All speakers have a little EQ built in

bruce19

AR-2ax’s were my 1st decent speakers while in college. LP’s, FM,

listened to the nightbird when working late or all night

https://www.google.com/search?q=allison+steele+the+nightbird&rlz=1C1JSBI_enUS1081US1081&oq=nightbird+all&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCggCEAAYChgWGB4yBggAEEUYOTIMCAEQABgKGA8YFhgeMgoIAhAAGAoYFhgeMgwIAxAAGAoYDxgWGB4yCggEEAAYChgWGB4yDQgFEC4YChgWGB4Y1AIyDQgGEC4YChgWGB4Y1ALSAQkxNzk2MGowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I just restored two pairs of them. 1st sounded so good I got a second pair. restored the crossovers and replaced the L-Pads for tweeter and mid volume adjustments. they sound terrific, using in both my office and garage/shop systems.

2nd pair came with new tweeters, I replaced the tweeters on the 1st pair.

a fine example of the advantage of level controls

everything you need is readily available, do a simple 'ar-2ax' search on hifishark.

I would have a very difficult time replacing a variable L-pad instead of just soldering in fixed value resistors. I’ve seen too many of them go bad. Maybe with high efficiency horns that have very little power applied this could be reliable, but not for me.

One theme that comes up a lot when I look at old speakers and the crossovers is that we have much better tools but also different tastes in sound reproduction. Part of what makes new crossovers (especially for Infinity) better is we have tools to simultaneously track impedance and frequency response. Part of it is that sometimes (ahem, Infinity) makers just didn’t care that much about slapping in different drivers. It’s also true though that our listening tastes have changed and mastering engineers along with them.

Then there's the Kef Reference 1 Meta and..... WTF????

Eq is the great equalizer. It’s true. Most all room acoustics + imperfect gear performance means things will almost always come up short to some degree until some form of correction is applied.  Not only that, but chances are you won’t even know it until things are finally corrected properly and compared.

@elliottbnewcombjr I’m with you 100% on the AR’s, I used to listen to the Nightbird on AR 4’s. I restored the 2 AX’s and they help reinforce that hi-fi hasn’t changed as much as some people think in the last 50 years. :-) I had to recon the woofers, but the mid and tweeters were fine. What tweeters did you choose to replace yours with and how do they compare with the originals?

nice thread Nigel and I like your blog, but I wish it were a little easier to navigate the related articles in the order in which you wrote them. @erik_squires  DIY And another nice layer of fun to this hobby and can save a heck of a lot of money.