AR-3 vs AR-3a woofers and crossovers

[Guest John Faulkner]

I need a little advice! Just finished (except for new grill cloth) a pair of AR-3 as AR-3a - rebuilt crossovers, 3a tweeters and mids, 1971 3a woofers with new surrounds. I also have a pair of 3a cabinets with early #7 inductor crossovers, one AR-3 cloth surround woofer, one mid 70s genuine AR-3a replacement woofer with new surrounds, at least 4 AR-3a mids and one AR-3a tweeter, plus some AR-303 tweeters and will probably try Hi-Vi Q1r when available again. My question is about the woofers and crossovers - should I use the original #7 woofer inductors with both woofers, or add 100 mh coils (which I have) in series with #7 only for the newer woofer, or add the new coils for both woofers? I used this pair of woofers in the AR-3 cabinets with original AR-3 mids and tweeters and crossovers before started losing mids and tweets to age and replaced the speakers with Thiel CS-2 many years ago, but now I want acoustic suspension bass again. I think I will eventually try to find another newer woofer and sell the cloth surround one on ebay - they seem to go for >$100 each! But I would like to do something with the speakers now. I believe I have enough capacitors to replace all the old ones, nice cleaned pots, and will refinish the old plain boxes soon. What do the CSP experts recommend?

thanks

John

Like many of you I have gone overboard and now have working pairs of AR-5, AR-2a (at my daughter's house in Portland OR, and AR-2ax , so I don't really need another pair of large speakers in my little house but I still want them to play anyway.

[RoyC]

I need a little advice! Just finished (except for new grill cloth) a pair of AR-3 as AR-3a - rebuilt crossovers, 3a tweeters and mids, 1971 3a woofers with new surrounds. I also have a pair of 3a cabinets with early #7 inductor crossovers, one AR-3 cloth surround woofer, one mid 70s genuine AR-3a replacement woofer with new surrounds, at least 4 AR-3a mids and one AR-3a tweeter, plus some AR-303 tweeters and will probably try Hi-Vi Q1r when available again. My question is about the woofers and crossovers - should I use the original #7 woofer inductors with both woofers, or add 100 mh coils (which I have) in series with #7 only for the newer woofer, or add the new coils for both woofers?

thanks

John

Hi John,

I assume you meant to say "1.00mh coils" not "100mh"...

I would use the #7 (1.88mh) coil with the cloth woofer as it was originally configured, and only add the series coil for the foam surround woofer...then compare them. You may end up preferring the cloth surround woofer version, in which case you would stay with #7 coils and look for another cloth surround woofer. If you don't want to go that route, I would use the #9/2.85mh coil value for both woofers. The foam surround woofer does not respond to the #7 coil as well as the cloth surround woofer does to #9.

Roy