Question about tweeters for Monitor 5A's

old_brown_shoe

howdy all,

a friend of mine gave me his old pair of Monitor 5A's. these are from 1986. i hooked them up to my old onkyo receiver and they sound great to me. recently i noticed the sound in one of them went very flat and muffled. i replaced the fuse in back and now it sounds great. i believe that fuse is just for the tweeter right? the difference between fuse and no fuse was huge though. without the tweeter - just mid range and woofer working - the sound was just so dead and flat. like awful. does it make sense that this should be the case if only the tweeter stops working?

thanks in advance!
OBS

On3s&Z3r0s

I'd say that sounds right to me. True that fuse is just there to protect the tweeter. But, the tweeter covers the biggest part of the frequency range. The Monitor 5's are just a 2-way speaker. The mid-woofer does all the low to middle frequencies. The big thing at the bottom isn't a proper woofer, it's a passive radiator. It's just a fancy port to give the low bass somewhere to radiate out from the speaker cabinet. With no signal to the tweeter, you'd lose most of the articulation of the speaker.

old_brown_shoe

that explanation works for me. especially the part about the mid-woofer handling all the the low to mids. that's why things sounded so flat without the tweeter. thanks for the reply!

one more question. the number on the back of tweeter is: 55142682. is this the Peerless tweeter?

george daniel

does the tweeter appear to have a "dimple" in the middle?

On3s&Z3r0s

It's fairly easy to identify the tweeters from their appearance. The Monitor 4 speakers in the pictures on this thread (scroll down about 3 pics into the first post) have the Peerless: http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118475
They are all black with the leads that extend down at a diagonal from the tweeter dome.

The first pictures in this thread are the SL1000: http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25377
They look pretty much like the Peerless but have a silver faceplate with Polk Audio stamped into it.

SL2000's (if you scroll down on the same thread for the SL1000 above and click the thumbnail pic) have leads that extend out laterally instead of diagonally and say Silver Coil Dome.

Edit: Oops, just noticed there are also good American/Danish Peerless pics on the second page of the tweeter identification thread. Consider the pics in the first thread a free bonus!

Joe08867

I would bet they have the Peerless tweeter seeing they were built in 86'.

DON73

old_brown_shoe wrote: »

howdy all,

a friend of mine gave me his old pair of Monitor 5A's. these are from 1986. i hooked them up to my old onkyo receiver and they sound great to me. recently i noticed the sound in one of them went very flat and muffled. i replaced the fuse in back and now it sounds great. i believe that fuse is just for the tweeter right? the difference between fuse and no fuse was huge though. without the tweeter - just mid range and woofer working - the sound was just so dead and flat. like awful. does it make sense that this should be the case if only the tweeter stops working?

thanks in advance!
OBS

The fuses blew for a reason. Be very careful of how hard you drive your Onkyo. You most likely turned the volume up too high causing the amplifier in the Onkyo to clip. You either need to turn the volume down or get an amp with more power. The 5s are great little speakers and as a gift they're even better! Congratulations and welcome to the forum

old_brown_shoe

On3s&Z3r0s wrote: »

It's fairly easy to identify the tweeters from their appearance. The Monitor 4 speakers in the pictures on this thread (scroll down about 3 pics into the first post) have the Peerless: http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118475
They are all black with the leads that extend down at a diagonal from the tweeter dome.

The first pictures in this thread are the SL1000: http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25377
They look pretty much like the Peerless but have a silver faceplate with Polk Audio stamped into it.

SL2000's (if you scroll down on the same thread for the SL1000 above and click the thumbnail pic) have leads that extend out laterally instead of diagonally and say Silver Coil Dome.

Edit: Oops, just noticed there are also good American/Danish Peerless pics on the second page of the tweeter identification thread. Consider the pics in the first thread a free bonus!

thanks for the references! i must have the Peerless then. here are some pics. i'm thinking they are SL2500s? the speakers look like 7s i've seen but the 5A in the serial number must mean these are 5As.

old_brown_shoe

DON73 wrote: »

The fuses blew for a reason. Be very careful of how hard you drive your Onkyo. You most likely turned the volume up too high causing the amplifier in the Onkyo to clip. You either need to turn the volume down or get an amp with more power. The 5s are great little speakers and as a gift they're even better! Congratulations and welcome to the forum

thanks for the welcome don. it's very cool to see people are still interested in this "vintage" stuff. man, this was highschool for me. in fact my highschool buddy was the one that gave me these 5As.

anyway, you're right about being aware of the volume. my 17 month old son discovered the big knob on the Onkyo TX-8210 is the volume, and got to it before i did he jumped like two feet but that was what did it.

DON73

old_brown_shoe wrote: »

thanks for the references! i must have the Peerless then. here are some pics. i'm thinking they are SL2500s? the speakers look like 7s i've seen but the 5A in the serial number must mean these are 5As.

Those are Peerless. The 2500s don't have the exposed wires.