AR-90 loudspeakers for sale

Update: I sold these speakers in 2012, so they are no longer available. I sold them on this enthusiast site: http://hificollector.blogspot.com/2009/08/speakers-acoustic-research-ar-90.html.

I am selling my Acoustic Research AR-90 loudspeakers. Each of the two speakers measures 42.5 inches high x 12 inches wide x 14 inches deep without the grilles. Add an inch for each grille. I have the original boxes, which claim a shipping weight of 100 pounds per speaker.

Each speaker has a dome tweeter, a dome upper mid-range driver, a cone lower mid-range woofer, and two side-firing cone low-range woofers.

I bought the speakers for $950 in 1979 at an auction of a defunct stereo store. I'll selling them, as I never use my stereo anymore.

These acoustic suspension speakers sounded superb in their day. After 20 years, the foam material connecting the woofer speaker cones to the body of the drivers begain to deteriorate. This is very common for this type of speaker, and there are many repair kits available on the Internet to address this exact problem. I bought one of these repair kits (marketed specifically for the AR-90) and replaced the foam baffles on the woofers. However, the speakers don't sound as good as new to me. I can't go back in time to do a A/B comparison, plus my hearing isn't as good as it was in 1979, so I can't offer an explanation.

The speakers are in very good, but not excellent, shape cosmetically. See the photos. Close observation may show you that, oddly, one of the speaker grilles is labelled "AR90" while the other is labelled simply "AR".

Here are some images of the speakers as they are now (November 2011). Click on a thumbnail to see a larger image.