FredsBands

Thanks Glenn, I completely did the same as you suggested carefully, but with a box cutter and with isopropyl alcohol to help soften the glue just a bit. That glue was tough on #1 woofer., but I think that was a good job and both surfaces are pretty clean now on both woofers. Surround is done with the 1st woofer. The Aileen's dried to some degree of adhesion slowly, so I spent sometime holding it down. I also used my fingers to hold the cone just a bit up to give it a parallel surface to stick to, for both the surround-to-cone and surround-to-basket matings. If I held the cone up too far the general area where my fingers were holding it was a bit up too far, so that was a balance and tedious. I did notice that the removed dust caps were fairly porous, whereas the new ones are completely opaque and leak-free. I have the A.3 woofers, so I'm not going to worry about air leakage. At this point I'm gluing on the last surround to the 2nd basket and then will be ready to glue on the dust caps;t they look like just the right size and shape. Fred

I got them both cleaned up and ready for the surrounds. The woofer cone with the hard-to-remove old glue partly delaminated about 1/4" in from the edge and about 1/2"long due to the alcohol softening the cone. I could not avoid that, so I'll need to figure out a way to strrengthen it after thge surrounds are on. And this is what I was worried about more than removing the glue. I have to wonder if anyone else has had that problem.

I've made progress... My glue from Vintage AR dried up, so I'm using Aileen's, but I suspect the adhesion time is more like a half hour. I tested it on some cardboard.

The two different types of joinery shown make for lots of confusion for me. This would take two very different tooling and adjustments setups which would not be done in production where setup and fabrication MUST be done effriciently.This most certainly would not be the case for two systems manufactured in close sequence. If this has not been seen before, one of the cabinents was either a prototype or was custom made.

These are the A.3 woofers (I checked the restore guide). I got my surrounds from Vintage AR, which seem to be right. But my first question concerns this: the cone's glue surface is conical and the surround's cone-landing surface is flat. Is that going to be a problem with obtaining an air-tight joint without buckling? (I replaced surrounds on my DQ-10s, but the cones each had a flat surface where the cone meets the surround; it came out great, but that was my only experience ) Second concern is the amount and hardness of glue remaining on the cone for only one woofer. The guide suggested rubbing alcohol, and it is very slowly helping to soften the glue, but it is also softening the paper cone surface, causing me to pull the old glue off very, very slowly, worrying every millimeter. I've spent two hours so far and removed about 4-5 inches of it. Is there a better procedure or a better solvent I can use? UPDATE I've got it up to half removed, took 3 hours, cone still ok

The Phillips drivers, and the tweeters, in the Rectilinear line, even the 2 4-ohm, acoustic suspension versions, are 8 ohms. I don't know why, other than maybe the crossover points would have a too low impedance. I don't think the addition of a 4 ohm resistor in series with a 4-ohm driver to total 8 ohms or in parallel with an 8-ohm driver to total 4 ohms, would help matters for several reasons I'm aware of. I trust the engineers to judge which is best.

I just ordered lasagna.

I've found nothing remarkable at all in my searches for free, good and restorable speakers. I've looked in neighborhoods and thrift stores. I did find, free, 4 white van bookshelf speakers, Argos, in a neighbor's front yard. I've bought a pair of nice Rectilinear IIIs and a restored pair of AR-2ax's from Craigslist, and my unrestored AR3a's from a local used gear shop, HIONFI, but not cheap. That's what I'm working on now. I'm not jealous, but I wish I was that fortunate; I'm happy that others are. No point in throwing out good or restorable gear, unless it's picked up to be used by others.

The Simply Speakers model for the Dahlquist DQ-10is what I used; it seemed a bit stiff to me also, but I had nothing else to compare at the time. I haven't noticed any problems, though.

I think James Bongiorno, in the intervening years, has forgotten the correct crossover frequency of 100Hz, as repeatedly stated by Rectilinear Research. (The wonderful Rectilinear III has the 250Hz crossover.) After listening to these for some years, I believe a slightly higher crossover frequency would solve the speaker's main problem - a quite dry lower mid range. I am going to try 180Hz for the pair I am building; I can vary it to optimize the frequency response because I also have the Dahlquist electronic crossover which has a variable crossover adjustment. My slow building process, as don't usually have access to a woodshop, is documented on AK. I found that the speaker can well reproduce a front-to-back image when that is recorded; that may be the result of the fast response (phase accuracy). I recall nothing else about the sound stage, as it's been a long while since I've heard them. I believe the Rect Xa was their answer for competing with the AR3a which was also a 3-way acoustic suspention bookshelf speaker of the almost the same dimensions.. After all these years I have never heard an AR3 or AR3a. So I myself don't know which of these two sounds better.