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Polk Monitor 7 Radiator Question

DolphnSmooth

DolphnSmooth

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
Hello everyone,

Just this week I happened to pick up what I believe are a first generation pair of Polk Monitor 7s. I picked them up from a yard sale for $50, and since posting on Reddit, have been told that at least the mid woofers are not original, and perhaps the radiators as well. Since then, just tonight I've bought a pair of MW6500 mid woofers to replace the pair currently installed.

Right now I'm left wondering if the passive radiators look to be original as well. These are the 8" radiators, and both seem to match other images of the original monitor 7s. I'm trying to get these back to original if possible, and would appreciate any advice about what you all think.

P.S. Do the low serial numbers really mean that they were among the first 50 speakers produced, or is there any other meaning to these numbers? This made me a bit curious.

P.P.S. Sorry about the low quality pics, they changed to lower quality when I posted the thread. About the serials, one is 00049 and the other is 00046.

20170501_223142.png 20170501_223155.png 20170501_223156.png IMG_20170428_201454.jpg
 
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If the mid-drivers that came with your speakers have the same gray cardboard ring around them like your original PR's have they are the original ones and you should put them back in.

Yes, you have extremely early Monitor 7's. Congrats!
 
I did end up taking apart the mid drivers as well to see what they looked like inside, but I didn't find anything marked as Polk. This, coupled with other's opinions about their outside appearance led me to believe they aren't original. Here is the photo of the inside.

IMG_20170430_225857.jpg
 
Ok, those do not look like any vintage Polk driver I've seen. The originals would only have 4 spokes, 4 screw holes and be the same silver color on the back as your PR. The cone material would be untreated paper, just like your PR.
 
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In that case, I do have a pair of the original MW6500 that I ordered from eBay today. They look like this.

$_1.JPG $_1 (1).JPG IMG_20170502_021952.jpg

As far as the PR goes, until I hear any opinion saying otherwise, they do look like they are original as well. I spent a bit of time today trying to find out which mid-range model belonged to the original Monitor 7, and found that it was the 6500 and I believe later 6503 replacement that fit the original specifications. I picked them up concerned they wouldn't last long, and got verification from the seller that they indeed test good.

As for the tweeters, I do believe these are the Peerless version as well.
 
Those eBay drivers are a later version. Like I said, the originals would be untreated paper with the gray cardboard trim ring and silver back.

Yes, those are the original Peerless tweeters.
 
Well, that's about the only pair of drivers that I could find for sale at the moment, but I see what you mean about how the real originals should look. I can definitely make do with this pair, and look for an actual original pair in the meantime. These should run fine, and hopefully sound better than whatever is currently in there. I'm looking forward to trying to complete this pair of speakers, and up next would be a service of the crossovers.
 
Those original mid bass drivers are almost definitely Philips. Not bad drivers on their own, but obviously not correct in this application.
 
Impressive original/early model 7's. Probably assembled by Matthew Polk himself I would guess. That's a bit of history. Might want to post this info over at the forums on the Polk site. You might get even more info and history on them.

I recently gave a late set of 7A's to a close friend and I still have a set of 7B's in my collection. Both with Peerless tweets. Love the Polks. Fine speakers. Enjoy.
 
Something to know about some of the mid-woofer drivers in these Polks is that the glue on the magnets can let go and the magnets can shift which will bind the voicecoil. This might have been the reason the mid-woofers were replaced in this set. A typical mod is to epoxy the magnet onto the basket so that won't happen. There's some other common mods for the Polk monitor series out there on the Polk site.
 
These eBay drivers that I've bought, I will definitely be adding the epoxy to stabilize the magnets very soon here. One of the first pair I ordered arrived frozen, so I needed to grab a third and it's fine. I'll document my project as it goes from.here and will post pictures once I've finished the driver installation. I'll post over to the Polk forums as well to see what others have to say about them too.

They'll get to be driven on my Sx 1250 I've just cleaned and started using. Excited, they'd already sounded good before these new drivers.
 
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