So -- late last fall (if memory serves) Mrs. H and I were drivin' down the Brook Road in our microscopic town, en route to our daughter & son-in-law's place (about 1/2 hour away). Brook Road, with characteristic Yankee nominative directness , follows the course of a brook and is, not coincidentally, kind of windy (with a long "i" sound). As I rounded a bend, I espied a small pair of walnut boxes with white linen-ish grilles. Speakers! My sense from their morphology and form factor: perhaps a pair of Dynaco A25s. Manifesting great willpower, I kept going -- but of course I started grumbling with regrets almost immediately. "Ah, well, maybe they'll be there when we come home!" I remarked wistfully to Mrs. H.
They were. Turns out, they were a pair of AR4xs, in pretty good condition for left by the side of the road (and on a day with some sporadic rain). I grabbed them suckas, put 'em in the back of the Soobie, and schlepped 'em on home. At home, I dried 'em off and put 'em in a corner of the basment, where they spent the winter.
Fast forward to late spring 2021. As we made ready to visit our son & his new(ish) wife in their first home together in VA, he mentioned that, now that he was/they were in a proper house for the first time, he kinda sorta wanted a proper hifi. I started thinking about small-ish, good-ish speaker options, and the aforementioned orphaned AR4xs were on my mental short list. I had never even peeked under the grilles, much less tried them. I went downstairs and found that the grilles were already loose. First disappointment -- the tweeter in one of them had been replaced with a small coax car speaker (branded Pioneer, IIRC). Well, that's unfortunate. I tried 'em anyway and discovered a couple-three things. All drivers were working, the "replacement tweeter" was considerably brighter than the other AR4x's tweeter, and the tweeter adjustment on the hacked AR4x was inoperative. As it turned out, the pot had been bypassed in the hacked speaker, although a low-resistance (2 ohm, if memory serves) power resistor was added in (??) an attempt to pad the treble down a bit.
Undaunted, I sourced a pair of AR4x tweeters from one of the vacuum tube hifi gurus down in western Massachusetts. When I got it, I was disappointed to see that the tweeter cutout on the hacked AR4x had been enlarged a bit -- to the point that the AR4x tweeter would drop right through it, albeit just barely.
Well... hack begets hack, so I took a scrap of thin plywood I had (which happens to be painted white) and freehanded an adaptor ring for the correct tweeter using a jigsaw.
Now -- I wouldn't tell you all of this if there weren't a happy ending. The reanimated AR4x worked fine (although, in full disclosure, I just left the tweeter level pot out of the circuit... 'cause I am preternaturally lazy, as y'all know). As it happens, I don't ever recall having ever heard, or even seen, a pair of any of the AR4 family members in the flesh before. My expectations were fairly low -- I was expecting distant, reticent, polite, power-hungry, and undynamic loudspeakers. Here's the thing: I really like these. Mind you: the tweeter pots are bypassed (which is probably a Bad Idea on paper, but, for the time being, at least, I actually don't much care). The crossovers are unrestored (other than my removing the added resistor from the hacked speaker) -- but these are really, really pleasant to listen to. I am using that old, dump-find Yamaha AVR that has become my go-to "high power" amplification source to drive them: the pairing sounds good quiet or (yes, even) loud.
I... I... like these things. There, I "said" it.
Feels good to get that off my chest.
DSC_0804 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
(Sorry that things upstairs are in even more disarray than usual -- it's that time of year when we're busier outside than inside.)
They were, truth be told, one of three pairs of potential candidate loudspeakers I had identified for our son & daughter-in-law. When all was said & done, I decided to take them a pair of CSW Sixes that have been taking up space here for a couple of decades because they (also) sounded good and were clearly more sensitive than the ARs (good for the amplifier they'll be using).
I actually thought this story would be more interesting than it's turned out to be! Sorry about that.
At any rate: I was surprised by enjoyability of the lowly AR4x.
Thoughts?
They were. Turns out, they were a pair of AR4xs, in pretty good condition for left by the side of the road (and on a day with some sporadic rain). I grabbed them suckas, put 'em in the back of the Soobie, and schlepped 'em on home. At home, I dried 'em off and put 'em in a corner of the basment, where they spent the winter.
Fast forward to late spring 2021. As we made ready to visit our son & his new(ish) wife in their first home together in VA, he mentioned that, now that he was/they were in a proper house for the first time, he kinda sorta wanted a proper hifi. I started thinking about small-ish, good-ish speaker options, and the aforementioned orphaned AR4xs were on my mental short list. I had never even peeked under the grilles, much less tried them. I went downstairs and found that the grilles were already loose. First disappointment -- the tweeter in one of them had been replaced with a small coax car speaker (branded Pioneer, IIRC). Well, that's unfortunate. I tried 'em anyway and discovered a couple-three things. All drivers were working, the "replacement tweeter" was considerably brighter than the other AR4x's tweeter, and the tweeter adjustment on the hacked AR4x was inoperative. As it turned out, the pot had been bypassed in the hacked speaker, although a low-resistance (2 ohm, if memory serves) power resistor was added in (??) an attempt to pad the treble down a bit.
Undaunted, I sourced a pair of AR4x tweeters from one of the vacuum tube hifi gurus down in western Massachusetts. When I got it, I was disappointed to see that the tweeter cutout on the hacked AR4x had been enlarged a bit -- to the point that the AR4x tweeter would drop right through it, albeit just barely.
Well... hack begets hack, so I took a scrap of thin plywood I had (which happens to be painted white) and freehanded an adaptor ring for the correct tweeter using a jigsaw.
Now -- I wouldn't tell you all of this if there weren't a happy ending. The reanimated AR4x worked fine (although, in full disclosure, I just left the tweeter level pot out of the circuit... 'cause I am preternaturally lazy, as y'all know). As it happens, I don't ever recall having ever heard, or even seen, a pair of any of the AR4 family members in the flesh before. My expectations were fairly low -- I was expecting distant, reticent, polite, power-hungry, and undynamic loudspeakers. Here's the thing: I really like these. Mind you: the tweeter pots are bypassed (which is probably a Bad Idea on paper, but, for the time being, at least, I actually don't much care). The crossovers are unrestored (other than my removing the added resistor from the hacked speaker) -- but these are really, really pleasant to listen to. I am using that old, dump-find Yamaha AVR that has become my go-to "high power" amplification source to drive them: the pairing sounds good quiet or (yes, even) loud.
I... I... like these things. There, I "said" it.
Feels good to get that off my chest.
DSC_0804 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
(Sorry that things upstairs are in even more disarray than usual -- it's that time of year when we're busier outside than inside.)
They were, truth be told, one of three pairs of potential candidate loudspeakers I had identified for our son & daughter-in-law. When all was said & done, I decided to take them a pair of CSW Sixes that have been taking up space here for a couple of decades because they (also) sounded good and were clearly more sensitive than the ARs (good for the amplifier they'll be using).
I actually thought this story would be more interesting than it's turned out to be! Sorry about that.
At any rate: I was surprised by enjoyability of the lowly AR4x.
Thoughts?
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