AR TSW SERIES: WHO OWNS/HAVE OWNED THESE??

[Guest]

Just trying to get the discussion going about these speakers.....

What model TSW do you have/have...describe them(I don't know every model)... How do you like them, and if you have some you are not using....I would like to know!

First me.. just got a set of used TSW 910's

Per speaker:

1" Titanium tweet

(2) 6.5" mids

8" midbass

(2) 11" woofers

150+ lbs each

Made in Bedfordshire, England

Missing the little "AR" tweeter logos

But the grilles have em, and are in excellent shape

Speakers will need re-foaming on the mids, midbass(just appearance really), Woofers can wait a couple years.

I love em, I have rekindled my love of stereo music..they play all types very well.

Anyone else?

Thanks

Chris

[Guest]

I'm just redoing a pair of TSW-510s.

I will have to replace one or both tweeters. If I replace both, would you be interested in the tweeter plates? They have both "little AR logos" :-).

Let me know.

Keith

keithh@objectfx.com

[Guest]

Hi - I've recently aquired some TSW 510's, like kiethh below - but the foams are good, fortunately. This is my first set of AR's - after a steady diet of reflex and horn enclosures over the last few years it's nice to have some decent size acoustic boxes again.

TSW of course is T for Titanium tweeter, SW for the Solid Wood decorative planks top and bottom, screwed onto a pretty ordinary black box. Structurally the weakness seems to be in the plastic-and- wire frame for the grill-cloth - the lugs seem very easy to snap off (as half are gone). Three-way, plastic cones with soft dustcovers, single 10" woofer, heavy blanket around the mid and high driver.

I like the low frequency taughtness, and the reasonably articulate mids, but not so sure about the titanium domes. Having great horn tweeters in the house has spoilt me I think - I'm finding imaging of high freq's to be less than the best, with cymbals, for example, strangely superficial to the rest of the music - hanging out front somewhere while the rest of the kit is behind the band. At one time I would have loved the crispness, but now........probably just a dome characteristic, not a deficit of the AR's in particular. AR clearly tried to improve high freq rendition by fitting that heavy blanket to the baffle front. My dogs might enjoy the response out to 26 kHz, but particularly with a fairly ordindary CDP I'm rolling off the highs a couple of dB at 16.

BTW, I bought the pair for $10US at a yard sale - (I suspect the lady's husband will be less than thrilled at the price)......she told my wife she was well pleased to have actually sold them, at which my wife expressed her relief that it had not been her own husband who'd bought them - unaware that out of sight I was already stuffing them into the van. I guess its a guy thing.

[Guest]

Man, I gotta start going to more yard sales!!!! :>)

Anyways, since my 910's were found, I have also acquired some TSW 210's and 310's. Both in excellent shape. I have made a name for myself on the internet looking for these babies.

I have recently purchased an Acurus 100X2(150X2 into 4 ohms as the TSW 910s are), and boy do the neighbors love me!

Cheers!

Chris

[Guest tombowlus]

Hey, this is an old thread, but I just found this site, so please indulge me.

I bought a pair of TSW 110's new back in 1987, and have been enjoying them ever since. I paired them with a BSR subwoofer (yes, from DAK catalogs!), and they really matched up well. I FINALLY replaced these as my main speakers with a pair of Thiel CS3.6's (talk about a size difference!). However, if I could have found a pair of TSW-910's, I probably would have picked them up. I have also recently picked up a pair of SAT 660's (satellites only), and they are a dead ringer for the TSW line. They look like smaller versions of my 110's, and sound quite nice.

I recently ordered a pair of AR-2ax's off ebay, but I still keep an eye out for the TSW series. To me, it seems as if the TSW is an underappreciated gem in the AR line.

Later, Tom.

[Guest Brian_D]

They guy I bought my 9's from had a system in his basement with a pair of TSW 910's as mains and 9's on the side... each speaker had its own Adcom amp, though I'm not sure of the model.

I always found the 910's to be, I don't know, "shrill?" I killed all his tone knobs and EQ's one day and found that he had actualy cut the higher frequencies a little. Maybe I was just used to hearing them cut a little, but when I killed the attenuation, boy did that tweeter ring! This is when I decided that the 9's were more to my liking. (I had the chance to buy either pair for $150, and I chose the 9's instead of the 910's)

I later found a pair in a second-hand shop and asked if I could audition them, one obviously had a bad tweeter (dented) and did not sound very good at all. I passed these up for $50.

A word to those thinking about buying a pair of these; they are HEAVY. More so than the 9. They are also pretty fragile.

I never really agreed with the woofer orientation either. It seemed that they took what they learned in designing the 9 and tossed it all in the fire. "Let's point a woofer at the listener, then another at the wall, then NOT time correct them!" At any rate, I think the 910's are a less-than-stellar system, but the TSW line in general are very impressive for their vintage. The drivers and crosovers are very high quality and the cabinets are usualy very nice. For someone looking to get into AR's cheap, they can usualy be found fairly inexpensively and they're not really old enough to have the common problems associated with "older" equipment. (rot, degaussing, capacitors...)

[Steve F]

I’ll reprise an entry I made about a year ago giving the complete history of the TSW Series, and how it fit into AR’s chronological succession of product families, and then add some additional comments at the end.

First, my comments from Dec 2002--

"The TSW series was introduced in 1987. It was the next line after the BXi series of product. TSW, of course, stood for "Titanium/Solid Wood," a reference to their titanium tweeters and solid walnut or oak top and bottom cabinet panels.

(It should be noted that the Connoisseur Series overlapped the BXi and TSW families of products. The Connoisseur Series was AR’s attempt at very high end, sophisticated audiophile-type speakers, utilizing real wood veneer cabinetry, multi-input binding post terminals, and expensive component crossovers. I had a pair of the model 50T’s (a very large 12", 3-way floorstander with dedicated angled pedestal stands), which featured 1" thick cabinet walls and tri-amp (!) input connections. They were $1500/pr. including the stands in 1986, which was pretty pricey. Did they sound good? Yes, they were good, but when I refurbished my 11’s a few years later, I gave the 50‘s to my Dad...)

The TSW was a very comprehensive range of products, and went through several generations over the years. Although most people remember the 910, 810, 610, and 510, there was also a 710 (dual 8-inchers in a very slender cabinet), a 115P (the same guts as the Powered Partner, but in the TSW-style wood cabinet instead of the Partner’s aluminum cabinet), and a later-generation of models with "15" suffixes, instead of "10" suffixes, i.e., the TSW-215, 315, 415, etc. (A humorous aside—I was speaking with a former AR marketing executive of that era, and he said that internally at AR, "TSW" stood for "This S**t Works!"

When the TSW line was developed, AR’s VP of engineering was Alex DeCoster. There were several extremely talented individual engineers who carried out the specific design work on the different models, such as Mark Nazar, Andy Lewis, and others. Mark and Andy have continued their distinguished work with other companies since they’ve left AR, although I don’t know what Mr. DeCoster is doing these days.

I bought both TSW-110’s (a 6 1/2" 2-way) and TSW-105’s (a 4" 2-way) to use as extension speakers around my house. They’re both considerably smaller than even the smallest of the classic models like the AR-7, and they’ve served me well in that non-critical role.

All in all, the TSW line was a respectable, presentable hi-fi product, but nothing about it was spectacularly different or better than similar speakers from other good companies of that era. And for AR speakers to be merely "as good as" those of other reputable companies, was for me, a real disappointment.

The last truly groundbreaking, envelope-pushing AR product was, of course, Mr. Kantor’s MGC-1 (and I suppose to a lessor extent, the MGC-2 of 1988, although I’m not sure how much Ken had to do with that one). The Magic Speakers were apart on their own, totally independent of the BXi, TSW, or Connoisseur speakers. In the June 1985 Stereo Review, Julian Hirsch said of the MGC-1, "The MGC-1 is one of the best-sounding speakers you are likely to find." And High Fidelity said in their May 1986 review, "We rank the MGC-1 among the world’s great loudspeakers." The Magic Speakers represented creative thinking and inventive execution in the best tradition of previous AR innovations."

To that entry from last year, let me add this:

The TSW-910 was not quite the same class of product as the original 9 or the 9LS. The 9 was a spectacular leap to a new level of performance for AR, and it set the industry on it collective ear. The LS version furthered that performance with an even higher level of refinement. But the 910 was a somewhat formulaic product, born more from a marketing sense of "Well, I guess we should have a big floorstander, sort of like the 9, with a couple of 12-inchers" than from a genuine desire to explore new territory. I know first-hand how corporate product planning sessions work. It’s not that the 9 or any of the TSW’s were bad products—just the opposite, they were pretty good in fact—it’s that they were conceived and built more to fill marketing slots than anything else. That’s the way most day-in, day-out products are done. That’s NOT how the 1, 3, 3a, LST, 9, or Magic were done, and the difference is obvious.

I encourage you to read the 910 reviews in High Fidelity from April 1988 or in Stereo Review in June 1987. They’re good reviews, but the product is damned with faint praise. Julian Hirsch’s concluding sentence in his report was, "We never tired of its easy, smooth sound." Well, if you are familiar with his test reports over the years, especially the 3a, LST, and 9, Julian was usually much more effusive and unequivocal in his comments when he REALLY liked something. "…easy, smooth sound…" is Hirsch-speak for "Not bad, but I was hoping for more." The 910 is a "B+/A-" product, which is fine, but it’s not in the same category as the 9, either from a performance refinement standpoint or from an industry impact standpoint. It’s been 35 years since the 3a was introduced, and we’re still enamored with it. The 910 will be long since forgotten 35 years after its introduction.

Steve F.

[Steve F]

I'd like to correct a typo in my previous post, just to make sure my intent is clear:

--"It’s not that the 9 or any of the TSW’s were bad products—just the opposite, they were pretty good in fact—it’s that they were conceived and built more to fill marketing slots than anything else.--"

In this sentence, the "9" should be "910."

Steve F.

[Guest driftster420]

I agree with Tom: "To me, it seems as if the TSW is an underappreciated gem in the AR line."

My parents have a pair of AR TSW-910; and they wanted to sell them because the room has been re-arranged. They are the original owner of these, and they rarely used them. The cabinets of the TSW-910 are really well made, and the drivers are with high quality. But because of the age, the woofer driver should be re-foamed. I've done one of them, but never had time to do the others.

If you're interested, please make an offer. I've owned and auditioned lots of different speakers, none of them has the "wow" factors as the TSW-910 have, regardless of price. I wished that I had more space in my own living room to place these, but I don't...

Pls send email to: cdshoward@yahoo.com if you'd like to own these superb speakers!