AR3a Improved with 2W SET monoblocks!

[Guest gilbodavid]

Having read a lot on this forum about 200W being needed for these speakers. I have a HH 800V power amp at 400w/channel into 8ohms, and also very high quality 70W into 8ohms ss monoblocks, as well as 2W 6l6gt set monoblocks. all amps were into a really nice Foundation Audio valve pre. My listening room is only 13'x13' with 12' ceiling. At the moderate levels i listen to the valve SET's music is simply lovely, the best of the 3 amps. There is no issue with bass, the bass being better than through the HH and virtually on a par with the 70w monoblocks, and more organic and musical.

I talked to my "tech" friend who designed. built and owns both sets of monoblocks, and he reassured me that the tweeters wont blow at moderate volumes with the SET's, and in fact it is low power transister amps that will blow tweeters due to the way they distort, whereas valve amps are much more lenient on the tweeters. These AR3a's have been refoamed, and i shall be recapping them shortly.

Thought i'd share this experience, which is at odds with much i've read in this forum on the subject. On a similar note, my AR9's have sounded their best through a very cheap 1980's 50w Sony integrated, with seismic bass on the Gladiator soundtrack cd like i have never heard out of any other speaker. My AR9's and AR91's are awaiting me refoaming and recapping them.

Cheers, david

[genek]

I talked to my "tech" friend who designed. built and owns both sets of monoblocks, and he reassured me that the tweeters wont blow at moderate volumes with the SET's, and in fact it is low power transister amps that will blow tweeters due to the way they distort, whereas valve amps are much more lenient on the tweeters. These AR3a's have been refoamed, and i shall be recapping them shortly.

Thought i'd share this experience, which is at odds with much i've read in this forum on the subject.

This doesn't sound at all at odds with most of what we know about what blows tweeters.

[genek]

I am one of those who believes that good amps sound like all other good amps, at least up to their respective clipping levels.

I think the problem with this statement is basing it on a subjective description like "good." There is plenty of evidence to back up the view that amplifiers with similar measurements (frequency response, THD, etc.) sound alike up to clipping, but if you look at measurements of some of the holy grails of audio history, both tube and solid-state, many of them neither measure nor sound alike, and all have fans who consider them "good."

Note that while some people insist that the AR-3a needs gobs of power, I do not find that to be the case. Sixty clean watts per channel should do the trick in any typically sized room, and ironically that is what the company itself mandated for its own amplifier and receiver years ago (Roy Allison hired Robert Grodinsky to design the AR Amp), although both would generally put out more than that.

My old 60+ WPC AR amp and the 70 WPC HK unit I currently have in my secondary system had no problems with LP and tape sources with typical 50-60dB dynamic ranges, but when they encountered well-engineered CDs that came near to fully exploiting that format's wider dynamic range potential, or if I set my dbx expander to widen analog sources that far, the volume settings that prevented the amps from clipping on peaks were inaudible during soft passages. My current main system amp provides 120WPC into 8 ohms and 170 into 4, and hasn't had any problems with any of my sources so far. I don't think I ever play anything at levels that could possibly require more power than this.

[genek]

The net result was no sonic change at all, either with musical sources or movies. I knew this would be the case, because I had checked closely and realized that I simply never needed more than about 100 watts on any given satellite channel.

Having jumped from 60-70WPC directly to my current 170WPC, it wouldn't surprise me if my peaks aren't going over 100WPC either. Or maybe the old amps were just in need of some new caps and it wasn't a power issue at all.

Incidentally, I had a dbx 3BX dynamic range enhancer in my main system for years. Loved it, but being only an analog device best installed in a tape-monitor loop, I could not use it with DVD sources (which operate in the digital domain until the output to the amps) and wanted to convert my CD player feed from analog (which used the DACs in the player) to digital direct, which allowed the RX-Z1 to not have to convert from analog back to digital when doing DSP amendations with the sources. The expander was sensational and very useful in its time, however, and the people I sold it to recently are very happy. Incidentally, I also had a dbx 120 and AudioControl Phase-Coupled Activator bass synthesizers for years in both installations and got a lot of good use out of them, too. Those have also been sold off as part of the downsizing.

I'm not giving up my 3BX, especially not now that record companies are compressing everything in sight to degrees that sometimes make cassettes seem wide by comparison. I have my CD player feeding digital and analog outputs to the preamp, so if I encounter a CD that is horribly engineered I can switch the feed to analog and still run the signal through processors.

Please keep discussions of items offered to the For Sale/Wanted section.

[kzeppos]

Of course , I use my 300B amps for ten years without a problem for the AR3a's,

they just sound fantastic !

I also have a CJ prem 1 , 200watt....

the 300B's sound better .

I rewired my tone arm with my own 100% carbon cable and carbon interconnect...SPOOKY !