AR9 Drivers

[Guest jb_av]

I have a pair of both original 9's and 90's. The tweeters and high -mids in the 90's are blown, and the high mids are blown in the 9's. Any suggestion on a path of repair would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[ninohernes]

What happened here? The AR-9's have massive power handling ability. Did your amp fail? Anyway, your best source for replacement drivers is AB tech 1-800-225-9847. You can also try Layne Audio, [615] 298-4124. He is really hard to get a hold of.

[Guest jb_av]

Thanks for your reply. I ordered some already from AB tech. I should have looked further into this site before asking for help. As for what happened here; I like Grateful Dead audience recordings, loud, to start with. The 90's i got back in 1989, but wasn't driving them with enough power: a Hafler dh200. So my thinking is i was clipping my amp, and distorting the sound but having too much fun to hear it. My stupidity. The 9's i got a few months ago and i don't really know what happened. I'm using a Hafler pro 500, a Seimen's pre-amp and a furman EQ. sounds great, i haven't heard any distortion but, lost the high-mids. again, i listen to alot of audience recordings, though very high quality. so, i'm at a loss as to what happened on the 9's. sorry to ramble on, just answering. Thanks again for your input and have a great evening!

[Guest dogmeninreno]

>I have a pair of both original 9's and 90's. The tweeters and

>high -mids in the 90's are blown, and the high mids are blown

>in the 9's. Any suggestion on a path of repair would be

>greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Wow! I have heard lots of clipping and abuse of the AR9's but have never had a failure of the uppers or lowers for that matter. What are you driving the 9's with? AB Tech has the upper mids and they are fine but the tweeters they offer are not as good as the original as they do not offer the fluid cooled units. Are the drivers in your 9's original? The tweeter will have a silver ring around it and so will the upper mids. I have purchased several original tweeters and other drivers for the 9's but have not had to use them yet! Something seems wrong here. Good luck..Dale

[Guest dogmeninreno]

If you listen to the hard stuff, I would suggest you download the AR9 manual from this site and fuse your AR9's. Not a perfect solution but a good thing to do. Dale

[ninohernes]

I had a hafler amp for a while. I finaly got rid of it, because it dosent really provide clean power. If you want a new amp, Adcom has some great amps that sound much like the haflers, but they provide very clean power, and I belive that they filter DC, so it dosent end up in your tweeters!

[Guest Bret]

>What happened here?<

I have a theory.

Whether age or abuse or design, the lower midrange capacitors in every AR-90 I'm aware of are shot.

The practical upshot of this is that there is too much stuff and of the wrong frequency sent to the upper mids.

Bret

[rrcrain]

I had an upper mid failure in an AR90 as well. Whatever the cause, the voice coil came out of the magnet groove. The first replacement driver had the same defect out of the box. The second replacement was fine.

[roundhome]

I have played around with the AR 9 mids for a while and found it does not take dropping the crossover down much to get them to bark at you. some one posted a while back about raising the mid base crossover to 1500 this does sound like it would keep these mids from the base range that would make them pop out of the gap. when the factory swep them for testing they could have poped that one out and not knowing it sent it to you. This sounds like why they originaly had the wire and pad on them. in the early AR mids.

The crossover could have drifted of enough to do some damage at hi watt rock music listening.

just something for thought. I'm still vary new at this.

Jim

[Guest crazycat]

Can anyone tell me what effect using a larger capicator in a crossover circuit will have, assuming inductance remains constant? What does it do the crossover point if capicatance drifts up?

Very new to this,

Robert

[soundminded]

If a capacitor in series with the upper midrange or tweeter driver increases in value, its low frequency cutoff point will go down. This would allow more energy at lower frequenies than the driver was originally intended to handle reach the driver. This could conceivably damage it at lower volume levels than the design contemplated. However, the magnitude of the change should be taken into consideration. Marginal changes even as high as 20% or 30% for a second order filter such as those in AR loudspeakers probably wouldn't result in damage unless the volume levels are very high in a speaker like AR9 or AR90. You should also hear distortion before actual damage occurs as the driver would be pushed to the limit of its linear range first. IMO, damage would most likely occur from overdriving the cone, not melting the voice coil. At these levels, you may wind up damaging your hearing and your ruined loudspeaker would be the least of your problems. If there is any real risk, it is of a complete failure of the capacitor resulting in a short. In that case, the driver would see the entire low frequency spectrum of the amplifier output and would almost certainly be destroyed.

[Guest crazycat]

Thanks for the reply, soundminded.

The reason I asked was that during rebuilding a set of long neglected AR-9's both of upper mids were blown (they read open with a ohm meter). I've been following these threads trying to descide if I really need to replace all caps in crossovers. Your reply was another piece of the puzzle that is telling me I should replace caps.

Robert