Jdfelice.
Have you given some thought to putting together a vintage system for your Father? There's still a lot of great sounding amps, speakers, ect from the "goldern age of audio", that has loving been taken care through the years, and can give a lot of modern equipment a good run for the money. I sure your Father would appreciate a classic 60/70s era system system to listen to his Blues and Jazz recording from that time. One thing that you mentioned in that your father used to own a pair of Acoustic Research AR3, and with that in mind, I wonder how much would like a modern day speaker, or would it would be better to have a pair of vintage speakers that have the "Boston" sound that Acoustic Research, Advent, ect where know for. Put that together with maybe a well taken care of amp from that era - and there are plenty of Marantz, McIntosh, Fisher, ect out there, along with a quality turntable and he'll have a system that would take him back to those days.