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What to do with old AR-9s? (1 Viewer)

Lorne

Agent
Joined
Feb 19, 2002
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28
I inherited a pair of vintage floor standing AR-9s that must be at least 25 years old. When I got them the foam around the woofers and mid-ranges was all crumbled away so I re-foamed them with materials from Newfoam. However, they still crackle a bit at the high end and there's noticeable distortion if I listen closely enough. Hey, they're 25 years old. So I'm left with a tough decision since I've been using them as my front speakers. Do I try and refurb them for an unknown cost? Or do I replace them with something new, which in the price range I'm looking at, and based on testimony I've read here, would be something like the Axiom m22TI paired with a VP150 center, or the Rocket ELT CSEs paired with a the RSC100 MKII. (Right now I'm using a friend's unwanted Cambridge Center Stage center and Cambridge dual bipole/diploe surrounds). I use my sound system for home theater first, music second, and my living room is 20x25, carpeted, with 9 ft ceilings. Am I crazy to think of trading in these giant towers for bookshelf speakers?

So if I buy new, what are the AR-9's worth if I try to sell them and is there a better place than eBay to do that? If I try to refurbish the speakers, is there any way offhand to estimate what would it cost? I live in the Washington DC area and I don't even know where I would take them for service -- they are about five feet high and really heavy so shipping them would be a real problem. Any ideas?
 

Chu Gai

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2001
Messages
7,270
Given the description of the problem you're observing, refurbishing might mean nothing more than doing some resoldering (bad solder joints) and/or cleaning up contacts. They were a decent speaker and if this works you could either keep them or sell them for a bit more since there'd be no audible defects.
 

LanceJ

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 26, 2002
Messages
3,168
Lorne, there are two ongoing discussions about AR speakers at Steve Hoffman's forum (he's a respected remastering engineer) in his "Hardware" forum. Several AR fans & speaker enthusiasts are discussing the "old days" and how the AR name will be treated now that Audiovox owns them (and Advent too). And the AR9s were one of the models brought up in the "Okay, why do these little AR2......" thread.
 

RobertR

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 19, 1998
Messages
10,675
Sigh. I junked my AR 9Ls speakers for this reason. It just didn't seem worth it....
 

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