How to disassemble Speakers -- Acoustic Research AR-1 High Res

[bnhnet]

I have a pair of Acoustic Research AR-1 High Res speakers and want to disassemble them and sell the parts. They appear to be in A-! condition, but they are missing the internal Sun Fire amps which drove the woofers.

The photo below shows the mid-range and tweeter speakers with the grill removed. There is a soft sponge like material around this set of 3 speakers. Even the bubble around the tweeter is made of this soft sponge/foamy material. (The woofer is on the side as shown above.) From the front, there are no obvious bolts or screws for mounting the mid-range and tweeter to the cabinet. From the back, there appears to be no bolts or screws holding these speakers to the cabinet.


Before I start digging out the soft sponge/foam material on the front to see if there are screws underneath, I thought I would ask if any knows how these speakers are mounted? My guess is that there are screws under this soft sponge/foam material on the front, but I'll obviously have to destroy the material to expose the screws. Is this correct?

The back of the two mid-range speakers are encased in a hard plastic resin. You can't even get to the spades where the wires are attached to the speaker terminals. This hard plastic material seems to form a protective cone over the back of each of these mid-range speakers. There are no screws or bolts holding this protective cone to the cabinet. There appears to be a bead of glue around the edge of these mid-range speakers. Are these mid-rang speakers simply glued to the cabinet? Surely not. But if so, how does one remove the mid-range speakers. Does one simply cut and pry the glue off the edge and hope they will separate from the cabinet? That sounds very low-tech for speakers with such a legendary name.

What purpose is the plastic resin? To hide some trade secret?

Do I cut the cabinet apart to get at these resin-coated speakers?

Any advise would be appreciated.

[Mr Peabody]

Any chance of finding a replacement amp? Places like Parts Express sell just the plate amp. Or, the woofers could be driven by an external amp in a biamp type configuration.

I've never taken any of those apart. Why not sell the speakers "as is", those who would buy them probably want them intact or know enough to take them apart.

Once you get the drivers out, even with no damage I doubt you'd get much for them.

I'm sure the cases on back of the midrange are for isolation purposes, to keep the bass waves from imposing on the midrange, and vice versa.