AR9's anybody

[snow 240]

Have any of you ever heard or own AR9's? I picked up a pair the other day for $75.00 they need foam on the mid woofers and woofers I wonder if their worth the trouble of doing them?

 

 

 

REGARDS SNOW 

[hipmomk 1]

In their day (circa 78 -79) they were some of the best available, and widely considered AR's overall best speaker made - which is really quite a statement.  AR invented acoustic suspension ("sealed") speakers - they are power hungry, would not use less than a MKII 1.0, 1.5, or 4.x series.  They can be passively bi-amped with very good results, best to keep same type amp on woofers & the mid tweeter array for simplicity.

 

 The AR 12" woofer is pretty famous for being very flat at low frequencies, it is widely accepted the NHT1259 subwoofer driver prevalent in use in high end systems in the 80's & 90's was patterned off of it. The AR9 has two of them, with the lower bass response being very robust.  One of the reasons it was considered AR's best was the woofers hand off to an 8 inch midbass driver, and then on the the usual AR dome midrange and tweeters of the era. – this solved lower midrange coloration of a big woofer handing off to cone midrange drivers.

 

 The negatives include the speakers are a pain in the ass to place in a room. They need to be against a wall about 5 or 6 feet apart with about another 5 feet or so to the corner wall - that's because of the side firing woofers.  And of course, they are power hungry.  They are a low impedance speaker, nominally rated at 4 ohms, but at various frequencies it can dip to 3 or 2, especially in the bass region, which can stress very good amps, even the Carvers.  And they are over 30 years old. In the lower 48, they are very collectible, ranging from about $600 to $1500 depending on condition and luck - you got a good deal.

 

 M-Sound on eBay (Moonlistener) sells the correct foam surrounds - this is pretty important for the older AR stuff because the acoustic suspension principal requires very compliant surrounds in order to maintain their low frequency response - if I remember correctly the AR9 woofers are around 19hz FS.  AR used very good quality caps in the crossover, only the tweeter array ones (somewhere around 6uf) should probably be replaced.  The crossover is very complicated; don't bother thinking about a way to truly biamp by bypassing the internal crossover unless you are a rocket scientist.  Drivers are becoming rarer and pricy so while playing loud is fine, be careful of playing demo records (1812 overture comes to mind) after several beers.  In the day, AR made some of the better driver around, but again the speakers are over 30 years old now.

 

Good find (I am a little jealous, have been looking to score a set in NJ for cheap for about 2 years now), have fun.

 

Joe

 

 

[stereo_dog 1,216]

 

 

Have any of you ever heard or own AR9's? I picked up a pair the other day for $75.00 they need foam on the mid woofers and woofers I wonder if their worth the trouble of doing them?

 

 

 

REGARDS SNOW 

 

YES!!!! They are great speakers. I have the "little" brothers in my bedroom, AR-90's. $75.00 is a good price and well worth investing in a re-foaming. 

 

Just my $.02.

[snow 240]

 

 

In their day (circa 78 -79) they were some of the best available, and widely considered AR's overall best speaker made - which is really quite a statement.  AR invented acoustic suspension ("sealed") speakers - they are power hungry, would not use less than a MKII 1.0, 1.5, or 4.x series.  They can be passively bi-amped with very good results, best to keep same type amp on woofers & the mid tweeter array for simplicity.

 

 The AR 12" woofer is pretty famous for being very flat at low frequencies, it is widely accepted the NHT1259 subwoofer driver prevalent in use in high end systems in the 80's & 90's was patterned off of it. The AR9 has two of them, with the lower bass response being very robust.  One of the reasons it was considered AR's best was the woofers hand off to an 8 inch midbass driver, and then on the the usual AR dome midrange and tweeters of the era. – this solved lower midrange coloration of a big woofer handing off to cone midrange drivers.

 

 The negatives include the speakers are a pain in the ass to place in a room. They need to be against a wall about 5 or 6 feet apart with about another 5 feet or so to the corner wall - that's because of the side firing woofers.  And of course, they are power hungry.  They are a low impedance speaker, nominally rated at 4 ohms, but at various frequencies it can dip to 3 or 2, especially in the bass region, which can stress very good amps, even the Carvers.  And they are over 30 years old. In the lower 48, they are very collectible, ranging from about $600 to $1500 depending on condition and luck - you got a good deal.

 

 M-Sound on eBay (Moonlistener) sells the correct foam surrounds - this is pretty important for the older AR stuff because the acoustic suspension principal requires very compliant surrounds in order to maintain their low frequency response - if I remember correctly the AR9 woofers are around 19hz FS.  AR used very good quality caps in the crossover, only the tweeter array ones (somewhere around 6uf) should probably be replaced.  The crossover is very complicated; don't bother thinking about a way to truly biamp by bypassing the internal crossover unless you are a rocket scientist.  Drivers are becoming rarer and pricy so while playing loud is fine, be careful of playing demo records (1812 overture comes to mind) after several beers.  In the day, AR made some of the better driver around, but again the speakers are over 30 years old now.

 

Good find (I am a little jealous, have been looking to score a set in NJ for cheap for about 2 years now), have fun.

 

Joe

 

 

Thanks for the info Joe. They look like they should really rock the house if given the right power.

 

 

 

REGARDS SNOW 

[snow 240]

 

 

 

Have any of you ever heard or own AR9's? I picked up a pair the other day for $75.00 they need foam on the mid woofers and woofers I wonder if their worth the trouble of doing them?

 

 

 

REGARDS SNOW 

 

YES!!!! They are great speakers. I have the "little" brothers in my bedroom, AR-90's. $75.00 is a good price and well worth investing in a re-foaming. 

 

Just my $.02.

Thanks. My biggest concern was the cost of shipping 4 woofers and two mid woofers both ways, I shipped a pair of AR3A woofers to a fellow some time ago and it was a little over $100.00 one way so I figure it will cost me at least $400.00 to ship all 4 and most likely another $100.00 or so to ship the lower mids out and back plus whatever it would cost to have them re foamed most likely at least $200.00 so i'm thinking a minimum of $700.00 just to be able to hear them and I might not like them

 

I will have to give it some serious thought first  if the cabinets were pristine I wouldndt hesitate. 

 

 

 

REGARDS SNOW 

[madmike46 398]

Hey Snow, re-foaming is not hard to do at all.  The hardest part is getting cleaned up for the new surrounds.  I had 4 woofers and 4 Passive Radiators to do in my Advance A+.  This would cut you cost to shipping surrounds to you only.  Also you won't have to worry about the shipping goons destroying or loosing your speakers.  JMO

 

Mike

[zumbini 6,147]

I recently re-foamed a 30+ year old Design Acoustic subwoofer that I bought on ePray.

I had done a few smaller speakers (mostly mids) in the distant past but I'm far from an expert.

Someone had re-coned the sub and botched the job, but I was able to fix it with help from a few members.

 

I posted a blow by blow description of the proceedings along with plenty of photos HERE.

Reading through the details of my project might help you decide if you can handle yours.

[hipmomk 1]

The woofer surround kits I mentioned above on eBay are really not that bad to install.  I have done about 6 to 8 AR 12 inch woofers over the last 10 or 15 years, and am what I consider "medium handy" at these types of things.  "M_Sound" includes voice coil shims and very good instructions.  So if you are willing to put in "sweat equity" and do it yourself, you can do all of them including the midranges for around $125.  You need an exacto knife and patience.  Note that with acoustic suspension drivers, if you play at any kind of volume with junky surrounds you run the risk of (permanently) damaging the drivers, as the woofer spider is very compliant (or loose/sloppy) as compared to a bass/reflex type of design which will have a comparetively "stiff" spider.  These drivers are essentially the same 12 inch drivers of the AR3, just updated slightly for higher power handling in the later 70's.  Good thing about the AR9 vs AR3 is the AR9 driver connections are regular push on types versus the soldering required for the old AR speakers - so driver removal is a snap (just remember which color wire goes where).

 

Joe

[Guest dingus]

ditto on the advice given earlier, though i would space them more than 6ft apart if at all possible.  basically the wider apart you can get them (while still maintaining a minimum of 3ft from the sidewall), the better.  replacing the surrounds is very easy, even if you've never done them before.  i would recommend ebay seller vintage_ar for a kit supplier.  bi-amp them if you have the gear to do so, but they'll do very well with even a single MXR-130.

 

i had a pair of AR9's for several years and absolutely loved them,  if not for space constraints i'd have kept them.  a very capable, truly full-range speaker.