[Vintage-Audio] Re Repairing Foam Suspension Speakers

[Ed Tanton]

Hi Duane... I have only the 2 ARs (and 2 Polks I picked up cheap [abt $100 
or so as I recall-plus S/H] either new, or as-new, for the basement.) 
They'll have to pry my ARs from my cold dead hands!!!

I have a story about the ARs. They're 4 ohms. Way back in the early 
eighties, my wife got a bonus at her work, and my piece of it was a new 
HI-FI. All I knew for sure was that I loved my old AR-3s (Lord I wish I had 
kept 'em!) so I got ARs for this upgrade. Also, I had a Fisher 500-C that I 
sold with the AR-3s. Anyway, I got a Sony STRV-35 and the AR-10s. This 
totally with the 'approval' of the salesman at the Hi-Fi store ("Hi-Fi 
Buys" here in Marietta.)

Well... it didn't take more than a couple of months before it quit. Had 
been great 'til then. Turns out the STRV-35 is not designed for 4 ohms-much 
less the 70 watts it puts into that impedance. The dealer replaced the 
finals, so to speak, and it ran a couple of weeks. ASIDE: By then I knew 
how to "test" the unit: one of the Boston songs would get the unit hot 
enough to literally SMELL the hot metal!

Next time, they messed around, and finally passed it on to Sony to fix, 
taking maybe a month. Picked it up at Sony. Lasted a day or two... uh... 
under... uh... "now-routine-testing" now that I knew how. THIS time I took 
it back to the Sony Service Center myself, not the dealer. I went in, asked 
for the service manager, showed him the paperwork, fussed in a reasonable 
manner, explaining the lengthy problems. He offered to fix it free (or 
maybe just the labor) one more time, and swore it'd be OK.

Let me point out: honesty required that I DID tell him about the 4 ohm 
business, and he made a point of saying it was not designed for 4 ohm 
speakers. Three weeks later, I picked it up. Never broke again. Still have 
it, and it works great... to this day.

What did they do differently? Available at the same time were virtually 
(physically) identical STRV-50s and STRV-75s. My guess is that I now own 
what is effectively an STRV-75... e.g. the STRV-75 set of finals-and 
probably the drivers too.


73 Ed Tanton N4XY <n4xy@earthlink.net>

Ed Tanton N4XY
189 Pioneer Trail
Marietta, GA 30068-3466

website: http://www.n4xy.com

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