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Re: Are vintage AR-9s worth the effort?

Posted by Soundmind (A) on December 8, 2004 at 06:23:05

In Reply to: Are vintage AR-9s worth the effort? posted by Larkston Zinazpic on December 7, 2004 at 18:37:44:

The Teledyne AR9 is IMO the ultimate expression of Edgar Vilcher's conceptualization of a full range multi driver acoustic suspension loudspeaker system. It took AR about 20 years to evolve its high end design to that point. It uses almost every advance in technology AR developed including dome midranges and tweeters and ferrofluid cooling. I have enhanced my AR9s with indirect firing tweeters and carefully equalized them using both a 10 band equalizer and the program controls on the speaker itself. They are in this arrangement an outstanding speaker and can hold their own IMO against anything. You will find it very hard to beat their bass performance at any price even today. They can produce extraordinary deep loud distortion free bass that is very musical but can also excite every room resonance you have. The thought that went into the engineering of this system is far greater than for most. You can read Tim Holl's explanation of everything from the crossover design to the driver arrangement on Arsenal's website;
http://www.arsenal.net/ Many people consider a slightly later version, the AR9LS to be of lesser performance.

The NHT 3.3 is probably a very fine speaker. Ken Kantor had a large hand in the design of it. It uses the famous Toneegen 12" driver but it has only one 12 inch driver per cabinet. In good condition, I'd say up to $600 to $800 is a fair price for a restored pair of Teledyne AR9s. BTW, it is a tough speaker to drive in the sense that it is nominally 4 ohms although its power requirements are relatively modest. It can however handle up to 400 wpc at low frequencies. Its overall tonal balance is of course adjustable but in keeping with AR's basic goals and design philosophy of that era, it strives to be as musically accurate as possible. If you are looking for some sort of exaggerated sound, this is not it.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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