[Arny Krueger]

"zibbit" wrote in message

West,

I don't know how profound it is, but it appears to be a
fairly well known "issue" among technicians that have
worked on AR speakers over the years.

Here's what I have learned so far, the first production
models of ARs were produced in 1958 (AR3) according to
various sources . The AR 2AX came later. The pair that
I have are date stamped 1966 on the woofer frame.
According to the previous post, laws were enacted in the
USA in 1973 to regulate the use of asbestos (in general).
That suggests that dampening materials containing
asbestos might have been used in AR speakers from 1958
through the1960s. Can't speak for other manufacturers...

I've taken apart a number of AR speakers from the early days (50s and 60s),
and never saw anything that even looked like asbestos in them. The damping
materials were always standard resin-bonded fiberglass. That was typical of
speakers of that era. I can't remember ever seeing asbestos used in a
commercially-built speaker, or even home brew ones.