2. vintage
  3. 170608-167278

AR XB headshell/tonearm

I have a good condition AR XB that I am refurbing and am having trouble with the headshell.  The carts that I have either don't fit the headshell or fit poorly such that they aren't alignable.  Is there a reasonable replacement headshell or am I going to have to replace the whole tonearm?  I'd prefer to not drop the coin for a whole tonearm but on the other hand this is a back burner project so I'm not opposed to sitting on it till I put aside a little money for a tonearm if that's how it's gotta be.
thank you
metal_farmer
jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 
I have a Vinyl Nirvana modded AR XB. It has an arm tube/headshell from a Technics arm. Plus new wiring. The rest of the AR arm remains intact. I suggest you contact Vinyl Nirvana and have your arm modded the same way. It will perform a lot better than the stock arm - plus the cartridge can be aligned correctly - something that is not possible with the stock arm/headshell.
imhififan's avatar
imhififan
2,123 posts
 
Headshell for AR XA/XB 

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/qZ4AAOSwk7xcxHc5/s-l1600.jpg
cd318
2,636 posts
 
@imhififan

Good to see the AR has not been completely forgotten.

That headshell might be well worth the trade in of slight extra weight for extra rigidity.

Either way, the original headshell is far from as bad as some like to claim.
imhififan's avatar
imhififan
2,123 posts
 
@cd318,
AR turntables are highly collectible, I hope OP can keep it as original as possible during refurbishing and use that after market headshell or diy something similar to install his cartridges. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,460 posts
 

AR Turntables are collectible? There are many thousands of them out there (I saw them listed for $50-$100 in local papers for years). I modified my AR XA by cutting out the well for the arm (it’s a piece of junk) and replacing it with a Formula 4 Unipivot. The XB is the same table but with a plastic imitation-wood covering in place of the XA’s real-wood veneer. The XB also has a metal headshell in place of the XA’s plastic.

There was a great mod-kit for the XA and XB (with a substitute floating subchassis), but if I wanted an AR I would look for an ES-1, the version of the table when it was re-introduced in the mid-80’s (I had one of those too). It’s basically the same as the XA, but with a separate arm board (the table was offered without or with an arm---a nice Jelco-sourced one. I mounted a Rega RB300 instead.).

I was okay with the ES-1 until I heard a VPI HW-19 at Brooks Berdan’s shop. Bye bye AR, hello VPI ;-) .

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