Brand

Vintage Acoustic Research speakers

Edgar Villchur and Henry Kloss founded Acoustic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1954 to build Villchur's acoustic suspension speaker, a sealed box where the trapped air acts as the woofer's spring. His patent was granted in 1956. That idea let a bookshelf-sized box play deep bass, and the 1958 AR-3 was the first speaker sold with dome midrange and tweeter drivers. Teledyne bought AR in 1967, the year the AR-3a arrived, and by 1973 the company was in Norwood. AR's catalogs showed Herbert von Karajan at home with AR-3as and Arthur Fiedler with AR-5s, and every speaker carried a five-year guarantee. The sealed boxes are inefficient, so they want a decent amplifier. Most of the AR speakers here have level controls for the midrange and tweeter, and on an AR-3a corroded level controls are the most common fault restorers find.

5 models we cover.