Jump to content

JCinLA

Members
  • Posts

    4
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

JCinLA's Achievements

Rookie

Rookie (2/14)

  • One Month Later Rare
  • Week One Done Rare
  • First Post Rare
  • Conversation Starter Rare

Recent Badges

0

Reputation

  1. Moving along… Photos of the second AR-5 speaker (serial No. 12410)and a few additional detail photos of both speakers (now identified by serial No.) Observations: Woofer also dated February 1970. This one has 4 mounting holes. (whereas the previous speaker serial No. 12843 has 8 mounting holes). What does this mean? Probably not too much; In February 1970 they were simultaneously using both the 8-hole and the 4-hole basket for AR-5s. Also slight differences in the terminal connectors. Both woofers appear to be usable and are now cleaned up ready for refoaming.
  2. Oops my bad! I should not have test driven them as you both have correctly pointed out. Thank you for that! Also thanks for the encouragement! Wow that’s something! Thank you for that info, Roy!
  3. First look photos and after opening the first one: Some observations/comments: Dated woofer: Feb 19, 1970 Stuffing shown as I found it. Red marker X on basket showing Pos. (not tested yet) Other Red marker ‘marks’ on magnet: ‘2’ ?? 8 mounting holes on basket/ only 4 used
  4. Hi folks I acquired an original pair of AR-5s from an estate recently. Removed badges then determined that the grilles were not going to go quietly. (they were never coming off intact, tried all the tricks, oh well). So I hooked them up to my Pioneer SX-980 and queued up Miles on my Yamaha PX3 table with Denon DL-103 MC cart and Denon AU-300LC step-up transformer. A nice simple setup, nothing fancy here. First impressions: slowly increased the volume realizing they appear to be quite inefficient compared to my 1970s JBL Century L100s. Also less efficient compared to my 1960 pair of fairly rare EMI DLS-529x, which are 4 ohm loudspeakers. Once I reached my normal listening volume level (probably on the high side because my listening ‘room’ is a large commercial loft space), I was actually blown away! At first, I thought they might be good to go as is. No, then at low volume I started to hear some woofer distortion sounds. Turning the rear knobs revealed scratchy noise and dead spots. So that ended the testing session. Observations: 1) Having to turn the volume up to near 3/4s was a surprise. Both other pairs mentioned above are never above 1/2. Is this due to the aging electronics in these AR-5s? My presumption is that may change somewhat after a restore. 2) Got to get these fixed up and amazing potential! After studying much of the AR-5 related content here, I decided to try a restoration myself even though I have no real expertise. I have only rudimentary knowledge and just enough hand tools to be dangerous. I have (successfully) restored some cars, motorcycles a lot of mid-century-modern furniture and did a few basic clean up duties on the above vintage HIFI units. I plan on contributing this process to the forum here, mostly with photos and documenting what may be useful to others. It also appears that good documentation of original AR-5s may be helpful for the knowledge base here in general (hopefully I’ll contribute something worthwhile). Any observations are encouraged and I’ll be asking for a bit of help along the way. James Sorry for the long-winded opening post. photos to follow
×
×
  • Create New...