Book: The History of Acoustic Research

[tysontom]

On 7/19/2018 at 12:05 PM, Mike M. said:

Tom,

If it would be helpful I might be able to contribute to this effort. Back in June of 1967 I was recruited from Weldon Tech by Roy Alison to be an R&D Technician and member of the new electronics development team. Edgar made a deal to give us free rein for 5 years and we were disbanded in 1972. To say it was a magical time would be an understatement. I have endless information if you're interested. I've attached a picture of a younger me in the lab discussing  a circuit design with my supervisor John S.

Best regards,

Mike M.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your message!  Any information (particularly images) would be great as I plod along with my project.  I would love to see what you have collected.  I notice a couple Hewlett-Packard instruments stacked together in the background.  Send me a message offline, too.

Thanks, 

--Tom

 

 

[AR-emply #0252]

I worked there also from the fall of 72 till' the move to Norwood. As electronic tech. Amps but mostly FM. Dennis Coffey

[AR-emply #0252]

Yes Tom, I was there before and after the move. They knew that they were through with electronics and were disposing of stuff in the dumpster. I lived in Gloucester at the time and would sit with boxes of junk on the B&M train. I still have this unstuffed AR Tuner board.

[teknofossil]

Cool!

[Paul Lucas]

I have a pair of speakers that I bought in the 80's in UK. They are 8" bass with mid range and tweeter and are labelled Pi 4 by AR and clearly stated on the box that they are by Acoustic Research in Massachusetts but made in the EEC. I'm interested to find any information about them as they don't seem to figure on the list of models made by AR. I've used them for many years and always found them very good. Paul

[Aadams]

47 minutes ago, Paul Lucas said:

They are 8" bass with mid range and tweeter and are labelled Pi 4 by AR and clearly stated on the box that they are by Acoustic Research in Massachusetts but made in the EEC.

Are you saying they are 8" 3 ways from the 1980s?  Can you post a good photo?

[Paul Lucas]

Hope this helps

[powerglide]

On 1/8/2019 at 2:50 PM, teknofossil said:

Cool!

What he said 

[Steve B]

Hi as a new kid on the block Im not sure if this is the right place but.....

AR Speaker adverts the 1st 30 years

After being given a link to an AR-16 advertisement, I decided to create a list of links to other AR Speaker adds. (While this site has a lot of information I thought this might help with general information about older AR speakers. Because Google does not have all the answers!)

Some Adverts will have technical information, while those that do not still provide a historical background to a particular speaker especially by looking at other information in the magazines.

All magazines reviewed were on the American Radio History Web Site: https://www.americanradiohistory.com.

This was bigger job than I thought, but I looked at every issue of the Magazines listed below (about 700 issues) for references to “Acoustic Research” and “Acoustic R”. However not all PDF’s could be successfully searched so I also checked:

·         The Advertisers Index

·         The Products being tested / reviewed

·         The “News” section

By doing this I am happy that references to AR were not missed.

The magazines reviewed were:

From	To	Period in Years	Magazine
1955	1987	33	High Fidelity Magazine
1958	1958	1	HIFi & Music Review*
1958	1960	3	HIFI Review
1960	1968	9	HiFi / Stereo Review
1968	1984	17	Stereo Review

NOTE: “HiFi & Music Review” changed its name three times.

Having looked at hundreds of pages of adds here is a summary of AR advertising:

In general terms AR speaker adverts were relatively conservative and technical, with these main themes:

·        -  Information was supplied by AR about a specific or family of speakers

·        -  Information about a speaker was quoted from a review, test or award

·         - Celebrity usage e.g. Person X, famous for Y, uses AR speaker AR-NN, because ….

·         - AR Speakers being used in Music related locations e.g. opera houses, performances

·         - AR Speakers being used: Commercially; Professionally; Technically and Scientifically

·         - AR speakers have: Accurate; un-coloured;  low distortion; and /or clean sound

·         - AR speakers are Best / Good value for money

I did not include adds about: guarantee; workmanship; quality / quality control or reliability as these were not speaker specific. Also no adds for other AR products eg Turntables, Amplifiers etc.

I then created a document with 152 different AR Speaker Adverts from 1955 to 1985 (1st 30 years) with a separate Index containing links to the magazines. I have attached these documents as PDF's.

I hope this is of some interest to some one. Regards Steve

As an off shoot of this project, I’ve also created a separate list of:

AR speaker Reviews and Test Reports:

Year	Speaker	Link
1955	AR-1	High Fidelity Magazine 1955 / 10
1957	AR-2	High Fidelity Magazine 1957 / 10
1959	AR-3	High Fidelity Magazine 1959 / 09
1960	AR-3	High Fidelity Magazine 1960 / 10
1965	AR-4	HiFI / Stereo Review 1965 / 01
1965	AR-4	High Fidelity Magazine 1965 / 01
1965	AR-2ax	HiFI / Stereo Review 1965 / 10
1966	AR-2ax	High Fidelity Magazine 1966 / 02
1970	AR-2ax	High Fidelity Magazine 1970 / 09
1966	AR-4x	High Fidelity Magazine 1966 / 02
1966	AR-4x	HiFI / Stereo Review 1966 / 05
1968	AR-3a	High Fidelity Magazine 1968 / 01
1968	AR-3a	HiFI / Stereo Review 1968 / 06
1968	AR-5	Stereo Review 1968 / 12
1969	AR-5	High Fidelity Magazine 1969 / 01
1970	AR-6	Stereo Review 1970 / 12
1971	AR-6	High Fidelity Magazine 1971 / 03
1972	AR-LST	High Fidelity Magazine 1972 / 01
1972	AR-LST	Stereo Review 1972 / 10
1973	AR-7	Stereo Review 1973 / 03
1973	AR-7	High Fidelity Magazine 1973 / 08
1974	AR-8	High Fidelity Magazine 1974 / 01
1977	AR-10 π	High Fidelity Magazine 1977 / 07
1978	AR-15	High Fidelity Magazine 1978 / 01
1978	AR-18	HiFI Stereo Buyers guide 1978 / 07
1978	AR-9	Stereo Review 1978 / 07
1978	AR-9	High Fidelity Magazine 1978 / 10
1980	AR-25	High Fidelity Magazine 1980 / 03
1980	AR-93	Stereo Review 1980 / 11
1980	AR-94	High Fidelity Magazine 1980 / 10
1980	AR-94	Stereo Review 1980 / 11
1981	AR-28S	High Fidelity Magazine 1981 / 07
1982	AR-48S	High Fidelity Magazine 1982 / 05
1982	AR-9LS	High Fidelity Magazine 1982 / 12
1983	AR-1ms	High Fidelity Magazine 1983 / 11
1983	AR-8B	Stereo Review 1983 / 07
1984	AR-78LS	High Fidelity Magazine 1984 / 04
1985	AR-20	High Fidelity Magazine 1985 / 07

Index 2.pdf AR_main_speaker_Adds_1st_30_years.pdf

[JeffS]

Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to compile these AR advertisements, along with an index with links.  

Some of these were unfamiliar to me because they predate my involvement in this hobby.  The Big Horn ad (p.91) is interesting in that it comes as late as 1970, when the company has been around for 16 years and the 3a is the flagship AR. The Auditorium Acoustics Simulator ad (p. 94) references a system using AR-1W's for low bass (along with 4x's) in 1970. In fact, I think that the AR-1W is the longest lived AR speaker with a 12" woofer, being manufactured from 1955 into the early 1970's.

Two of my favorites are here: 'Factory Inspection of AR Speakers' (p. 12), and 'professional workhorses' (p. 33).

The only ad in this collection that seems out of place with the others, but appropriate for the time and target market, is the "foot in your face" AR-14 (p. 128). 

[Steve B]

Hi Jeffs

Thanks for the thanks and comments.

I  must admit I found most adds a bit dry. (Especially after looking at hundreds of them).  But a few stood out visually. I liked the Big Horm add and add 72 and add 127 with Tim Hall (this is just before the feet in your face add 128 so probably same add agency).

I liked the difference between adds 141 and 142.

It also appealed to me the way the AR - Dyna System (Add 48) with AR-4 became the AR- Dyna - Shure System (add 55)

Then named Dyna - Shure - AR System (Add 56) with AR-4x  which later was called the AR- Dyna - Shure System (Add 59) Im sure there must be a story behind these changes eg contractual arguments or an add agency got Add 56 wrong (who puts the advertiser last!).

Regarding AR-1W the last reference to this speaker I found was in January 1973 in an add that was not by AR but rather one for a Dixie HiFi Catelogue. https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-High-Fidelity/70s/High-Fidelity-1973-01.pdf#page=93.

Thanks again for your comments  and time taken looking at this.Regards Steve

 

[dna]

Tom;

        What is the current status of your project? BTW I think many conventional expenses of self publishing could be reduced or eliminated if you self- publish the book on Amazon, in a electronic form; (no actual book, no actual printing, binding, physical distribution, boxes, shipping) this may be the answer your looking for. On another subject; would it be possible to post all the appropriate archives to the AR library here?

[tysontom]

On 5/8/2020 at 9:55 AM, dna said:

Tom;

        What is the current status of your project? BTW I think many conventional expenses of self publishing could be reduced or eliminated if you self- publish the book on Amazon, in a electronic form; (no actual book, no actual printing, binding, physical distribution, boxes, shipping) this may be the answer your looking for. On another subject; would it be possible to post all the appropriate archives to the AR library here?

dna, thanks for your inquiry. 

I am working on the book project, but it goes slowly considering many other responsibilities, so there is still a way to go on it.  I was a bit premature in "presenting" the project so early; I should have waited a bit later, but I'll get there.  The Administrator posted this "separate" topic before I was ready, so this is where we are at this point.  As for printing, I prefer to have it printed by a publisher, but we'll have to wait to see how that works.  One has to have an agent to get a publisher.

As for the "AR Archives."  There are around 15 5-drawer, legal-size, filing cabinets full of data, many millions of pieces of paper, I suspect, and this doesn't include everything that was originally in these files.  There are also thousands of large blue-line drawings and prints that can not be easily scanned unless a large-page scanner is used.  In addition, someone from International Jensen actually, unknowingly, "deep-sixed" hundreds of old files, I was told by Victor Campos, before the filing cabinets were sent out to Benicia, California in the early 1990s, several years before I acquired them.  So, many early files are now gone.  Even with that, I have not actually read every single item in every file in every cabinet, even after several years.  It is nearly overwhelming. 

There is one important thing, however, and that is that I have preserved these files (they were going to be distributed elsewhere or discarded) and went to great expense to acquire them -- legally -- through Recoton at the time to prevent them from being lost, distributed elsewhere or destroyed, and I had them shipped back to me on the east coast.     

To answer your question, "would it be possible to post all of the appropriate archives in the AR Library here," I would love to, but the answer is a simple "no."  There are several reasons: (1) the files would overwhelm any storage method, even if compressed; (2) there are many "personal," non-public files and memos heavily mixed in with general-information files; (3) I don't have the resources of a half-dozen workers organizing and scanning the zillions of files and (4) many files are still somewhat sensitive and involve financial information or personnel information, and should not be shared, even though they date back many years.  In addition, there are many "workbooks" on the design of various products, and these include hundreds of anechoic-chamber measurements, arcane calculations and mathematics, physics and so forth that only a few people would understand.  This is part of the method of designing a loudspeaker, and it is tedious, dull and difficult to follow in some circumstances unless you are a speaker engineer.  Nevertheless, if I see things that will be pertinent to general information that is not in the Library, I will scan them and send on to the Library.  

The Library, as a part of this website, is really quite complete and comprehensive, and most of the information needed for hobbyist work can be found in those files.  Stuff is added all the time, and will continue to be added over time, and when I do see things in the Archives that are pertinent, I will send that information forward.

Thanks, --Tom

[RTally]

 

On 5/24/2020 at 10:49 PM, tysontom said:

As for the "AR Archives."  There are around 15 5-drawer, legal-size, filing cabinets full of data, many millions of pieces of paper, I suspect, and this doesn't include everything that was originally in these files.  There are also thousands of large blue-line drawings and prints that can not be easily scanned unless a large-page scanner is used. 

 With current camera technology, large-format scanners are not necessarily needed for scanning drawings. I am finding that using a camera to capture documents is more convenient and typically as good a quality as using a scanner. Line drawings, in particular, do not require high resolution scanning. 

A good option to scan large drawings is to mount them on a wall and position the camera on a tripod with the lens centered on the drawing. If a smartphone camera is used, depth of field can be increased by using very bright lighting. It is important to ensure that the drawing is flat. I am used to large-format drawings (D to F sized) being stored flat, not folded. 

[tysontom]

On 5/25/2020 at 10:53 PM, RTally said:

 

 With current camera technology, large-format scanners are not necessarily needed for scanning drawings. I am finding that using a camera to capture documents is more convenient and typically as good a quality as using a scanner. Line drawings, in particular, do not require high resolution scanning. 

A good option to scan large drawings is to mount them on a wall and position the camera on a tripod with the lens centered on the drawing. If a smartphone camera is used, depth of field can be increased by using very bright lighting. It is important to ensure that the drawing is flat. I am used to large-format drawings (D to F sized) being stored flat, not folded. 

I've done just that with many drawings, but you may not realize the scope of the number of drawings that would have to be done this way.  I've used my Canon 5D-MkIII to take pictures of several drawings with great results -- and this camera is very precise with high resolution -- but it is very cumbersome and time-consuming to mount a drawing on the wall or tape each drawing to a drafting table with the camera on a tripod above (which is the way I've done it most of the time).  A large-format scanner is much faster will give much better results because there is little lens distortion or light variation, but even that is a real problem. 

[wsill]

To Steve B.

Thank You !!!

Just incredible post from January 9th. I just saw it. What a compilation of test reports, ads... etc.

Can't imagine the amount of time that went into that. I've been going thru the various Test Reports past couple of hours.

Bill

 

[DavidR]

Tom, how about an update

[tysontom]

On 11/9/2021 at 6:11 PM, DavidR said:

Tom, how about an update

Very slow progress due to several personal issues.  Sorry it's not going any faster!  I'll try to update a bit later on.

Tom  

[Ggutierrezm]

Hi, I'm from Venezuela. I wanted to ask about these speakers, to find out if they really are AR3a.  I have seen that the AR3a speakers do not have that square speaker.  also from behind they are not the same.  Does anyone have an information on these speakers.  Thanks for the info

[DavidR]

@Ggutierrezm > They may have been 3a speakers but the tweeter and rear control panel has been modified/changed.

The woofers and mids look to be original AR parts.