"Cheap and Nasty' Speaker Drivers

[gmgraves]

On 8/17/2019 at 6:31 PM, Ralf11 said:

Post listening experiences, designs, etc. here

 

If you received a communicable disease from the Cheap and/or Nasty Speaker Drivers, state which one.

A little off topic perhaps, but I recently heard a pair of “refurbished” Acoustic Research AR-3ax’s from the late 1950’s. These were driven by a McIntosh 275 stereo power amp of similar vintage. The owner told me that he paid about $250 each for the speakers in around 1960, and had them locally refurbished for about $150 each. I’d say that these fulfilled the criteria of being both cheap and dirty.

 

My jaw dropped! These speakers; THIS SYSTEM, sounded magnificent! I had not heard a pair of AR-3ax speakers in probably 40 years, and I certainly don’t recall them sounding anywhere near this good. When I enquired about this, the owner told me that the restorer had made two changes to the speakers and one to the crossovers. He re-coned the woofers with doped paper for a better, longer lasting cabinet seal, and since the soft domed tweeter could neither be repaired nor replaced, the restorer replaced it with a Heil air-motion transformer tweeter from Parts Express! The crossovers were upgraded with audio quality polypropylene caps. The values and the crossover points were not altered. To say that I was impressed with these 60-year old “cheap and dirty” speakers would be an understatement.