Acoustic Research AR8S - the surprise of small boxes

[RJohan]

Real AR's where big and made in America. AR 1, AR 3, LST, AR 9 and the weird 10 pi to name a few.

I've owned a pair of early 60's 3's, sound a bit dated in the modern world, but then probably the best you could get. Even Motown used them as monitors!

 

[JensenHealey]

my AR94s did last quite a number of years. I ran them for some time and then bought some TDL Studio 1's that were great. I gave the ARs to my mum, along with an A & R A60 and an old cassette deck. She used them for another 10yrs or more before returning them. The foams died soon afterwards.

 

[James]

my AR94s did last quite a number of years.

In fairness, I bought the 94s in Singapore, where they resided for two years in tropical humidity before I got them shipped to Aotearoa New Zealand. I traded them in for a pair of Linn Nexus. Worst mistake ever! I should have got them re-foamed.

 

[Robert]

ARs are great! I prefer the generation before the 18, i.e. the 3a, 4, 6, etc as they had a much nicer real veneer cabs (18 is a vinyl wrap IIRC) and the wheat grilles look cool in a ‘mid-century modern’ way. A friend has a pair of AR 6 in his kitchen driven by a wood case A21 and they sound lovely, as ARs do. They are obviously a bookshelf/wall-proximity speaker so become unbalanced when pulled out into the room, but they are really good speakers. Ed Vilchur was one of the great audio designers. An amazing legacy.

PS Rob got one of the best sounds at Scalford one year with one of the smaller ‘70s Marantz and I think a pair of AR 4s. They really work and show just how good a sealed-box speaker with an 8” paper bass and simple tweeter can actually sound. Surprisingly big, warm and punchy without any harshness. Rob had rebuilt to amp and replaced the foam driver surrounds as one has to with these speakers.

Love the old ARs.

I still have those rebuilt 4xa - part of a now almost extinct breed of 'speaker where the bass driver is purpose designed to work in a small-medium closed box and with the simplest of crossovers.
They look crude but a lot of thought went into those drivers. The large paper tweeters were in effect early ring radiator designs and designed to cross lower than a typical dome - again eminently sensible engineering when pairing with a mid-woofer.

I ended up building my own design based on the still commonly available (used) generic 8" AR driver. There is a thread somewhere way back in diy.