Acoustic Research Teledyne AR9 Towers Help !

[VinnyTheLens]

Greetings all,

I am a new member and could use some help. Last year or so I inherited my fathers AR9 towers (Mint condition) that he has had since new. My Yamaha home theater receiver did not want to run them to well and I sold it and got out of home theater anyway. I wanted a system for listening strictly to music. I purchased a Rega turntable and Musical Fidelity M1SDAC and two M1PWR mono block amplifiers and MF v90 phono amp. They run at 200w per channel at 4 ohms. I am still not very happy with the sound and lacks low end punch. I have read that these speakers need a lot of power to sound their best. I could use some advise. Should I keep these speakers and buy another integrated amplifier more money. Or sell the speakers and buy something that will run with the new setup. I am just wondering if it is worth it to keep spending money on the old speakers. I must admit they sound fantastic and grew up listening to them. My dad was running Adcom components and power amps for these speakers at the time. He got out of the audio game and gave the speakers to me to make room in his living room. They are big. My listening area is maybe 15 x20 max.
Side note: Was thinking of buying a pair of Wharfdale Denton bookshelves and a sub or something like the Elac B6 and sub, or Fluance if I sell the speakers.
Don't know going nuts here.

Thanks all,

V

 

[fuzz092888]

Step one for getting help, don't double post.

 

[VinnyTheLens]

Step one for getting help, don't double post.

Well could not figure out how to delete the post in the other area.

 

[fuzz092888]

Well could not figure out how to delete the post in the other area.

FYI most times the actual section doesn't matter because most members simply read threads off of the "Recent Threads" link at the top of the page and if it is in the wrong spot a moderator will move it.

 

[VinnyTheLens]

FYI most times the actual section doesn't matter because most members simply read threads off of the "Recent Threads" link at the top of the page and if it is in the wrong spot a moderator will move it.

Roger that.

 

[TLS Guy]

Greetings all,

I am a new member and could use some help. Last year or so I inherited my fathers AR9 towers (Mint condition) that he has had since new. My Yamaha home theater receiver did not want to run them to well and I sold it and got out of home theater anyway. I wanted a system for listening strictly to music. I purchased a Rega turntable and Musical Fidelity M1SDAC and two M1PWR mono block amplifiers and MF v90 phono amp. They run at 200w per channel at 4 ohms. I am still not very happy with the sound and lacks low end punch. I have read that these speakers need a lot of power to sound their best. I could use some advise. Should I keep these speakers and buy another integrated amplifier more money. Or sell the speakers and buy something that will run with the new setup. I am just wondering if it is worth it to keep spending money on the old speakers. I must admit they sound fantastic and grew up listening to them. My dad was running Adcom components and power amps for these speakers at the time. He got out of the audio game and gave the speakers to me to make room in his living room. They are big. My listening area is maybe 15 x20 max.
Side note: Was thinking of buying a pair of Wharfdale Denton bookshelves and a sub or something like the Elac B6 and sub, or Fluance if I sell the speakers.
Don't know going nuts here.

Thanks all,

I think if you want to use those speakers you need some DIY skills.

There are problems with those speakers.

First the electrolytic caps were of poor quality and it seems a lot have leaked and just about none have the correct values anymore.

Next I understand there are a lot of iterations of the crossovers.

As far as I can tell this is most likely the final version.

Next the woofer section has a problem. The impedance drops to below 3 ohms and the DC resistance of the coils are too high. This was probably done to prevent the amplifier frying. I would say that this design is almost certainly in resonance, as is common with low passive crossover points.

The good news is that these speakers are good enough to warrant restoration and modification.

The best approach is to make the bass section active.

To do this you will need another two channel amp comfortable with 4 ohm loads.

You will need an electronic crossover like this.

Now make sure the crossover is the circuit above.

Eliminate the three coils and two caps to the woofers.

Connect the woofers in parallel directly to the bass amp.

Eliminate the 80 mfd cap in the 8" lower mid circuit.

Now replace all the other caps with good quality new components.

Now connect the top three sections to the high frequency power amp.

Now place the electronic crossover between the pre amp and the two stereo power amps.

Set the crossover to two way and set the frequency to 200 Hz. Trim the volumes between the high and low sections to a balance that sounds good to you.

This is well worth the effort. With this mod the speaker is capable of +/- 2 db from 28 to 20 K Hz.

The bass section is low Q around 0.5 and is capable of very clean reproduction.

The speakers due to age and design are almost certainly not in usable condition at present.

 

[VinnyTheLens]

I think if you want to use those speakers you need some DIY skills.

There are problems with those speakers.

First the electrolytic caps were of poor quality and it seems a lot have leaked and just about none have the correct values anymore.

Next I understand there are a lot of iterations of the crossovers.

As far as I can tell this is most likely the final version.

Next the woofer section has a problem. The impedance drops to below 3 ohms and the DC resistance of the coils are too high. This was probably done to prevent the amplifier frying. I would say that this design is almost certainly in resonance, as is common with low passive crossover points.

The good news is that these speakers are good enough to warrant restoration and modification.

The best approach is to make the bass section active.

To do this you will need another two channel amp comfortable with 4 ohm loads.

You will need an electronic crossover like this.

Now make sure the crossover is the circuit above.

Eliminate the three coils and two caps to the woofers.

Connect the woofers in parallel directly to the bass amp.

Eliminate the 80 mfd cap in the 8" lower mid circuit.

Now replace all the other caps with good quality new components.

Now connect the top three sections to the high frequency power amp.

Now place the electronic crossover between the pre amp and the two stereo power amps.

Set the crossover to two way and set the frequency to 200 Hz. Trim the volumes between the high and low sections to a balance that sounds good to you.

This is well worth the effort. With this mod the speaker is capable of +/- 2 db from 28 to 20 K Hz.

The bass section is low Q around 0.5 and is capable of very clean reproduction.

The speakers due to age and design are almost certainly not in usable condition at present.

Thank You for the info and reply... Good news is the speakers have been restored and the woofers were replaced as the old ones completely disintegrated and were not very good originally form the factory. To be honest I don't know if I want to go through all that to make them right. I might just sell them and start a fresh.

 

[TLS Guy]

Thank You for the info and reply... Good news is the speakers have been restored and the woofers were replaced as the old ones completely disintegrated and were not very good originally form the factory. To be honest I don't know if I want to go through all that to make them right. I might just sell them and start a fresh.

Then the question becomes: - Were the woofers replaced with drivers of original manufacture and spec? If not the speakers are now total junk.

 

[VinnyTheLens]

Then the question becomes: - Were the woofers replaced with drivers of original manufacture and spec? If not the speakers are now total junk.

ok