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AR Demonstration Room in Grand Central Station Photo


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"bfastr"  Let's hope some will learn from your good example.

I've been doing this for decades and I learned early on the basic rules must be adhered to for maximum quality of sound.

Yet, some believe they know better than those who've been down this road before and that they can rewrite the basic fundamentals and principles of high fidelity set-up and listening. They're so wrong.

What's the expression? "Those who don't learn from history, are condemned to relive the worse aspects of it".

Happy listening bfastr, I've got to run along and do some pleasurable work that's actually part of my listening regiment.

This week I received approximately 15 vinyl disks that I want to ultrasonically clean. These are some of the best condition used disks I've  bought on the bay to date. The selling claim was that they've never been played and they certainly appear as such. Thank goodness there are still honest people in this world. Though, a good cleaning will be the ultimate proof.

My way of doing things is to always clean a record before it goes any where near my turntables. Whether they're new or used, it doesn't matter.

 It makes for better listening and brings one closer to the music in every way. Anyone who says differently is a nincompoop plain and simple. Or perhaps they simply don't fully understand the basics.

FM

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Frank,

I must admit that when I first picked up the 2's they sat on the floor for a very short time, then I put them on a couple matching small waste cans,  I just didnt like leaving them on the floor. And I want to say they seemed a little boomy on the hardwood so I elevated them.  it seemed like a better idea to get them to where they are in line with my ears as I sit in my chair rather than play to my ankles.  I am very happy with the current elevation.  The stands under the 2ax's are same height as the AR stands for the 3's.  The stands under the 4ax's ended up 16" to the bottoms.  Only because the design of the stands looked best that high. 

 

Bob F

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On 11/29/2018 at 2:57 PM, frankmarsi said:

Wow!  I was never aware of those. Though they do have that early '60s brass colored feet/leg sort of look, they seem barely suited for the task.

Then again, there's a new trend of placing bookshelf speakers on floors by some folks here so, that photo may do some good as inspiration.

 

Frank, the speaker stand, shown in my picture, was the first such AR speaker-mounting device and was priced at $30 per stand, not particularly cheap at the time ($30 in 1959 would be $256.45 in 2018, multiplied by 2).  This was shipped directly from AR to customers as a kit with the two veneered plywood shelves and four wrought-iron legs with attachment point underneath, hardware and tool.  The legs were solid wrought-iron one-piece legs in black, and the bottom of the legs had a plastic protective piece added.  This stand was actually quite handsome and was very sturdy and capable of supporting the weight of any of the AR bookshelf speakers mounted horizontally.  It was designed to be placed back against the wall.

Following the stand was the first speaker base, a solid-walnut, 2-piece design, also quite handsome.  Later, an inexpensive vinyl-covered MDF "speaker base" was offered to allow the AR speakers to be brought up off the floor at least a minimum of ten inches.  This base was inexpensive, and it looked inexpensive, available only in walnut-grained or ebony vinyl.  It was always important to get any of the AR "bookshelf" speakers up off the floor to prevent them from sounding boomy.  In the mid-1970s, AR brought out a welded-steel stand that was powder-coated in black, and this was designed to fit primarily the Advanced Development Speakers (AR-10Pi, AR-11, AR-12 and AR-14).

 --Tom Tyson

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Anyone know if Walter Berry is still around? I'm sure he'd have some good stories to tell. He was always very kind to, & tolerant of, a certain teenager I know who regularly visited the NY showroom with an armfull of LPs.  

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On 11/29/2018 at 9:19 PM, frankmarsi said:

That's all such good old "Americana" from a time gone by.

Everything was for all intents new and wonderful.

For the most part, virtues as trustworthiness, decency, and honor were still a common thread.

The American population in the early 1950's was half of what it is today.

without getting into things, I have to agree.  I miss those days,  but then I suppose as we age thats a normal feeling.

I do remember the day my dad brought home his first pair of AR4x speakers and we all marveled at how good they sounded for bookshelf speakers. Probably listened to something on his old Dual turntable or top loading Techniques cassette deck with the new Dolby C.  all played thru an old Marantz receiver.  man we had it made. !!!

good times

Bob F

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On 11/28/2018 at 4:30 PM, RonJ said:

In the mid 1960's I spent many hours inside the AR listening room in Grand Central Station. 

Great first post, RonJ. Welcome to CSP.... and don't be a stranger.

10 hours ago, Martin said:

....if Walter Berry is still around?

Miscellaneous tidbit attached from Jet magazine, 1963.

9 minutes ago, bfastr said:

....top loading Technics cassette deck with the new Dolby C...

I'm thinking top-loaders were pretty much passé by the time Dolby C entered consumer electronics (early 80's?), but my first cassette deck was a small top-loading SONY with no Dolby features, used in the same system with some AR-4x speakers.

AR music room.jpg

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39 minutes ago, ra.ra said:

I'm thinking top-loaders were pretty much passé by the time Dolby C entered consumer electronics (early 80's?), but my first cassette deck was a small top-loading SONY with no Dolby features, used in the same system with some AR-4x speakers.

You may be right,  all I remember were two toggle switches ,  looking at google images it seems maybe one was for Cr02 tapes and the other simply noise reduction, in or out.   either way we thought this was the coolest setup ever.   Until my friends dad got some JBL Century 100's...  

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This discussion makes me regret I never visited the AR demo room (or even knew about it) despite the fact that I lived about 20 miles from NYC in those days. My into to "hi-fi" wasn't until college, in the late '60s when I decided to buy some gear on my extremely limited budget. One of my fraternity brothers was an engineering student we called Mike "Soul Man" and he steered me in the right direction: KLH Eighteen tuner, Dynaco ST-35 amp kit and Superex headphones. Couldn't afford speakers at the time so I mounted the tuner and amp in a home-made box that included a headphone jack. Within a year the 'phones were replaced by AR-4x speakers and I added an AR-XA turntable with Shure cartridge and a Dynaco PAT-4 preamp kit. By then I was hooked!

btw ra.ra. and bfastr, my first cassette deck was a top-loader too: a Wollensak (7650, I think). It was identical to the Advent 201 that was regarded the first Dolby Cassette deck. Advent re-branded the Wollensak and had different knobs and 1 meter instead of 2. The Wollensak deck was absolutely bullet-proof and in its non-Dolby version was widely used in schools, where they HAD to be tough! I bought the Wollensak because it could be had at a discount while the Advent was strictly list price only.

Kent

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I owned the Advent 201, and it was really a solidly-built deck; sourcing from Wollensak was a good move. Needing to hold onto the lever for FF and rewind was tedious, but it made great recordings. Years later, I stumbled onto a lightly-used Nakamichi 1000 for $125, and while it was considerably more sophisticated than the 201 and had a ton of features, I don't recall the recordings sounding any better.

I bought an unbuilt Dyna ST-35 from the same used-audio dealer in the late '80s - I think I paid about $100 - and had a lot of fun assembling it - what would a new-in-the-box Dynakit tube amplifier sell for on eBay these days? ^_^

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4 hours ago, ar_pro said:

what would a new-in-the-box Dynakit tube amplifier sell for on eBay these days

Dunno, and we're getting pretty OT but I can tell you I bought my kit for about $45 in 1969 and sold the amp in 2002 for $400. Good investment ;)

I think the original transformers were considered to be very special.  And I remember an Audio magazine review by Bascom King, who compared the ST-35 to a big buck (Conrad-Johnson or Audio Research I think) tube amp. I wrote to King c/o Audio and he sent back an annotated ST-35 schematic noting a couple of capacitors to change!

Here's a new reproduction ST-35 kit for about $600: http://store.triodestore.com/diy35kit.html but it doesn't look like the original.

There's a "New Generation ST-35" kit on ebay for $825. Includes a volume control.

https://www.dynakitparts.com/shop/st-35-kit-120-vac/ here in NJ sells some very authentic-looking ST-35 kits for about $600. 

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  • 6 months later...

I just discovered this thread while I was thinking of posting this very topic. It's been months since the last post and I don't know if anyone else will see this, but here goes:

My memory for detail isn't as sharp as everyone else, but I do remember one important fact that wasn't mentioned in any of the other posts. The AR Demonstration Room was air conditioned while the rest of the Grand Central Terminal was not! 

I was a sixteen year old working a summer job as a messenger in the Lower Level of Grand Central in the summer of 1970. (At that time there was no such thing as Email, scanners, FAX Machines, and even bicycle messengers were rare. Most paperwork in Manhattan was hand-delivered by messenger.) As a teenager about to start my last year of H.S. I the knew very little about HiFi audio, but I knew a good place to escape the heat on my lunch hour in the middle of August. For me, the AR Demo Room was an oasis in the middle of a noisy, crowded city. I remember the tranquility and coolness of the room, augmented by the waves of mostly classical music that emanated from the AR3's.

Although my initial motivation was escape from the heat, the AR Demo Room also became one of my introductions to better audio quality. I discovered the AR Room in late August, shortly before quitting my job and taking a week off before returning to Staten Island and school. So while my exposure to HiFi was short, it did stay with me. By the next year, like most other kids heading off to college, I had saved up enough money for my first Mid-Fi audio system. It didn't include AR speakers which were over my budget, but it was a huge improvement over what passed for an audio system in my parents home.

I'm a retired senior now, and I've started to dabble again with audio equipment as one of my hobbies. (I recently purchased a reworked AR-Xa) Memories are so much more important to me now, compared to when I was younger. I suppose it's a way of reliving the fresh experience of youth. The AR Demo Room at Grand Central Terminal is one of my best memories of that summer.

 

 

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Norman, 

Welcome to this forum!  That is an interesting story about your experience at the AR Music Room on the west balcony in GCT.  I had forgotten that the room was air-conditioned, but now that you mention it, I do recall that it felt very comfortable up in the room.  I spent quite a lot of time up there in 1966 and again in 1968, two trips I made to the New York High Fidelity Music Show.  Those were fun memories that I had there, too, along with attending the hifi show.  At the time, my girlfriend lived in Manhattan, so we all had a great time!  I got to know Walt Berry quite well during that time and his assistant Barbara.  During those years, AR had over 100,000 people a year visit the room, but no sales were ever allowed to be made.  

In 1994, AR made a return visit to GCT, but this time renting the east balcony.  By now, the old AR building was long-gone, but AR rented the east balcony to celebrate "AR's 40th Birthday Party," a celebration and trip down AR memory lane that included most of the "who's who" in high-fidelity audio history at the time.

--Tom Tyson

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the welcome, Tom. I've posted on a few topics, but I'm still a relative newcomer to the forum.

I did not know that AR reprised the Demo Room in 1994. I was in Florida for a couple of years in the mid-nineties, so even if I knew about it, it's highly unlikely that I would have been unable to visit. That must have been during much of the restoration work to the terminal.

I took a look at the home page for AR products recently, and aside from a few outdoor speakers, it looks like they are out of the speaker business entirely, so I guess there is not much hope for a 70th birthday celebration at GCT in 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

I just discovered this thread while I was thinking of posting this very topic. It's been months since the last post and I don't know if anyone else will see this, but here goes:

My memory for detail isn't as sharp as everyone else, but I do remember one important fact that wasn't mentioned in any of the other posts. The AR Demonstration Room was air conditioned while the rest of the Grand Central Terminal was not! 

I was a sixteen year old working a summer job as a messenger in the Lower Level of Grand Central in the summer of 1970. (At that time there was no such thing as Email, scanners, FAX Machines, and even bicycle messengers were rare. Most paperwork in Manhattan was hand-delivered by messenger.) As a teenager about to start my last year of H.S. I the knew very little about HiFi audio, but I knew a good place to escape the heat on my lunch hour in the middle of August. For me, the AR Demo Room was an oasis in the middle of a noisy, crowded city. I remember the tranquility and coolness of the room, augmented by the waves of mostly classical music that emanated from the AR3's.

Although my initial motivation was escape from the heat, the AR Demo Room also became one of my introductions to better audio quality. I discovered the AR Room in late August, shortly before quitting my job and taking a week off before returning to Staten Island and school. So while my exposure to HiFi was short, it did stay with me. By the next year, like most other kids heading off to college, I had saved up enough money for my first Mid-Fi audio system. It didn't include AR speakers which were over my budget, but it was a huge improvement over what passed for an audio system in my parents home.

I'm a retired senior now, and I've started to dabble again with audio equipment as one of my hobbies. (I recently purchased a reworked AR-Xa) Memories are so much more important to me now, compared to when I was younger. I suppose it's a way of reliving the fresh experience of youth. The AR Demo Room at Grand Central Terminal is one of my best memories of that summer.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...

I remember very clearly going to the Grand Central room in the 70’s.  In fact, to this day I use the AR-XA turntable (with a dust bug, just as they did in the demo room!)

Also I remember thinking the  3a’s were obviously  the greatest, but thinking very highly of the 6’s.

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  • 1 year later...

Go to this websites Library section and find Original Models (1954-1974) for AR. Under "Original Model Brochures" look for "AR High Fidelity Components". There's a B&W photo of the inside of the AR demonstration room (NYC) on Pg 16

Also, in the "AR-3 Series Brochure" there's another interior photo of the same demonstration room on Pg 12.

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