Polk vintage speakers, great quality at cheap prices

4thHorsemen

Just trying to understand. I can speculate but I'd like your guys' input.

I've seen guys on here score nice vintage speakers at great prices. For example, I'm looking at this: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/ele/1770554697.html

RTA 12C's looking in great shape for a mere $150. One site I found says these were mfg'd between '84-'87 and had a MSRP of $960/pair. My father boght a pair of JBL L166 Horizon Studio Monitors for around $350/pair new back in '78. They're in excellent shape, lightly used, and after a lil research I understand these to be collectors due to their quality. After re-foaming I expect I could get at least the orig. price paid for these or maybe a lil more. Given the higher price tag of the RTA's I would think they would yield higher quality although I understand this is not always the case. Could it be that Polk lines were produced in higher numbers than JBL's and JBL fan's strong loyalty keep their vintage speakers at higher resale? Just curious. I know a lot of you here have a lot of knowledge so I'm interested on your take on this.

vc69

I'm sure others here will chime in soon, but I would have already bought those. They look to be in excellent condition and you could easily flip them if you didn't like them.

dane_peterson

Those look minty! I'd say $150 is a pretty solid price for them.

audiobilly

They look good, and a good price, even "if" a driver was frozen. If I were within driving distance, they would come home with me.

Knucklehead

Lots of good stuff to be had if your patient and ready to buy at a momments notice.

Jstas

Even if it had a frozen driver, you're stealing them for $150! Go grab them. There are plenty of people here with spare drivers or, I'm pretty sure you can call up Polk Audio customer service and get replacement/upgrade drivers. Totally worth it and honestly, out of the few Monitor series speakers I've heard these are probably my favorite and they have a cool factor with the exposed crossovers.

As far as your questions on JBL, the ones you reference are studio monitors. They weren't necessarily top of the line back then but they were a nice speaker for a nice price. However, finding them in good condition is rare. Many need to have a re-foam job done on the woofers. So a good pair will get top dollar to a collector. At the same time though, $350 back in 1978 bucks was a small fortune. $350 now is peanuts comparatively. They didn't really hold their value. Because they were in that magic range of $100-$500 back in the '70's, they have maintained a price but the price point has dropped invisibly due to inflation. In other words, they may still be around $300 a pair but $300 don't go as far as it used to. They aren't maintaining value because of interest but rather because they don't hold up well over the years so demand is a bit past serviceable supply which keeps values a bit higher. Not necessarily because "...fan's strong loyalty keep their vintage speakers at higher resale?"

As far as the Polk speakers, the surrounds on the woofers are likely rubber and they won't degrade as much or at the same rate as the foam surrounds on the JBLs. Given that, there are many more still around that are completely serviceable. Most repairs/upgrades are related to crossover components and wiring which are all readily available and fairly inexpensively because of standardization for the entire electronic component market, not just audio. Add to that the fact that Polk Audio still supports it's old models as best as it can and you can see why the speakers have remained attainable and in ready supply. JBL doesn't support much past 6-10 years ago.

Get those Monitors and if you don't have amplification, get a NAD amplifier to power them. A 902 would be easy to find, fairly cheap and more than adequate to get decent sound out of it and you'll love those Monitors!

Hillbilly61

$150 = definite steal. Set up an appt. and check it out.

Also, most legit sellers will demo. I keep some lamp zip cord and an ancient 30 wpc receiver on hand to cart to a seller for demoing, as to make the demo as hassle free as possible for him/her. This technique works especially if they are reluctant to crawl around their system to do the necessary hookups for a demo.

4thHorsemen

Thanks Jstas for the explanation. I'm just a curious creature :rolleyes:

Thanks everyone else for the encouragement. I emailed the seller hours ago but fell asleep. I'm usually never able to get the jump on a good deal like this but looks like I'll have them home with me in the next hour. Guy says they sound great and has them ready to demo.

jon s

JBL 166 Horizons were a lot more expensive than $350/pair... they were $510 each.

4thHorsemen

Jon,

Looks like you're right. I was going by what my father recalls paying for them. On the other hand that would make it the 2010 equivalent of $3,550 today for the pair. There's no way my father could even afford that back then. I did find that in the first year they were sold (1975), retail price was $375 each. That would be $2,610 a pair in 2010 dollars. I guess it's possible he paid something close to that. Just that he grew up dirt poor and I've never seen him ever buy anything nice for himself. I wouldn't even spend that much and I spend money when I can't afford it! LOL On the upside, I recently saw a nice pair sell on ebay for $609. Haven't had them refoamed yet so he might keep them if he likes them although I just bought him some M70s that I think sound incredible but I have rookie, untrained, just beginning to develop ears. Nevertheless, jstas made some very good points.