A New Life for AR 2

[Sonnar]

Some Years ago I bought a pair of very old AR 2, Just to have it in my collection. The forniture was in bad conditions, but the speakers works fine. The woofer is an excellent Loudspeaker, it delivers fast, clean bass, but the pair cone for mid-highs are very obsolescent. On ebay I bought a pair of Epi inverted dome tweeters, put it a 13 micro farad caps and no resistors, the woofer is more efficient than usual AR's standards. Now I have an updated excellent two-way speaker of pure East Coast school. Very close to my reference speakers, AR 3 and AR 3a that I still have. I use to drive it with my Marantz 7T and a Crown PSA2, and i' m very satisfied. Obviously, the modification is fully reversible. My best regards, Adriano, Rome, Italy

[Sonnar]

Sorry, pics are upside down!

[Carlspeak]

you can edit your post by deleting the pics and uploading them again right-side up.

[tysontom]

Andriano's picture, right-side-up:

[Sonnar]

Thank You, Tom. According to Acosustic Research, original AR 2 woofer is very efficient, about 90.5 db at four feet with 2.83 V input, if placed in a corner. So I can't attenuate Epi's tweeter. At first I wired speakers inverting phase, but it causes an attenuation on a crossover frequency: then I wired speakers in phase, and it's ok. AR 2 woofers are a scaled-down version of AR 3 woofer, Alnico magnet and fabric surrounds, and it's an excellent bass reproducer, but not too extended on midrange side, the ideal crossover point it's about at 1.4/1.5 Khz.