Normally when I’m in working at my desk, I’m listening to music through my headphones. It’s become a bit of a problem because the wired headphones I use—unlike my Bluetooth Airpods—do not have a pass-through option, so I’m effectively cut off from the outside world when I’m wearing them. Ben hasn’t said anything, but I know he’s becoming increasingly annoyed that I’m not responding to things he’s said—from the other room—simply because I can’t hear him. So, other than not listening to music while I’m working in the office when he’s home at all, I needed to find another solution. I could have gotten a plug-in bluetooth transmitter to plug into my Minidisc player and use my Airpods, but my wired headphones sound so much better than the Airpods that really wasn’t a viable option. The other thing I could do was to get some small powered speakers that sounded good, fit my limited desk space, and didn’t break the bank. I looked, but nothing new really reached out and grabbed me. Then I remembered the AR Powered Partners I had back in 1999…
I liked them a lot, but—as I do so often with stuff—I foolishly sold them when I’d moved on to other interests and then later come to regret it.
Since they’re long out of production, I checked on eBay to see if any were being sold, and the vast majority of ones that were available (now over twenty-five years old) looked like they’d been ridden hard. So I set up a notification to be emailed whenever new offerings went up. A couple weeks ago a pair showed up with a Buy It Now price of only $70 (normally they go for twice that in awful condition). They looked mint—or at least as mint as any piece of used electronics can look after twenty five years. The seller mentioned that they were a single-owner and had been used gently indoors.
How could I not? They arrived a couple days ago.
For being so small (relatively) I’d forgotten how heavy they were. The enclosures are cast aluminum, and the 5-inch woofers have magnets almost as big as the drivers themselves. And yes, they were absolutely mint. They had scratchy volume controls, but a quick disassembly and a squirt of De-oxit into the pots cleared that up quick enough.
How do they sound? Fab-u-lous! As good as I remember. Now I’ve just got to watch that I don’t play them too loud!