results from a ChatGPT scan of CSP says the mid/tweet driver is allowed to operate unrestrained to its extreme upper limit and the fiberglass is used damp and muffle unwanted behavior when it reaches that point. This approach made the crossover network simpler and less expensive. Could be wrong but sounds reasonable. The main reason for the fiberglass is to smooth the power response.

AR55 those PDFs you posted are library worthy. I recommend you post them in the library section. Not many people can get into the drawings as you do.

There are two sources, both in the NE US.

Assuming speakers are original except for woofers, your biggest question is, do both mids operate correctly? If the mids work, the next issue is restoring the tweeters to original performance. The tweeters in the photo are shot, whether or not they make a noise. Lastly, replace the pots and caps. Do the above and you will hear AR3as The woofers, if they work, are a relatively minor flaw.

Yes. They could also be re-coned original ARs. The only way to know is remove them and look at the back side of the woofer.. They are not original 3a woofers. If the price were right they would be OK as a starting point if you want a Classic AR.

No. They do not look original. They could be original AR and could be OK but they don’t look like a 3a woofer.

In what city/state/ country are the speakers located? You can sell them here easily if you get a good balance on price and proximity. EDIT: Is that Sydney in Australia? If Sydney FL you may have already sold them.