My system has been developing towards having a purely classic audio alternative for some time now. It started with a Radford STA15 a long, long time ago. That amp has been in all sorts of incarnations of my set-up through the years. I have a big love of old tuners and receivers but have just a few of those now. A couple of years ago, a Goldring G99 came into the house and it will be staying. I wanted one of those because a family friend had one and I loved it - despite coming from a Garrard household! And now I appear to be acquiring all sorts of things that made a big impression on me back when I was under 10 years of age. That's fine because I like to be able to mix and match different permutations of stuff and it's nice to be able to listen to a different presentation every now and then. The main elements of the system have remained static for a long time now, but it's fun to tinker round the edges!
Having been exposed to a system which used AR 2ax speakers when I was a mere lad, I've always felt that they were such an important part of my hi-fi DNA that I ought to own a pair at some time or another. So I've been and gone and got me some!
They've had some work done on them - all the necessary re-foaming has already been carried out, so they are sounding pretty good. There are one or two things that I need to attend to before I'm going to be completely happy with them. I know that other Acoustic Research speakers of this vintage are far more desirable and sought after than these but that's not the point of this exercise - there wouldn't be room anyway, as my big Mirage M3si speakers aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
The cabinets are in pretty good shape and the old Radford is doing a fine job of rattling the windows with the 10" bass drivers. I now have rather a lot of pairs of speakers, however, so something has got to go! There are another three pairs in the house apart from these.