AR amp, special or not??

[Guest spgjmf]

Hi all,

I see the AR SS amp on ebay now and then.

Any thing special about it, besides looking very cool and simple?

Is it workth getting to complete the AR speakers or is the design nothing special?

JEff

[Guest SherwoodFool]

Hi,

I don't know if its special, but it( & the Dyna Stereo 120), defined for me how much power was needed for HU. If a well designed amp w 50Wts/ch could power 3a's, everything else became superfluous. Of course, I immediately went out & bought a Sherwood S-7900a. after that, the hiest I ever got was a Hafler DH-101 because I couldn't find a Dyna 300(4ch/75wts).

But for me, The downright beauty of the AR Receiver still moves me like no other except the early Protons. I will probably own one when I get my nerve up to spend the MSRP for a 40 yr old amp.

BTW, an amp just went $335 on EBay & I am sure at least 2 or 3 members of this forum were involved. I bid $90, early just to see & was wiped out in a nanosecond.

Regards,

-Russ

[dynaco_dan]

> Hi,

>I don't know if its special, but it( & the Dyna Stereo

>120), defined for me how much power was needed for HU. If a

>well designed amp w 50Wts/ch could power 3a's, everything else

>became superfluous. Of course, I immediately went out &

>bought a Sherwood S-7900a. after that, the hiest I ever got

>was a Hafler DH-101 because I couldn't find a Dyna

>300(4ch/75wts).

>

>But for me, The downright beauty of the AR Receiver still

>moves me like no other except the early Protons. I will

>probably own one when I get my nerve up to spend the MSRP for

>a 40 yr old amp.

>

>BTW, an amp just went $335 on EBay & I am sure at least 2

>or 3 members of this forum were involved. I bid $90, early

>just to see & was wiped out in a nanosecond.

>

>Regards,

>-Russ

>

Hi there;

I didn't comment when I first saw this topic, because I was thinking that there must have been an AR SS, model amplifier, after I dropped out of hifi.

The amp itself is, when working, is capable of well over 100 watts per channel into 4 ohms, actually closer to 110.

I posted the drawings last year for the bias pot work-arounds.

When all is well, there is no turn-on thump, because of it's unique and patented idling circuit.

The power output level goes down as the load impedance climbs.

In my opinion, the amp has a bass heavy, treble shy sound to it, the same as the speakers.

They were plain jane in appearance, extremely well packaged from the factory.

Very heavy cardboard box, with a cardboard wall around perimeter, slightly lower than the edges of the box.

They bolted the amp to a sheet of plywood and placed the amp upside down inside the box.

The border supported the plywood so the amp was supported off the bottom of the carton by several inches, and I would say the package was bullet-proof.

Also they used a large plastic bag to keep everything clean.

Because the circuits were not absolutely identical in both channels, final factory tuning with transistors was required.

Not quite as simple as a Dynaco kits, which were assembled in the field and easily met their spec's..

Would I sell mine?

Not very likely.

What are they worth?

Depending on what value you place on them.

The receiver is basicly the amplifier and tuner combined in one chassis with a common power supply.

There is a center channel phono output to another integrated amp or pre-amp/amp or receiver for a center channel speaker.

The schemetic of the receiver shows how they durived that outlet, and it can be duplicated with almost any system.

I truly value the simplistic AR tuner, pulls in FM nice and clean in my area.

The volume control on the rear, was not in my opinion, a very good idea to place it.

FM only for the tuner and receiver, kept engineering and production costs down, but AM would have been a nice included feature.

AM is not great, but it is here.

I had both the amp and the tuner, before the receiver was announced, so I already had my system and WAF.

I do like separates, in case one or the other piece goes down, then you don't just dump everything, if it not servicible.

That was another advantage of the Dynaco separates.

I don't know of anyone else who owns an AR amp or receiver here.

There is a brother of my tuner here at a friends home.

[soundminded]

I own an AR amp and a Dyna Stereo 120/Pat 4. The AR amplifier was the first solid state amplifier I owned and once I did, I never looked back at tubes again. It was a very fine product and the least expensive way to adequately power a pair of AR3/AR3a speakers. I think I paid $166 at a discount reduced from a list price of $250 in 1968. It was clean, powerful well beyond its rating and fully capbable of driving the KLH 6s I used it with to any sound level I wanted. When the Bose 901 was connected to it and they were used as originally intended, it was capable of rattling my neighbor's dishes in their third floor apartment from my first floor apartment. My scope showed it was not clipping at that level. The tone controls are very useful and among the unique features I like is the function control's "null" setting which combines both channels out of phase. It's adjustable phono level control was very useful too. Right now it's serving the function of powering the tweeters arrays in my bi-amplified Bose 901/tweeter setup so it's coasting except for the fact that the very modest wattage load all above 9 khz is presented at around 1 ohm but there is no problem, it doesn't seem to care. I think the last time I measured it, it had a DC offset on one channel of 0.5 volts and 2.0 volts on the other channel. With the current load it doesn't matter but if I needed to use it elsewhere, I'd have to get into it. I think I'd try cleaning and adjusting the bias pots before I repaced them with the recommended resistor network.

As I consider most ss amplifiers similar if not quite identical in sound and easily changed with a graphic equalizer which I consider an indespensible part of a high fidelity sound system anyway, I would have no problem using it interchangably with any other amplifier. Given the lack of value it commands on the used market, in good working condition I'd say it's usually an excellent value.

[Guest SherwoodFool]

Amen.