Lasminit2

Well, this is a very late reply, but I just purchased a pair of European model AR-5's. Their S/N's are: HL 09949 and 09950. I haven't opened them up yet, but I will be refoaming them soon, and they sound so good that I am curious to see if they might have been recapped. One speaker does have a bad tweeter (it's not the rheostats...the tweeter is really dead). The working drivers all have functional rheostats that have some dropouts.

Razor,
I suspect that going by the dates on the drivers is fairly safe with the exception that European examples were built from drivers brought over from the states, so transit and stockpiling could make an 11-11-1972 woofer wind up in a speaker rolling off the line several months later. Still, you know when your woofers were made, and that certainly puts you in the ballpark of production.

European AR-5's seem to be pretty rare, and I am really impressed so far: excited about getting 'em as nice as possible. Luckily, the cabs and grills are very nice. Keepers, I think!