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Polk Monitor 10a's: What would you do?

J

JohnM33

New Member
I know these are well-regarded speakers by some folks, but now I wonder if I'm in over my head. Please advise.

Picked up a pair of Polk Audio Monitor 10A's with the black Peerless tweeters. Guy said one tweeter was blown and could not demo them at all, but I took a chance for $60. Well, got them home and there's no high end on either speaker. I also own a pair of 10B's in good working order and swapped fuses with both pairs -- no luck.

So... what would you do next? I know crossovers and capacitors can be an issue, but I have no experience there. And I see replacement tweeters start at $50/ each, if you're lucky enough to find a match.

Are these worth taking to a speaker specialist? How much money is worth putting in them? Cabinets and other drivers appear to be in good working order.
 
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To test the tweeter it must be disconnected. Check with ohm meter on low scale and look for resistance. Open circuit means bad tweeter. If ok than it's a bad connection or bad capacitor in the crossover. Since the original Peerless tweeters are no more except used I would call Polk and check on a pair of RDO-194 tweeters. These are replacements for the originals are much better. Tell them you are a member of Club Polk and you will get a discount and possibly free shipping. The speakers are old and crossovers will need to be recapped. I have used the tweeters I mentioned and with crossover rebuild customers were very happy. Good speakers
 
loose ends said:
To test the tweeter it must be disconnected. Check with ohm meter on low scale and look for resistance. Open circuit means bad tweeter. If ok than it's a bad connection or bad capacitor in the crossover. Since the original Peerless tweeters are no more except used I would call Polk and check on a pair of RDO-194 tweeters. These are replacements for the originals are much better. Tell them you are a member of Club Polk and you will get a discount and possibly free shipping. The speakers are old and crossovers will need to be recapped. I have used the tweeters I mentioned and with crossover rebuild customers were very happy. Good speakers
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The RDO-194's are replacements for the SL-2000 tweeters, not the Peerless tweeters. They are not interchangeable, to use the RDO-194's in place of the Peerless tweeters would require modification to the crossovers. Not really hard to do but not exactly easy either. It's pretty easy to source the Peerless tweeters on the internet and a less expensive route to fully functional Polk Monitor 10A's. Peace.
 
As others said.
1. Check the tweeters with a multimeter first.
2. If the tweeters are bad then source exact replacements on the big auction site or here on BT with a WTB posting.
3. Definitely recap the cross-overs regardless of whether the tweeters are bad or good. Those 10A's are old enough that you'll want new caps. There are plenty of recommendations as to what brand/type to use here on AK. (I use Dayton 5% film caps in most of my projects.)

This isn't the Dollars and Sense section of AK, but $60 for a set with bad tweeters isn't bad - even after you factor in the cost of doing the above. Are the cabinets good? Grills ok?

Also, you'll want to think about epoxying the mid-woofer magnets. The Polks had a chronic problem with magnet shift that will kill those drivers. There are threads here and on the Polk website forums that will describe this.

Pics?
 
I love the old Polks and I've had a ton of different ones come and go. With that said, you have to be cautious about the money you dump into them because their resale doesn't reflect how good they sound. If you're going to hold onto them forever (unlikely) it doesn't matter. Replace the tweets, do a re-cap, plus all the other upgrades. They'll sound better. But if you're just trying to get them going again to pass on later, you may find yourself underwater pretty quickly.

If you can find a set of Peerless for $60, I'd probably do that.
 
audiosignal said:
"MW Audio" brand tweeter. Yeah right. Expensive but cheap quality Chinese knock-off? I would be leery of any look-alike knock-off. Worse yet, I can already see some people buy these and pass them off as Peerless tweeters.
Click to expand...

Actually, Midwest Speaker Repair is a reputable company that knows their stuff. And I've seen multiple people praise this particular tweeter as being high quality and sounding very similar to the original Peerless. I wouldn't hesitate to go this route.
 
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