jason4300

Don't forget the Rock Partners

One of the good things about Paradigm is that most of their speakers from those years use rubber surrounds and film caps, so there's not a lot of restoration needed.

I'm a big fan of Paradigm speakers from that time. Great quality and sound and fairly inexpensive if you look hard enough. Also, I know this forum likes to turn their collective noses up at the later AR stuff, but they were still making some great speakers up through the 90s. Stuff like the "Classic" series imo is up there with ARs best and goes fairly cheap.

Looks like I'm a little late, but I'll comment anyways. I have a NAD 7030, a lower watt equivalent of the 7080. I wouldn't dismiss the NAD because it's old or built in Taiwan. It's a well built and great sounding unit. On par with the other vintage amps I've owned. It's also extremely easy to work on should you ever decide to recap, which wouldn't be a bad idea.

Thanks. I wanted to keep the original dimensions so i could still use the plastic cover.

Yep, I built the base out of oak. Deer hide mat, MM reworked the arm, AT-F7 cart, currently sorbothane feet, although I'd like to add "spike" style(or whatever they're referred to) feet.

XB owner here. Love mine. Great example of less being more. I had Marc Morin rework the tone arm with new bearings, wiring and a technics arm tube.

I started putting new surrounds tonight. Ordered these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/360748750099?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT They're the same surrounds I use on my 94s with good results and it's hard to argue with the price. These ended up matching the dimensions of the original surrounds closely and were close to the thickness as well. I use a 50hz test tone instead of shimming. It seems these woofers are very forgiving as you could move the cone a good bit before you'd hear it hit the VC. I think I'd be pretty confident just doing surrounds on these without shims or a test tone. I finished one speaker before calling it a night. Hopefully i can get these wrapped up tomorrow and give them a thorough listen...

Mine appear to have that same rubber ring.I wouldn't have noticed it if you didn't mention it. When you cut your dustcap, did you cut where the crease is, or where it's glued to the cone? I was going to attempt this with a 50hz sine wave playing through the woofer, but may just shim.

Yep, they're 37's and the tweeters are 38's. What surrounds did you use on yours?

So, the fe-mailman dropped off a set of these on my doorstep today. I found another set after the CL seller flaked on me. I immediately opened them up and swapped the 30 year old NPE cap out for a 4.7uf Carli cap and a couple of NOS PIO caps that totaled 5uf. The original caps both read 5.6uf on my meter. I hooked them up and A/B'd them with my 94si pair. They don't have much of a low end, but the highs and mids are quite nice. They do a good job of pointing out how lacking the mids on the 94's are. Unfortunately, after 10 minutes of listening, I blew half of the seemingly good foam surrounds out, so I won't be able to give these a thorough listen until I order some surrounds. In the meantime, they have a nice home on my stack of project speakers.

Thanks for your feedback. I think I'm going to try and pick these up. The seller says he's having health problems and doesn't seem too interested in selling right now unfortunately. Ive got their little brothers, the 206HO's as the rears in my home theater. Very nice speaker. That era is very underated imo. My mains are a set of 318PS' and matching center, also from the late 90's. All together, it's a very nice sounding setup.

That's a nice setup for your daughter. I had a Marantz 2230 a few years back that powered a set of AR228's and I regret to this day selling. Having experience with the 18b, what are your thoughts on it?

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/ele/5758796913.html So these popped up on CL, about 45 minutes from me. Listed at $40, I could probably talk them down to $30. I haven't found much info, but what little I have found suggests that they are basically an AR18b and are regarded as a good speaker. Looking at the pics, it would seem the surrounds are intact/possibly new and it sounds like a simple crossover, if I would have to rebuild. Assuming there would be minimal work needed with these, are they worth 30-40 bucks and a drive?