Naldo

I have a pair of AR-2ax speakers in unfinished pine cabinets.  Other than leaving the cabinets alone, options available for finishing these cabinets include
  (1) finishing the pine veneer
  (2) veneering with your favorite veneer
  (3) painting

Has anyone finished unfinished pine cabinets?  What option did you select and what was the outcome?

Thanks.

Factory unfinished Pine veneer? Very interesting. Even though it's classified a secondary wood and is a softwood, I and alot of other woodworkers I've known love the look and feel of knotty pine. Very warm look.

These are from the later run with backwired tweeters. That last pic is a good shot of that oatmeal-mix linen that I've been trying for ages to find a good match for.

That fabric looked familiar to me because I'd seen something very similar years ago that was used for wall-covering by a designer I used to do remodel for. I'd check tile and wall-covering type home-design stores.


p.s. the speakers sound pretty awesome. Thanks, all, for all the tips!

Don't play any more music thru the speakers until you refoam the woofer. The buzzing you hear may well be the woofer coil rubbing because it isn't being held in alighment correctly due to the deterioriating woofer surround.
Remove the woofer and disconnect it, then play some more music and listen to see if the buzzing is still there or gone.
BTW, the midrange doesn't look like an AR original.

Well I took your tip, but when I got the cover off the 2nd, the 'really' buzzy speaker it became pretty obvious. There was literally no surround left, just shreds. I went ahead and cut the woofers loose, hooked up the boxes and played a few minutes of some samples through them. Very tinny and weak, obviously, but no buzzing that I could hear.

One oddity (to me) was that the + (red) and - (blue) were mirrored L/R, R/L on the two woofers. Is that typical?

or at the very least, put the speaker on it's back and try playing it--that should keep the VC from cocking due to the weight of the cone being cantilevered out and not supported by the foam.

Carl, what does the AR mid look like with the wire mesh and fiberglass pillow removed? from the pics it looks like there was a mesh screen over the mid at some point in time...

Hah, bingo guys. I went back and looked at it and voila.

Don't play any more music thru the speakers until you refoam the woofer. The buzzing you hear may well be the woofer coil rubbing because it isn't being held in alighment correctly due to the deterioriating woofer surround.
Remove the woofer and disconnect it, then play some more music and listen to see if the buzzing is still there or gone.
BTW, the midrange doesn't look like an AR original.

No, I hadn't intended to run any more sound through it. Interesting call on the midrange- the owner said he picked them up in Okinawa circa 1974 or so. I'd bet $ he never opened them up.