Luxman

Thanks Giorgio and Roy for the help. I live (and bought) the speakers in Holland so HFX will indeed stand for made in Holland. The fact that the speakers must sound equal makes it much more worth the effort to bring them back in their original state I bought them for parts and the logo's which I was missing from one of my other sets so actually I didn't expect to end up with a complete and working set 😊 The Woofer on the picture with the 1978 stamp on it was one of my donor woofers. I recently found 2 AR woofers in a thrift store which I recognised immediately as from AR. This was one of them. The other one was from an AR 9. a couple af days later I found a set of AR15 in a dumpster at the containerpark. The cabinets were badly damaged but the rest of the speakers were ok (these also contained the 200001-1) I always get my foam from a site called "repair your speakers" My first set has also been refoamed with his parts. they are perfect. The foam will arrive tomorrow. When finished I will place pictures

Hello Giorgio, Thank you for your answer. The white paint certainly looks original, that was my first impression too. What made me doubt was when I searched for pictures of the AR4xa I only found pictures of brown wooden cabinets, not a single one was painted white. The paint still looks very nice. today I repaired some small scratches and dents in the cabinets. They practically look as new now. I ordered a new surround for the woofer so I can repair it and place it back in the cabinet. Luckily the person who removed the original woofer placed the screws in backwards so I still have these😊 I was asking me, since the cabinets (and the woofers and tweeters) are from a different kind, Do they sound the same of is there a difference between the two speakers? For the fronts, I have the original (look alike) linen in white so I could replace them but for the moment I think I will leave them black because they look very nice this way. The last thing to do is probably change the condensator in the cabinet but unfortunately then I have to remove the nasty stuffing to reach it. The 2 logo's were on the fronts when I bought them so I can easily place them back. Another pair of classic speakers rescued😃 Thanks for the help ! Does anyone know what the white powdery stuff on the back of the woofer is? I have read somewhere that it is dangerous..?

the fronts look very nice too and it alsoo seems to be done in the factory. Would it be possible that AR delivered this set in white and also as a pair with one old version and one "new"version?

the strange thing is that the speakers are painted very professional and afterwards the sheet on the back side has been glue-ed on. On the other speaker the backside is not painted, you can see the wood as it is original and it does not have a sheet with a number.

Good afternoon, last week I bought myself a new set of AR speakers on the internet. It is my third set and I actually bought these because the logo's were still on them (to complete my two existing sets) After checking the speakers were not that bad at all, the former owner placed an Akai woofer in it and the cabinets are painted white but this has been done this good, it makes me wonder if they are delivered white from the factory.. Now as an acoustic research enthousiast in the last couple of years I collected some spare parts from different speakers and also the missing woofer. I checked my existing pair of speakers for the product number of the woofer and it seems I have a new woofer on the shelf for it.. It is the 200001-1

The cabinets stil have the rat-look but technically everything works fine. The pots work fine and after testing they sound amazingly good. Even with these test- tweeters. When the new caps are in I'm planning to place the original working tweeter and after that I will order the new HiVi tweeters to finish the project. In a couple of months the cabinets will be finished. I already have a new liquid cleaner which should do the job.

😊because I did not receive the 4uf caps yet. Also the old pots which I cleaned are in there at the moment and I'm not sure if I'm willing to keep them. For now actually they work fine..

When the glue was dry I placed the woofers in the cabinets and used a couple of wharfedale tweeters to test if everything works. At the moment there's no dampening in them yet because

This week I have refoamed the woofers, worked out fine..

Also been looking at he tweeters. One of the two is working. The working one has already been replaced once..

You mean the 4uf right from the pots? this indeed is the old one. Has to be changed. A new one (4uf MKP) is on it's way.

One of the woofers ready to be refoamed. Foam will probably be delivered next monday. This is the least of my problems🙂, done dozens of these jobs already.

Just accidently placed the wrong picture of the crossover. this was the old situation. Here is the new one..

Last week I also made a new front for one of the two cabinets. Luckily I had the original masonite fronts. All that's missing is the logo, but that comes later.. The cloth I bought online, I also used it before for my AR 4xa's.

After a week a new report on this topic. work has been going on. last couple of days I have been searching for a scheme and pictures of the crossover. I also ordered a couple of new capacitors, managed to find the original 4uf types. I guess they will be here within a week. today I have placed the sprague capacitors back, rebuilt the crossover and placed the old pots. Tested the speakers and everything works however the cleaned pots do not quite work like they should, when turning there are parts that do not work perfect but for now it's okay, I was planning to replace them anyway..

I you had not yet touched it I would say leave it but you are in deep now. I was already planning to check the crossover because the former owner had already removed the pots out of the system.. I had already found a scheme on this forum of the crossover so I can redo it. I think most here would advise you to replace the 4 with a new film cap. Is it a problem if I take a 3.9uf film cap? they are more easy to get.. Can you maybe advise me in where to get the parallel coil for the HIVI tweeter?

ok, thats nice i can reuse the old ones. the 4uf is also the original one, does this mean i can leave this one there also?

I also did some measurements on the capacitors. the original sprague compulytics are still in there. the 24 uf gives 29.6 the 72 uf gives 73.3 the 72 uf is maybe still usable. is it sensible to reuse this one?

In that case the HIVI is the best solution, I'd go for that. over here they are available for 30 euro a piece. so that's not that much. Is it possible to buy the parallel coil in a webshop? Today I have tried to make the cabinet look better, the liquid stripper did'nt do much. the white paint is in the small grains and these grains are about half a milimetre wide. The only way to remove it is with a needle, that works but will take me hours. I repainted the front in black, that looks very nice, here are some pictures of the result:

At the moment i put the liquid stripper on the bottom of the cabinet to see what it does.. also I grabbed my wife's toothbrush for cleaning the veneer. Not to worry about het missing it, I intend to put it back later without her noticing it😊 Another question about the tweeter, from a former project I still have 2 working AR tweeters from the AR19B speakers. I just found out it is an 8 Ohm tweeter too. Is there a possibility to use this one in the AR5 (Since this is an 8 Ohm also)?

The scratches are only on the bottom side, the other sides look much better. the only problem is the paint in the grain. Tomorrow i'm gonna try to remove it with liquid stripper and a copper brush. first on the bottom side, to see what it does..

I have taken some close up pictures of the veneer dampened with mineral spirit. this is the underside of the cabinet. i'm planning to try and clean it with a liquid stripper to see what it does..

thanks everyone for the help for so far. tomorrow I will post a close up picture of the surface of the veneer. I understand I have walnut veneer. I've just looked at the restorations of the AR2 and the AR5. They surely look great and get a lot of information there. Thanks a lot ! Now one of my tweeters still works. is it possible to change just one of the tweeters or is it better to change both of them?

How did you initially strip the speakers ? Did you use a liquid paint stripper? I first tried it with a liquid stripper but since this did not remove all the white paint i did it with a hot air gun, this worked much faster but the result was the same. Once I did a restoration on a set of translator Impact 5 speakers with the same problems. alse one of the cabinets had been painted white. On a similar way I also removed the white paint and with a steel brush and a lot of sanding i managed to remove practicaly all of the white but the result was the soft wood grain was removed, only the hard grain left over which was good but not the way I should have wanted it. This amount of work I would not like to do again, so if there is no more effective way I see no other possibility than painting themblack. White paint has been removed from cabs but I don't remember it being removed from walnut veneer. I understand my cabinets are walnut veneer? If you have not read the AR3a restoration guide now would be the time to do that, before you get deeper into the project. I have been reading a lot about repairing AR speakers on the internet, that is how I came to this forum but this restoration guide is a good starting point, I wil start following this. thanks There is also a new style pot available on ebay that is more expensive than lpads. This is maybe a better solution because cleaning the first pot already took me some time and the result was not perfect yet. Your alternative is a proven modification using a Hivi tweeter. I have read about this tweeter too, this will probably be the solution I will follow. does this mean I have to change my crossover because this is a 6 Ohm tweeter? I was thinking about replacing the fiberglass for another type of filling, since the original filling is kind a dangerous when inhaling and itchy to work with. Is there another fiber which can be used as a replacement?