Bought a pair of SDA 1's

gotchabigfish

Got them on ebay, always wanted Polks! Seller said one of the mids was bad, one of the 4 in the left cabinet, when they got here , it turns out 3 of the 4 on the left, and 2 of the 4 on the right are bad. Seller agrees to have them replaced or repaired, and ideas where?? I told him I would research it and let him know..thanks, oh new user too..nice site!!! Jim

audiobilly

Greetings Jim! Welcome to Club Polk! The madness does not end here

Older Polks have a history of the drivers freezing. For simplicity sake, the magnets shift (due to originally being glued to the back-plate and/or basket, and the glue has now failed) and bind up the voice coil. When these older Polks are shipped and bounced around, it will compound this problem. So who's at fault? When they left the seller there may have very well only been one bad driver. The seller may have not known about this problem, or maybe he did. Or he did not pack them well enough. Ya'll figure that out,

There is no re-cone kit for these. You might have some luck building a jig and trying to get the magnet and back plate into their original positions (read, more patience than the big man himself), then fix them into place with JB weld or some industrial adhesive. You can buy new drivers thru Polk Customer service. Pull the drivers out and the model number ( such as, MW6500, MW6502, MW6503,,,etc) should be on the back. Or you can see if any of the gang here has any to sell. Or there is Ebay. But the same problem applies when uneducated sellers do not know how to prepare the "used" drivers for shipment.

There are numerous threads on this forum about the issues of "frozen drivers". How to deal with them and such. One of the most famous methods of affixing the magnets and plates back to the basket is with JB weld. Search the forum here for that as well. You might consider treating your good drivers and any you get in the future. Just food for thought.

I myself have gone down that path of learning about how to deal with these vintage babies. I do not regret one moment of it. I now have a set of SDA-1Cs' that is in process of refurbishing, I can not wait until they are done!

Good luck with your new speakers. Once you get a little education on those babies, I think that you will find them very appealing.

dpowell

With 5 drivers bad, you'll easiliy be $150+ into replacements by the time you add in shipping costs. If you do get replacements, make sure you get the right models since each cabinet has two different mid driver models. Hard to tell what to advise but audiobilly has some good thoughts. Best of luck and welcome to CP!

eeagle

The SDA 1 and the SDA 1A both used the same MW6509 driver (6.5 in) for the main and the SDA driver.

The SDA 1 used 2 SL1000 tweeters.

The SDA 1A used 2 SL2000 tweeters.

I have the SDA 1A's and they are the reason I now own the 1.2's....amazing experience.

gdb

Build yourself a jig and re-center those voice coils and glue the living Hell outa them. click link below for how-to info.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79649&highlight=magnet

I also buy frozen drivers to repair myself if you don't feel like fooling with it.