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Old Polk Audio RTi10's -- worth fixing up?

yuletide

yuletide

New Member
Hey folks!

I have an old pair of Polk Audio RTi10 tower speakers that I got from my old landlord and are 10+ years old at this point. They are in pretty solid shape except for a blown tweeter, and one woofer that buzzes occasionally.

It also sounds like there is some kind of sand or debris inside when I move them, not sure if that's from bad foam or something else? I haven't opened them up.

My main question is if it's worth putting money to repair them -- find a replacement tweeter, or invest in a new setup. I'd like to build out a 3.1-5.1 arrangement (also got some Jamo surrounds and a sub for free, will hook those up next). Looks like cost for tweeter would be $75 on ebay, plus a matching-ish polk center online or local (bay area) for 100-150. Speakers are in a shared living room hooked up to an Onkyo TX-SR602 (with a broken remote... another issue) so they dont have to be top notch.

I've been compensating for lack of center/tweeter for now by just using the TV speaker as a center channel which works decently, but time for an upgrade.

Would love any thoughts!
 
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Buzzing can be caused by many things. It could be that there is something loose in the cabinet that is vibrating. It could be that one of the speakers is not properly secured (I once had a buzzing problem, when the woofer put out certain frequencies, and it turned out that the tweeter was not tightly screwed in, which was vibrating when those particular frequencies were put out by the woofer). It could be a problem with the woofer, such that it needs to be replaced. Obviously, you would want to check for other issues first, and one way to test that would be to switch woofers in your two speakers; assuming you tighten the woofers enough, if the sound goes with the woofer, it is the woofer that needs replaced, and if the sound stays in the same cabinet, then it isn't the woofer. One needs to be careful about over-tightening things, too, as one can strip out the wood where the screw is inserted if one gets carried away with tightening.

You should definitely open them up and remove the sand and debris in them.

As for the speakers, if you can get them up and running for $75 (which seems high for one tweeter, but...), they are worth it.
 
Debris is most likely toys from little kids putting something in the nice port hole in the front. I've seen lots of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars in speakers! The RTi 10 was a nice speaker and worth a little effort getting back into shape.
 
I had a pair of those for two minutes with the same symptoms. In my case, the spiders had become detached from the basket. Use some Aileens glue to reattach and they sounded fairly decent, easy flip.
 
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