Another (real green) Newbie with Monitor10s

jmobrien68

Howdy!
I've been lurking around doing some research and started to feel a bit guilty about not participating.
I recently acquired a pair of Monitor 10s at a Goodwill Store for $19.99.
I see these big **** speakers taped together on the floor and see the Polk Audio name plate and decide to examine them. Being just a step above a novice the first thing I do is pull the yards and yards of scotch tape off them and remove the grills to check for any rot around the speakers (by lurking, I've come to find that the Polk rubber never rots). So then I look at the back plate of the speakers and notice the fuses (which I've never seen on a speaker before) and these two little nubs. At this point, I'm trying to figure out how you attach speaker wires to these little nubs... maybe they are a high end connection that I'm not familiar with? (don't answer that yet). Anyway, I notice a couple guys starting to shadow me and I realize I need to s**t or get off the pot so I decide to take them... worst case scenario, I wasted 20 bucks. Man, what a surprise when I picked these big boys up and realized how heavy they were. On my way home, I stop at my local hardware store and pick up some fuses just to have them. I get home and start googling how to hook up these speakers with the strange speaker terminals and after looking at a few images, I finally realize they look strange, because they are all broken off (what a dumbass I am). So I take the wire from my current speakers and hold them to the broken terminals of the Monitor10s and the first one seems to be working well but the other one sounds very sick. My son and I realize on the good one when you lightly push in the 6.5 inch drivers, the 'bass speaker' pops out... didn't do it on the bad one. So we pop the bass speaker out and see that there's no tags or lead wires on them (many thanks to Kim for explaining the concept of 'passive radiators to me). Kim also told me the drivers were frozen and I should look into ordering new ones and I could order new post terminals from Parts Express. I had some other things going on so put the speakers away until this past weekend when I had a little time to mess with them. As a means of trying to get a good listen to the 'good speaker' I went old school DIY and took a skinny drill bit and drilled into the broken terminal and wrapped speaker wire around a screw and screwed them in and damn, was I impressed with how they sounded and decided to get to work on the 'bad' speaker. So I did the screw trick to the bad speaker, but noticed this time when I connected the wires, I was getting nothing from the speaker (first time I was getting sound from the tweeter... so I hope I didn't screw anything up with the screws on this one). In the meantime I called and ordered two MW6503's (which should be arriving today). So right now, I'm crossing my fingers that when I pop them in that all will be right, but I got a nagging feeling that it won't be, so I might just come crawling around begging for help.

Thanks for listening.

Polkie2009

Howdy Irish, welcome into the club sir! The speakers you bought are a real favorite model of Polk ,a lot of cp members have them or have had them in the past. I considered getting some myself a couple of years ago, but found some LS50's to try. Who knows, maybe someday I'll try the 10's also,lol. Good luck with the repair, hopefully someone can chime in with some input about helping you out with the speaker connectors problem.

TennMan

Welcome to Club Polk! That was a great deal on the monitor 10s. I had a pair of 10Bs for a couple of years and loved them. Some people love them so well that they keep them forever. Other people like me use them as a stepping stone to SDAs. Either way you can't go wrong at that price. I look forward to hearing you tell us how you like them once you get them working properly.

boston1450

Welcome jmo. As a club member you get a discount & free shipping. So make sure you tell Polk when you call your a member .....the 10's are a nice speaker that can match well with alot of receivers out there & give you lots if enjoyment. If you keep your eyes open you may even land some stock tilt stands that are a big plus. You will be very happy im sure with that FIND you found. I love my 10's & a very well liked here on CP. Welcome again

Faustin

Have a set of 10A's that I recently had the cross overs rebuilt and put new tweeters in. Bought these new in 1979. They sound amazing

jmobrien68

Got my 6.5 drivers on Friday. Installed them on Saturday and still had no audio when I connected the speaker wires to my makeshift connectors. I took the back plate off and popped the plastic clips and it appears that when I put the screw in I twisted one of the connectors so it was hitting the other one and when I straightened them out... SUCCESS! Love these speakers and the Peerless Tweeters still sound great! I'll always go used with audio equipment... I dig that 'ghost in the machine' feeling. So now two more newbie questions...
1) I see the original stands have a 6 degree back tilt. Currently my 10A's are sitting on record crates that I built myself that put the 10As about 15" off the ground. Is a 6 degree tilt gonna do anything special for me? (Yeah, I know I could just try it and see if I like it, but just wanted to see what others thought)

and

2) Could someone explain the concept of rebuilt crossovers (again... I'm real green)

drumminman

jmobrien68 wrote: »

So now two more newbie questions...
1) I see the original stands have a 6 degree back tilt. Currently my 10A's are sitting on record crates that I built myself that put the 10As about 15" off the ground. Is a 6 degree tilt gonna do anything special for me? (Yeah, I know I could just try it and see if I like it, but just wanted to see what others thought)

Tilting them back is a sort of time alignment. Should improve imaging a little the idea being that the high frequencies will reach you about the same time as the mids and lows.

Re: the crossovers, Polk voiced and built those speakers with were the best components available back in the day. However, those capacitors and resistors are either worn out with age, or there are choices today that are much better sonically than anything available back in the 70's/80's. Replacing those with modern film caps and non inductive wire would resistors will elevate those speakers to a whole new level.

If you can solder it's a pretty easy job, and rewarding to boot!

StantonZ

jmobrien68 wrote: »

1) I see the original stands have a 6 degree back tilt. Currently my 10A's are sitting on record crates that I built myself that put the 10As about 15" off the ground. Is a 6 degree tilt gonna do anything special for me? (Yeah, I know I could just try it and see if I like it, but just wanted to see what others thought)

and

2) Could someone explain the concept of rebuilt crossovers (again... I'm real green)

I use something called "tip toes" instead of stands; "spikes" will do something similar on carpet. I'm not a big fan of stands with large speakers. You'll see a lot bigger difference in replacing old crossover components than you will with stands. Protect those peerless tweets (I treasure my 4's)!

jmobrien68

Thanks!
I was thinking about throwing together a little box/stand to give the 10s their tilt and now that I see the logic behind it (ta drumminman) I'll try it.

So... where do I begin with crossovers (and for the record, I suck at soldering)