Earthnz

Thanks for the reply Roy. They sound nice as is so I will leave them alone.

The finish line is in sight with my LST's, but there is one last obstacle I need some guidance with... I have installed Midwest tweeters, recapped with 2uf capacitors and I've brought the 0.1mH coils, but I am a little confused exactly how to connect these coils up to the tweeters... Could someone guide me on this last task.... As far as I understand, I'll only need to hook up 2 coils per cabinet... One coil for 2 tweeters, but this is where I get confused. Do I connect to the positive of one tweeter and then connect to the negative of the other tweeter that is in parallel?? Or do I just simply connect one coil to one tweeter per pair?? Thanks in advance. Your advice is hugely appreciated.

Thanks for the reply Aadams. I'm not confident enough to attempt the shiming process so I'll be sending them off to the professionals to perform that surgery. Out of curiosity, won't the weight of the cone on the sagging spider cause the surrounds to be under alot more stress than a properly sitting spider and cone??.... And how common is this sagging spider issue with these woofers??

Advice needed. Both woofers have quite severe spider sag. One so much that when I manually raise the cone, you can feel the spider snap back to its former position. Let it go and it snaps back down towards the magnet. The other woofer is not as bad, but the cone still sits about 8mm below where the new surrounds placed on top sit....any hints of tips from members on how to remedy this?? Or, much to my stress, will I need to replace the spiders with non original AR parts.

Great score. I saw them advertised and thought they were a bargin👌👍

Its been over 4 years since the introduction of the Midwest tweeter and I'm curious as to the members opinion on them now. I have the Midwest tweeter in my AR-11s and they sound great to my old ears, but how do they sound in the earlier models and what modification's are needed to make them work. I'm going to be using them in my LST restoration and understand that I will need to drop the tweeter cap from a 6uf to a 2uf , is there any other recommended crossover tweak's I should know before I hit the order button?? Cheers!

Great job. Enjoy the results 🍻👌👍

Thanks Roy, very much appreciated. 🍻

Question time....I'm going through the LST schematic in preparation of ordering new NPE capacitors and I see that the tweeters use a single 6mfd capacitor but on my crossover it has 2 wax capacitors. One says 6mfd, the other says 4mfd and 6mfd. Can someone explain what is going on here please and let me know what value capacitors I will need to buy....Cheers!

Finding anything AR related in NZ is quite a chore, to say the least. Those stands do look dam nice though. Is there any measurements in the library of these stands?? Looks like it could be an easy build.

Update time.... Finally finished the AR-11s. Looking and sounding spectacular! They have come a long way since I first brought them last July. New caps, new surrounds, midwest tweeters, repair of smashed baffle, replacement of one mid and a spit and polish. Time for a beer then onto the LSTs. Cheers one and all who helped me along the way🍻

Kia ora from New Zealand Giorgio, Merry Christmas to you and your family also 🎼

Sad to see this pop up on my local auction site. Never heard a pair, but from what I hear, they are quite sort after...maybe not these ones though.

Beautiful!!! Inspiration for my restorations.

Bellissimo!

Cheers JKent 🍻

I'm tackling the recap of the AR-11's today. Looks like Acoustic Research had a new shipment of glue arrive that day. Will it be worth my while to try and remove the excess glue?? The switches are compleatly covered in it along with 3 resistors. Also when I ordered the caps, I ordered a 100uf and a 22uf as shown in the schematic I downloaded, but this speaker has a 120uf cap, which tells me this is a AR-11 B speaker... Doh! Will replacing this cap with a slightly higher value make a huge difference in sound? Thanks in advance 👍

Hell yes!

5 weeks ago I stumbled across a pair of AR-11s at my favorite second hand HiFi shop here in New Zealand (huge respect to the owner of this shop. So helpful and a great man). I had never heard vintage ARs before but had read only good reviews on them so gladly handed over the $$, took them home (My beautiful wife is used to me bringing home stray speakers now), cleaned a decade of dust and cobwebs off them, sat down and had a listen...Blown away! Even with one tweeter caput and a midrange on its way out. I jumped straight into researching AR speakers and classicspeakerpages was the logical place to start. All the information was here that I need to restore these AR-11s...Brilliant (and thankyou!)....so Midwest tweeters and replacement caps are on the way along with a midrange brought from a very cool guy in Australia (you know who you are and thanks again mate) Onto the AR-LSTs..... They had been sitting idle for around 10 years. When I went to view them at the home of the seller (and owner of the shop I originally brought the AR-11s from. These were from his personal collection) he plugged them in and we checked all the drivers (low volume). From what I could hear, only one tweeter and one midrange is out. Cabinets are in pretty good condition. Few deep scratches and stains on the top, but sides and edges are in good condition. Two of the grills are broken but easily fixed. Original cloth needs to be replaced (replacement cloth was thrown in with the deal)...All in all, a beautiful pair of early AR-LSTs. I had heard of the AR LST speakers in the past while researching online vintage speakers. Never in a million years did I EVER think I would hear a pair, let alone own a pair, but here I am, after only 5 weeks of AR infatuation, with a pair of all original AR-LSTs. Even the wife loves them and she, like me, hasnt even heard what they are capable of "yet". First task is to restore the AR-11s then onto the AR-LSTs. I will try and document the process (along with plenty of questions I'm sure) and record it here. Hopefully it will be useful for other people, like myself, learning to restore these works of art.

Onto a new lead closer to home. I'm hoping to hear back soon about a couple of midranges. 🤞🙏👌👍

I thought it was only the tweeters from the later model AR-11's had ferrofluid in them.. Could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time that's for sure haha

I haven't a multimeter yet but will be buying one in the coming weeks. One of the midranges starts to distort and lose volume once the volume goes past 3. It's only a 40watt amp so it's not being pushed hard at all. I swapped the midranges over and it still distorted so it's definitely a semi blown speaker. I've been contacted via the Facebook AR group page by a guy saying he has a number of AR LST midranges available. They use the same midrange as the AR-11 yes?? Thanks again for all your help Giorgio. Champion!

Being under $1000nzd in value there won't be any custom fees or taxes on this end if I understand our import laws. Ill see what total price he comes back with the postage added on. The budget for restoring these AR-11s is quickly disappearing and I havnt even started researching capacitors yet. Will be worth it in the end Im sure.

Wow Giorgio, very kind of you to offer me this kind gesture 👍👌 I have gotten in touch with the seller asking if he is willing to post to New Zealand. Hopefully I get some good news back 🙏 if I don't, I may take you up on your offer. Thank you again 🍻

Cheers for the reply Giorgio 👍👌I've seen those ones in Italy for sale. Exchange rates and shipping would make them almost 3 times more expensive than what I paid for both speakers... Wife would not be happy! And that other link doesn't post outside of Europe by the looks of it. The hunt goes on. I'm sure something will turn up eventually.