AR 1 with high auction price?

[Andy]

Is there anything super special about this pair of AR 1 speakers (ebay #5764238888) to justify $2,550 ? Wow! If they had a serial number below 100 I could see spending good money, but these seem to have a number in the 11,000 range. Is mahogany a rare cabinet choice?

[Guest pbda]

Historical/collectability value I imagine.

Any idea why a seller would use a "private listing" auction as they did on this one?

[RoyC]

Check out the AR-4's that just went for over a grand!

Ebay #5764623927

Roy

[Guest Bret]

I suspect it is an Asian interest in the Altec tweeters.

Bret

[Supercooper188]

What is so special about the altec tweeter?

[ninohernes]

Nothing really, they are just collectors items.

It was actually a full range driver. It was designed to be mounted in a large cabinet. It can actually sound quite good when it is in the proper enclosure. I don't know why Villchur chose this driver for the high frequency device for the AR-1. He probably chose it because it had decent power handling (for the time).

[Guest Bret]

>What is so special about the altec tweeter?<

Having one.

It's something akin to expensive Russian fish-eggs, I think. Or it may be the yuppie thing over there.

Bret

[Guest Bret]

>Check out the AR-4's that just went for over a grand!

Ebay #5764623927<

Did you buy 'em? Alright everybody, whoever got them, time to confess. We promise not to point and shout out rude names.

Bret

[Guest Bret]

Here's my latest contribution to AR inflation. I'm not going to tell what I paid for them, but I will tell you it was silly.

Bret

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/dc/user_files/355.jpg

[soundminded]

It struck me as an interesting historical fact that until the late 1950s, commercially availble recordings had nothing above 8khz to be reproduced. This was stated in the historical accounts of JBL speakers of the day on the Lansing Heritage site. Given this fact, the Altec tweeter was an very sensible choice being a proven and reliable piece of high quality hardware from a reliable source. Edgar Vilcher was a very practical man.

[mrdb]

I read an interview with Henry Kloss from 1996 where he stated that he suggested to Villchur that the Altec 755 driver (based on a Western Electric design) had a better top end than the Bozak tweeter that Villchur was thinking of using. So evidently that is the reason for the Altec use until Villchur finished the development of the dome drivers for the AR3.

Bob

[soundminded]

AR 1W was also paired with JanZen's electrostatic tweeter. Was this an early indication of Kloss's fascination with electrostatics which lead to the KLH Nine? Why wasn't the Nine marketed with the AR 1 woofer or a similar design as the world's first subwoofer/full range electrostatic combination? It could have predated Infinity ServoStatik 1 by over ten years and made the Nine even more remarkable. Perhaps in those days, cost was so prohibitive and the anticipated market so small that nobody considered it a viable idea.

[tysontom]

>Is there anything super special about this pair of AR 1

>speakers (ebay #5764238888) to justify $2,550 ? Wow! If they

>had a serial number below 100 I could see spending good money,

>but these seem to have a number in the 11,000 range. Is

>mahogany a rare cabinet choice?

Regarding the value of the eBay AR-1 pair, others have correctly answered this question by alluding to the "perceived" value of the Altec Lansing 755A 8-inch mid-and-high-frequency driver used in the AR-1. This was originally a Western Electric design (WE755A), but beginning in the early 1950s, the 755A was built by Altec ("All Technical Services Division") as they assumed much of WE's loudspeaker and audio-product production. All AR-1s had the Altec 755A, as the switchover from WE to Altec occurred before introduction of the AR-1

In any event the 755 design was a fine, post-WW-II general-purpose, full-range loudspeaker rated at 4 ohms, and it was known to have relatively smooth on-axis response out to about 13kHz. AR tested the on-axis response of the 755A to be within +/- 5dB from 1000 to 13000 Hz, smoother than most available dynamic speakers of the period. This speaker was readily available and fairly inexpensive during the early 1950s. However, not even one year after the AR-1's introduction in 1954 audiophiles began using the superior Janszen I-30 electrostatic (and in some cases the 8-inch Bozak B-305 for a midrange) in lieu of the 755A. AR even had a crossover drawing showing the B-305 and Janszen drivers used with the AR-1W. As well, Villchur had intended to use the 755A as a interim device until he had finished developing the direct-radiator dome tweeters in the AR-3.

Some foreign collectors have found great favor in the sound and the construction quality of the 755A driver. This speaker had an Alnico magnet, a heavy frame construction and a cone made from a vacuum-formed process containing cotton and pulp materials. The cone had two skivers (surrounds); one allowed the entire cone to act as a piston at lower frequencies, the second inner surround allowed the speaker to act as a smaller piston for higher frequencies, thus decoupling somewhat with the overall diaphram. This was common practice in this period. Another desirable "feature" of the 755A was the precision quality control measures taken during manufacture. There were QC stamps on the cork mounting gaskets -- many in the case of WE -- a few in the case of the Altec version. All this business adds up to a "magical" quality in the resale market for 755A drivers, and thus greatly adds to the value of used AR-1s.

--Tom Tyson

[tysontom]

>AR 1W was also paired with JanZen's electrostatic tweeter.

>Was this an early indication of Kloss's fascination with

>electrostatics which lead to the KLH Nine? Why wasn't the

>Nine marketed with the AR 1 woofer or a similar design as the

>world's first subwoofer/full range electrostatic combination?

>It could have predated Infinity ServoStatik 1 by over ten

>years and made the Nine even more remarkable. Perhaps in

>those days, cost was so prohibitive and the anticipated market

>so small that nobody considered it a viable idea.

The KLH Model Nine was a Janszen design to begin with, of course, so Kloss' interest in the original Janszen electrostatic was a big factor in the design of the Nine. Prior to the Model Nine Kloss also sold the KLH Model One and Two that had a cabinet designed to use the Janszen electrostatic unit with the KLH single or dual acoustic-suspension woofers.

However, for Kloss to have marketed the rival AR-1W with the KLH Nine, as you suggest, would have been nothing less than business "hara-kiri," to say the least!

--Tom Tyson

[soundminded]

Thanks for the history Tom. Was the KLH model 4 designed around the same woofer design as the model 1 or 2? Strange that I never saw Model 9 even demo'd with a dynamic woofer or subwoofer, KLH's or anyone elses. As far as I can tell, KLH never came close to LF reproduction equal to AR1W. Is this true? Maybe KLH 12 was as close as Kloss got although I'm not familiar with KLH 1 through 4. I think very LF reproduction was considered by many to be the one performance weak spot of model 9. Kloss of course had a license to build acoustic suspension woofers and he was very familiar with AR1W so it shouldn't have been a problem for him to have manufactured a competitive model. As for KLH selling AR 1W, I don't think it would be a suicide pact at all. After all, rebranding other people's equipment supplied OEM wasn't new even then and the prestige that AR 1W had garnered as the premier LF reproducer in high fidelity audio would have been an asset. He could have tweaked it just enough to advertise that you couldn't just go out and buy one yourself to get a correct match, that you had to buy it from him. Just hypothetical 40+ years later anyway.

[tysontom]

>Thanks for the history Tom. Was the KLH model 4 designed

>around the same woofer design as the model 1 or 2? Strange

>that I never saw Model 9 even demo'd with a dynamic woofer or

>subwoofer, KLH's or anyone elses. As far as I can tell, KLH

>never came close to LF reproduction equal to AR1W. Is this

>true? Maybe KLH 12 was as close as Kloss got although I'm not

>familiar with KLH 1 through 4. I think very LF reproduction

>was considered by many to be the one performance weak spot of

>model 9. Kloss of course had a license to build acoustic

>suspension woofers and he was very familiar with AR1W so it

>shouldn't have been a problem for him to have manufactured a

>competitive model. As for KLH selling AR 1W, I don't think it

>would be a suicide pact at all. After all, rebranding other

>people's equipment supplied OEM wasn't new even then and the

>prestige that AR 1W had garnered as the premier LF reproducer

>in high fidelity audio would have been an asset. He could

>have tweaked it just enough to advertise that you couldn't

>just go out and buy one yourself to get a correct match, that

>you had to buy it from him. Just hypothetical 40+ years later

>anyway.

I think the idea behind the KLH Nine was to have a pure electrostatic design, devoid of dynamic, "moving-coil" drivers, but as you imply, it did not reproduce low frequencies particularly well. It actually went low, but since the electrostatic elements were, of course, open-air dipole devices and could move small amounts of air, the deep-bass output was very limited before harsh distortion ("cracking" sounds) would set in. It's the old displacement-volume relationship, Déjà vu.

KLH early on did produce some excellent low-frequency loudspeakers, close in quality to the AR-1W. Obviously Henry Kloss knew a great deal about the AR-1 since he did much of the production-design work on Villchur's conception. The physical design and application of the AR-1 cabinet, as well as the design of the Alnico woofer itself, are largely credited to Henry Kloss. The AR-1 was solely Villchur's design, but the physical construction of the first speakers was probably 75% Henry Kloss. Strangely, when he left in 1957 to form KLH, he did not choose to use the aluminum-frame-type Alnico woofer, but instead designed (and patented) an epoxy-frame Alnico woofer that became integral with the front baffle board. In many respects this design was elegant and quite ingenious because quality control could be more precisely controlled; yet when one of these speakers broke, it had to be returned to the factory without exception. There was no field repair on an early KLH speaker. The first Models One, Two, Three Four and Six had the epoxy-frame woofers. This changed in the Model Six sometime in the mid-to-late 1960s, and by this time the Model Four was discontinued. The first Model Five was a stand-alone tweeter version.

The first KLH speaker was the Model One, which had two 11-inch (these were true 11-inch speakers) epoxied-in frame, acoustic-suspension woofers (licensed under AR) mounted in separate 2.25-cu-ft compartments in a floor-standing . These acoustic-suspension woofers were wired in parallel to match the 16-ohm version of the Janszen electrostatic tweeter, and the compartment above the two sealed woofers was designed to precisely fit the Janszen tweeter. This first woofer-only KLH system cost a staggering $390/ea in walnut back in 1958, I believe, and apparently few were sold due to the high price. It was very expensive, but it was reported in an early issue of *High Fidelity* magazine to have excellent deep-bass output without doubling down to 35 Hz with some output down to 20 Hz. KLH quickly followed with the 16-ohm Model Two, which was the same as the Model One except that it had only one 11-inch woofer, and a price of $206/ea., still a bit pricy. The Model Three was a woofer-only version of the Model Two, and the price was $181/ea, similar to the AR-1W. KLH sales did not take off until the introduction of the bookshelf Model Four and the huge-selling KLH Model Six.

I believe that the KLH Four was close to the AR-1 in deep bass, but not quite its equal. The only comparison I have ever seen was the *Consumer Reports* comparison of the KLH Four and the AR-1 and later the AR-3, in which they said the AR-1 had slightly superior bass response to the Four, and that the AR-3 produced the deepest bass they had ever tested.

--Tom Tyson

[Guest ARnut]

Just a thought. Beyond the competition issues between AR and KLH, the AR1w was patented, and if I remember correctly, the patent was held by Ed Villchur and Abe Hoffman. KLH and probably other successors were obliged to manufacture their own knockoffs under the patent licensing agreements, and AR got a piece of the action.

[tysontom]

>Thanks for the history Tom. Was the KLH model 4 designed

>around the same woofer design as the model 1 or 2? Strange

>that I never saw Model 9 even demo'd with a dynamic woofer or

>subwoofer, KLH's or anyone elses. As far as I can tell, KLH

>never came close to LF reproduction equal to AR1W. Is this

>true? Maybe KLH 12 was as close as Kloss got although I'm not

>familiar with KLH 1 through 4. I think very LF reproduction

>was considered by many to be the one performance weak spot of

>model 9. Kloss of course had a license to build acoustic

>suspension woofers and he was very familiar with AR1W so it

>shouldn't have been a problem for him to have manufactured a

>competitive model. As for KLH selling AR 1W, I don't think it

>would be a suicide pact at all. After all, rebranding other

>people's equipment supplied OEM wasn't new even then and the

>prestige that AR 1W had garnered as the premier LF reproducer

>in high fidelity audio would have been an asset. He could

>have tweaked it just enough to advertise that you couldn't

>just go out and buy one yourself to get a correct match, that

>you had to buy it from him. Just hypothetical 40+ years later

>anyway.

Soundminded,

Some additional thoughts:

The KLH Four did use a version of the KLH Two woofer, a 16-ohm 11-inch woofer with an fc was, I believe, in the 45-48 Hz range, fairly comparable to the AR-1. One of Henry Kloss' goals was to increase efficiency, and one way to do that was to raise the resonance frequency slightly by using less "overhang" in the voice coil and reducing moving mass. The KLH Model Four and Model Six were 2-4 dB more efficient than comparable AR models, yet sacrificed only a small amount of deep-bass response and distortion when compared to an AR speaker. This was somewhat the same philosophy in the original Advent Loudspeaker.

Ironically, the 16-ohm KLH designs were more amenable to existing tube amplifiers of the day than the AR-1, which became more compatible with the high-current solid-state amps that came afterwards. Also, many electrostatic designs built in the 1950s were 16-ohm devices. The KLH Model One used two 32-ohm 11-inch woofers, paralleled together for 16-ohm output, in separate 2-1/4 cu. ft. acoustic-suspension enclosures. I have never heard one, but I am sure that the Model One would have been a fine bass reproducer.

--Tom Tyson