HT Subwoofer

The sub woofer was promising to be my biggest challenge. Acoustic Research’s first and only vintage sub woofer glided through the audio market from 1982 to 1988 as part of the Connoisseur series, and it was simply known as the AR or Connoisseur Sub. Measuring 406x787x457mm and weighing a healthy 32kg, it looked like a small walnut coffee table, and had two 10-inch down-firing drivers in separate interior enclosures. Frequency response was specified as 31-100Hz, and it sold for $500.

Nowadays one or two pop up annually on eBay, selling for between $150 and $200, but at this stage I simply cannot afford to have it shipped to South Africa. I have no idea whether any were ever sold here, and I have certainly never seen any used ones come up for sale. So apart from importing from the States or waiting for ever on a South African version to hit the used columns, I had two other options; build a replica, or completely fore go the vintage route and simply buy a later AR model which was available locally.

As for building my own, I had enough confidence in tackling the woodwork part, and I could lay my hands on a pair of either used original drivers, or a pair of AR-rated substitutes. What troubled me was that very little is known about this speaker, and nowhere on the Internet could I find anything about electronic specs, material specs or building diagrams. I had external dimensions, but no internal volumes, electronic filter details, driver load or whatever, so without all the detail I would never be sure that I was getting close to original performance or not.

After living with the Denon/AR94/AR4 setup for a good 4-5 months, and having run through plenty of mega sound dvd’s, I was starting to question the need or justification for a separate sub; it was a non-deniable fact that all my low frequencies were handled by five 8 inch bass drivers. Did I really need more? Ok, maybe I was starting to get used to the sound on hand, but until I was proven wrong, the sub-woofer would remain on ice.  Final evaluation would be made when I replace two of 8 inchers (AR94's) with the 12 inch  drivers of the AR3a's, each sporting a free-air resonance of 18-21 Hz.

(To continue – or maybe not)