Martin_H

Thanks again, ra.ra. Of course it meant I had to rearrange my listening room to get the left speaker out of the corner. Rules is rules! But they do seem to sound smoother in the low frequencies now. Listening to UB40's "Tyler", my favourite track for checking out bass response, there are no nasty dips or resonances, so I'm happy.

Wow, thanks Kent, what a great resource this site is, I hadn't found that library! The wording in that manual about positioning definitely rings lots of bells from my AR94 manual back in the day. Room re-arrangement coming up. Cheers!

Thanks for the schematic, ra.ra. The crossover circuit matches and so does the model number on the 8" lower midrange unit, so I expect the rest matches too. One more question you might know - I lost the manual for these speakers a long time ago, but I seem to remember it recommending the speakers be placed flat against the wall. Although I've currently got them a foot or so away, I was thinking of experimenting - but it would be interesting to know what the recommendation was.

Kent, I like what you did with your 94Si restorations, replacing the socks with grills. Very smart. I considered building front covers for them, but I don't have your skills. Also the chipboard is pretty scruffy and would have needed a lot of sanding and staining, so I went for sock replacement as the simpler option. Thanks for the tips on cap replacement, and yes one of those 100uF caps had definitely leaked.

OK, so it turns out mine are AR94ER models. Whatever that means. There seem to be as many models as there are actual speakers. Maybe "E" for "Economy", I seem to remember these were the cheapest AR floorstanders in the shop. Or perhaps "E" for "European market"? Anyone know? Anyway, when new they sounded great with my Cyrus 2 amp. Unfortunately I managed to fry the power stages of that amp somewhere along the line with a short circuit at the turntable end. It had no protection circuts, I guess. I sent it away to repair but they said it had basically melted down to slag and was unrepairable. I'm currently using its replacement, a Linn Majik I integrated amp. It has a nice phono stage and it seems to have enough oomph to drive the ARs. Hopefully once I've re-done the capacitors the whole setup will be back to its their former glory. I'm now thinking of upgrading the turntable. Damn these rabbit holes!

Those look quite a lot like my ones, lARrybody. Thanks for the tip about resizing the pictures! Here's some of the work so far plus one of the capacitor I am going to replace.

Hi all, I've had a pair of AR94 speakers since they were new. I think they are the original model. They have been in various garage / storage spaces for about 30 years since the foams went, but I could never quite bring myself to get rid of them. This last winter I bit the bullet and got a refoaming kit. I've never done it before but the job turned out to be quite straightforward. I got some fabric and made new socks for them and they sound pretty good. That's all I was planning to do, I didn't want to go down the big upgrade rabbit hole! I would show pictures but can't seem to be able to upload, maybe it's because I'm new here? But while I was refoaming I played some tones through them to make sure the cones were nicely centred and noticed that the bass/mid roll-off wasn't working the same on both speakers. I put it to the back of my mind but it keeps coming back, so today I ordered a pair of 100uF capacitors that I can solder in to replace the one(s) that have obviously blown. That ought to improve the lower midrange sound quality a bit. I can feel that rabbit hole sucking me in... While I'm doing some work, should I replace the 4uF capacitors that balance out the tweeter sound, just in case? Should I have a go at pulling out the dented tweeter cones? Also, the finishing touch: anyone know a source for "AR" badges to stick on the front, the original ones got broken and fell off a long, long time ago... Thanks for any advice!