yossaray

An update on the speakers I posted here a year ago: I finally got round to restoring them, in total I: Refoamed the woofers Sanded, cleaned and applied Danish oil to the cabinet veneers Used a bleach and water mixture to get stains out of the linen grilles Polished the badges with brasso Sanded and lubed the contacts of the potentiometers (with wd40, not what would be recommended however it was the only thing I had on hand). I was able to lightly sand the potentiometer contacts without desoldering it (as I had read on this forum how fiddly the stiff nichrome wire can be to resolder and I am not an experienced solderer) by carefully taking it apart in place by removing the clamping pin. Before I did this one of the speakers produced no sound from the tweeters because of the corrosion however after this the potentiometers are almost perfect on both. I also suffered a t-nut blowout which I epoxied back in with some supporting plywood underneath, hopefully this will hold. I wasn't able to fully able to remove some water stains from the cabinet veneers I may try again in the future, any tips would be very helpful. I have a question regarding what is referred to as the slimline cabinet perimeter, I sanded and cleaned with white spirits the bottom of one of the sides and underneath is a light coloured piece of solid wood as shown in the picture below. I tried applying a dark oak coloured Danish oil but it remains very light. Originally I think they were either painted or a heavy stain was used. Anyway any advice on how to treat these would be great. Thanks to jkent and ra.ra's help and advice in restoring these, they sound fantastic!

thank you so much for all the information, how would you best recommend removing the ex foam gunk from the outside ring without damaging it? light sanding? and do you think a simple potentiometer clean up could get the tweeters working again or is there a possibility the tweeters (or another component) is broken/ in need of cleaning or replacing ra.ra how did you get your black surrounds looking so smooth and clean, did you respray them? thanks again

Thanks JKent, I have added them now

Hi guys, some really great information in this thread, thanks to all who have contributed I've recently acquired some AR-6s (pics below) that haven't been kept in the best condition but im working on restoring them. I'm no audiophile and do not have access to a lot of electronics equipment e.g. might just be able to scrounge a soldering iron from a friend. Sadly when I tested out the speakers, they sound really muffled as if the tweeters are not working at all. The foam is completely degraded and I will be replacing this, however the sound was so off I think there must be something else off. The pots are completely crunchy to turn and from the information in this thread I believe they may be the culprit for the lack of tweeter noise, first I'll try opening them up and cleaning but possibly completely replacing them. First question is, when prepping for a refoam, when clearing away the 'outer ring' of old junk should I be scraping all the way down to the metal? I started scraping and then came across some sort of hard woody material and then panicked and stopped, also pic included. Secondly is the pots cleaning/ replacing route the most best angle of attack for fixing the muffled sound or should I be looking elsewhere, from what I've seen most of you are confident in the performance of the compulytic cap so I will not be bothering to replace that. Please also let me know anything r.e the history/ originality of any of the parts in the pictures cheers