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AR-3 Power Handling


ninohernes

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I have just finished building 2 new crossovers from scratch for my AR-3's with parts and schematics form Layne Audio. I have a question, what is the max power handling of the AR-3? I am in the process of building two 100 watt tube monoblocks, can the AR-3s handle 100 watts? I would assume so, but then again, you know what happens when we assume!

Joe

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>I have just finished building 2 new crossovers from scratch

>for my AR-3's with parts and schematics form Layne Audio. I

>have a question, what is the max power handling of the AR-3?

>I am in the process of building two 100 watt tube

>monoblocks, can the AR-3s handle 100 watts? I would assume

>so, but then again, you know what happens when we assume!

> Joe

Handle 100 watts? There is probably a problem of too little, rather than too much power for the AR-3. But then again, there is the age issue. Many AR-3's are beginning their 44th year, and things change over the years. Consider, too that the AR-3 has embarrassingly low impedance -- probably somewhere around 2.5-3.0 ohms at certain frequencies, so it demands a lot from an amplifier. Many amplifiers have great difficulty properly driving an AR-3. A better question might be: how much power does this 100-watt tube amplifier put into 2-3 ohms? Tube amps typically don't do quite as well at low impedances as solid-state amplifiers. In addition, a 100-watt amplifier (tube or solid-state) will "clip," or overload, long before overdriving an AR-3 on short-term peaks of music or speech. By the same token, that doesn't imply that you can use the full 100-watt steady-state power of this amplifier on the AR-3, or that it can sustain high-power sine-wave testing with such an amplifier; it simply means that under normal circurmstances and on music, a 100-watt amplifier should provide adequate power for the AR-3's without any problem.

Brand-new AR-3's were capable of handling amplifier peaks of over 200 watts without difficulty and without distorting. During the 1960s, the recommended fuse for the AR-1, AR-3, AR-3t was the Bussman Fusetron FNM 8/10-amp, slow-blow, dual-element fuse. This fuse will "open" with peaks of 200-250 watts. "That was then, and this is now," as they say, and one probably should not now attempt to test the limits of the AR-3 power-handling capability.

So, the long-winded answer to your question is: "100 watts is just about enough power."

--Tom Tyson

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