Best Of

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Those Avid 100s were the first real speakers I bought; they perfectly fit my graduate student budget. Spent weeks auditioning options at HiFi Buys in Atlanta. Had them for 10 years until some opportunists purloined them from my house during a move, along with all the rest of my audio gear. Curiously, they overlooked my Thorens 165 turntable (which I still have and use). With my insurance money, I went to HiFi Buys Outlet and immediately fell in love with a pair of demo Polk Audio SDA 2B Studios in black. Got a Denon DRA-75VR receiver in the same deal. Sweet. They did not have the SDA interconnect at the outlet store, but they sent me to the parts guy at the main store, saying he could order one for me. Went there, told him what I needed, he told me what it would cost, then he stopped and said "I think I may have one of those in the back." He brought out the cable in an envelope, handed it to me and said he thought it likely belonged with the speakers I bought. No charge. That was 1988. The 2Bs have been fed with a number of increasingly powerful amps, and continue to perform beautifully. Back in 1998, one of the tweeters blew out; Polk got me a replacement in a couple of days (SL-2500 (I think) for the SL-2000, which had been discontinued.) Later I replaced the tweeters with the RD0-194s. Aural bliss continues.

Note: I take no responsibility for the various and sundry typos and misapprehensions reproduced in the vintage Gordon Miller Music catalog scan above.

Growing up, I had heard of Polk Audio, but there weren't any retailers for their home audio speakers in my area. People mostly had Infinity, Cerwin-Vega, or Advent. I listened to some of their mobile products and thought they sounded nice. Around the age of 30 or so, I finally realized that harsh boomy speakers from the likes of Infinity and Cerwin Vega were no longer my style. I had dabbled in some of the Satellite/Subwoofer systems from the Canadian brand Energy, but found that was still severely lacking in mid-range detail. Around this same time, I started reading various Audio magazine reviews including Stereophile. Stereophile had recently published a glowing review of Polk's little RT25i bookshelf speakers. At the time, I was spending a lot of time with my future wife and she desperately needed a proper stereo system to replace the junky all in one Panasonic stereo she had since her middle school years. We both appreciated better sounding music, but she had never looked into upgrading. I decided to replace her all in one plastic system with something that might sound better.

That ended up being my first of many Polk purchases. I was amazed how much quality sound could come out of that little bookshelf speaker. A few years later after buying my my first house, I bought a pair of RT800i and a CS245i to setup a proper surround system. Later, I upgraded to a CS400i and added a 2nd set of RT25i for rear surround to give a full 7.1 system. That arrangement stuck with me for many years.
In the meantime, as I had some spare rooms to fool around with a dedicated 2-ch system, I decided to try some of Polk's vintage lineup. I found a nice set of Monitor 5 with peerless tweeters and loved that laid back sound and enjoyed them for quite some time. From there, I would try every vintage Polk set I could find locally if the price was reasonable. In and out the door they went...RTA 11T, Monitor 7, and a pair of SDA-1C, which I held for some time and they displaced the RT800i in the living room.
Many years later based on glowing reviews from this forum, came some newer stuff (which I still have): Polk R200/R300 for the living room, and RTiA7/CSiA6 for the basement theater mixed with some other Polks from older generations. Out of the many sets through the doors over the last 25 years, I still have that original pair of RT25i from Crutchfield in my basement theater working as height speakers in an Atmos 5.2.1 setup. I will always have Polk Audio in the house.

First Polk speakers were a pair of used SDA 2Bs, I had heard them at a party months before that and when our tax return check arrived I picked them up. I'll always remember the looks on our faces when we first put them into the rig, it was the look of "wow! So that's what we've been missing!).

Originally came to this forum seeking and receiving help on restoring the 2Bs.

2 years ago I picked up a pair of L600s and the 2Bs currently reside at my daughters' place.