Jump to content

Jay

Members
  • Posts

    14
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Jay

  1. Thanks for the help. Just an update. Franken-woofer be gone!! Looks and sounds so much better now.
  2. Might be a good idea to take the woofers out (take a picture of the speaker connections before disconnecting the wires) and do a quick 1.5volt battery check (battery attached to jumper leads and a momentary touch with jumper leads) across the speaker terminals. If the cones move or make a noise then the voice coils are good and surround replacement should commence. If they don't move or make a noise you'll probably need to start looking for a replacement woofer. Of course you could measure the resistance of the coils with an ohm meter as well.
  3. Hi fedeleliugi, Thank you for the link, it is now saved to my bookmarks. Also I'll thank Ken Kizer for his efforts in continuing a valuable resource for this community as well.
  4. Hi fedeleluigi, How are you viewing the AR Drawings? When I visit the AR Drawings resource it is a flash file and flash is not supported by Adobe or any web browser anymore. Maybe I am missing something here. I know you are not site or forum admin, but maybe an admin can update the AR Drawings from unsupported flash to some other format so people can view it?
  5. When I replaced the surrounds in 2019, I tested the phasing with a 1.5 volt D battery. With battery momentarily touching the connectors (with jumpers) and the cone popping outward then I knew the proper phasing and marked the cage. It could very well be that during the re-coning that they reverse connected the wires. I do remember having to swap the wires at the terminals after that shop repair because the bass didn't sound right, but I never checked the phasing back then.
  6. Oh my gosh, you nailed it! I took one woofer out of the cabinet to check the cone part number and it was not a match to 203043x, it was 337584. Did a google search and found this: 337584 10 inch replacement cones. Mystery solved. I know the AR-48b and other Teledyne AR speakers is not considered to be AR's finest, but I do like their sound and will have to make them right again. Thanks to everyone for helping me to solve this.
  7. Hi Giorgio, Thanks! I don't know how to interpret this evidence. I really think in my pair of AR-48b speakers that AR installed 200004-2 with square magnet version and put a 200040-0 label on them. From the pictures I found the 200004-2 with square magnets have the surrounds mounted on the front face of the cone. Anyway I'm ready to put all this to rest and just enjoy the music from these speakers. Well, ok, not exactly to rest yet. I did buy some 200004-2 with square magnet woofers on ebay and will need to replace the surrounds. I could not find 200040-0 woofers, maybe is bad timing. Once I get the 200004-2 woofers (uncoated cones) restored then I can do an A/B listening test and see which woofers I like better. I suspect I won't hear much of a sound difference between the coated and uncoated woofers.
  8. Hi Roy, Thank you for your insight. Question about the date code. In one of the pictures of the AR-14 woofer it's showing a date code of 7786. I can understand how 77 would be the year, just not sure how 86 could be the week. Maybe AR had another way to interpret the date code? Anyway on another note, thanks for supplying your cloth surround treatment. I bought a small bottle from you (ebay) awhile back and used it to recondition AR-2 woofers. It work great. Got the AR-2's restored, replaced the standard cross-firing midrange assembly with an AR-2ax midrange to make my own "upgraded" upright standing AR-2x's. I still have to stain the new mounting board for the midrange speaker and make a new grille cloth board and attach grille cloth to it. Some work left, but they do sound great.
  9. Unbelievable, but I think I found some clues to this mystery. After searching ebay I got some hits for a couple AR-14 woofers. The cone is stipple textured. The magnet on this woofer is round, but I also found another AR-14 woofer with a square magnet. This round magnet AR-14 woofer has the surround mounted to the back face of the cone. Here's another picture of a square magnet AR-14 woofer. The cone has a stippled texture. This square magnet AR-14 woofer has the surround mounted to the front face of the cone. Both round and square magnet woofers have a common number "561". Here's my woofer. Which also has the "561" code. Could it be that my AR-48b speakers had AR-14 square magnet woofers with front mount surrounds installed but with the 200040-0 label? At this point I'm pretty confident that AR used the same 10 inch woofer design in several different speakers. The model # 200040-0 or 200004-2 may have been different but it was still a "561" speaker. I'm still curious about the cone coating though. Was it a factory applied coating or not? It would be great if there were some AR speaker assembly line people on this forum who might know the true story.
  10. @briodo I'm not sure if a coating was added or was factory. The only time the pair of speakers was not in my possession was when I brought them in for the surround replacement around 2000. Unfortunately I don't recall after these past 20 + years if the cones were uncoated or not when I brought them in for repair. They've been this way for as long as I remember. @AR55 Kind of weird I guess. The back of both of my woofer cones are clean as a whistle, no glue or surround remnants. So would appear like factory mount to the front of the cone. I had downsized the original pictures before posting the opening post, but here is a section of the coated cone. You can see the cone surface under the coating is not like flat paper. For lack of a better description, I'll call it a stippled paper surface. Are your cones plain flat surface or do they also have this stippled surface? Maybe the repair shop replaced the cones when they did the surround replacement? I'm not sure after all these years but from what I recall it wasn't that expensive. The speakers sound fine, but I guess I'll never know the difference unless I can get a hold of some 200040-0 woofers and A/B listen to them. You mention the 200004-2 woofers. Do you think they would be a good replacement if I can't find 200040-0 woofers? Thanks for your replies guys.
  11. I bought new AR48b speakers back in the mid-1980's and had the surrounds of the woofers replaced once by a stereo repair shop around 2000 and a couple years ago I replaced the surrounds myself. From what I've found in this forum is that the surrounds should be mounted on the back of the cone. My pair of woofers look like the surrounds were factory mounted on the front of the cones. The pictures show the back edge of the cones are absolutely clean with no glue residue or old surround remnants. One other thing which I think is an anomaly is that both of my woofers are coated on the front. I have no reason to believe the stereo repair shop coated the woofers when they replaced the surrounds in 2000. The speakers sound fine. I'm just curious if anybody here has any knowledge of these anomalies A.) surrounds factory mounted to front of cone and B.) factory coating of the cones?
  12. Hi Kent, Yup, not replacing anything. I measured the resistance across the 2 outside legs, 12.1 ohm. Measured in circuit from center to the open leg 0 to 12.1 ohm smoothly, no jumps or skips. I guess I could properly verify out of circuit, apply a few volts DC on the outside legs and scope the center while I turned the knob, then I could get a visual on the pot condition. But I think it's good to go. Just have to restore the woofer's cloth surround and re-glue the surround back to the basket. Also replace the old broken grille cloth.
  13. I know this is an old thread, but I am glad I found it as I was a bit confused about the pots in my AR-2 speakers. Everywhere I searched on the web, all that was ever mentioned was the ceramic pots in the early AR speakers would fry themselves. I guess I'm lucky because the pots in my AR-2 speakers are good and smooth to turn. Anyway just uploading some pictures for future reference to this thread. Jay
  14. I've been searching and reading the few forum threads about the AR-2 and its crossover with much interest as I'm finally getting around to restoring a pair of AR-2 which I inherited about 10 years ago. Anyway, it would appear the AR-2 had a "mixed bag" of pots being used during their manufacturing cycle / timeline. The example pictures earlier in this thread show ceramic pots, while the ones in my speakers look like L-Pads, but are definitely pots (see attached pics). After reading as much info as I could find about restoring the early AR speakers I was confused about the pots in my speakers versus example pics and descriptions that others have shared here and AudioKarma. The only reference I could find here describing the pots I have is forum thread AR pots & L-pads AR-2? . That thread was from 2006 and does not include any pictures, but the description of the pot is dead on. Maybe I should put my pictures there as well for reference sake? Jay
×
×
  • Create New...