A VR3 Pair of One of a Kind

Mikey081057

Today I received my long awaited LSIm 703's back from Trey.

Trey and I have been collaborating for some months getting the 703's down to him to perform his magic on what is already a fine albeit big bookshelf speaker.

Could it be possible that VR3 could improve the performance of the the 703?

In a word **** yeah he could. Allright that's more than a word.

I have them next to my VR3 LSi 9's which always performed incredibly, but i felt they were a little difficult to drive with my tube amp.

Now I only have a few hours on them, and expect them to improve slightly, but the difference between stock 703's the modded 9's and the modded 703's is very distinct.

The stock 703's to me seemed to do everything well and could hang with most bookshelf speakers in their price range. I honestly don't have anything in my inventory that compares. I guess I could compare them to the LSi 15's, but don't feel like moving them. My guess is that you would have to pony up a considerable amount to compare these with.

First off, bass response is like no other bookshelf speaker I have heard. Incredibly tight and accurate at any volume. I say this b/c I would avoid listening to Dave Matthews as to my ear all of the bass in his recording always seemed to be over accentuated and somewhat difficult for my equipment to reproduce accurately. Bordering muddy like the "loudness switch" was activated. And it only seemed like Dave Matthews as most other recordings were fine. I would like it in the car, could be my room acoustics, but I avoided it in the listening room. To my surprise, this mod solved that issue for my ears.

The overall blending, depth and expansion of the soundstage is noticeably and greatly improved. I feel like the sweetspot for listening has expanded like i ran audessy. My Yaqin MC100B sounds phenomenal matched with the VR3 703's.

I couldn't have imagined that the blending and accuracy of the high frequencies would have improved, as I felt that was the biggest improvement the LSIm's had over the LSi's. They are even smoother now and again more present outside the sweetspot than before.

All in, this is a moderately expensive but huge bang for the buck mod that I know Trey might opt not to do in the future b/c the cost of materials and labor might be hard to justify but my first impression is that I couldn't have imagined them sounding this different and would not know what to compare them to. My thought is that you would have to audition speakers in the 3 to 5k range to achieve this level of performance.

I will leave all of the technical questions and details up to Trey to answer.

Thank you Trey! You are amazing, and the work you do is remarkable.

The TEST SITE:

hochpt21

Some sweet audio **** in that picture.

Glad you're enjoying the upgraded speakers!

danz1906

Nice Speakers!

Mikey081057

Vocals male and female are nicely improved too.

Mikey081057

Trey says 200 - 250 hrs burn in... I will be putting a lot of hours on these to get them settled in. Really sweet in my tube rig...

TNHNDYMAN

Could we get a ballpark price for this upgrade for other 703 owners out there to consider. Glad you are enjoying them already.

Mikey081057

TNHNDYMAN wrote: »

Could we get a ballpark price for this upgrade for other 703 owners out there to consider. Glad you are enjoying them already.

I'll defer to Trey on that

Mikey081057

Listening to some classical... very accurate, tight and dynamic.

VR3

Thanks for the detailed write up Mike! I cant wait to hear your thoughts after 200-250 hours. I feel like they are going to really transform!

This mod was very difficult and had many obstacles to overcome but the end results on my end were far more than noticeable. I agree with Mike that the highs were so much more improved than I had anticipated, particular due to the fact the stock parts were decent versus the normal not so nice stuff. The highs really came to life after the mod, putting the stock to modded side by side made the stock ones sound subdued and grainy.

As far if I will do another one of these, that is something I need to think about. I think a second pair will go faster than the first as I know the layout versus starting from scratch but there are still things to consider - IE: The cut out has to be enlarged by a router to accommodate the modification. The next issue was the mod literally can not be oversized by even 1/16" and I utilize the stock plates so I would still need the speakers or at a minimum the plate.

With that said I am debating on publicly offering these or doing them as they are inquired about - the pricing will be at $1,050.00 + shipping/paypal a pair with a four week lead time. There is a tremendous amount of labor in this modification and they are not many other ways to do it without going external.

With that said I thoroughly enjoyed building these, first modification that has been a challenge - in that manner. I can usually formulate a plan within 20 seconds without even drawing it out where as these took four days to figure out the arrangement.

Thank you again Mike!

Mike Reeter

Mike, You've got some beautiful Polk Classics there...Trey, awesome attention to detail, as usual.

Mikey081057

Also of note: the modded 703's weigh about 6 lbs. more than the stock. A sturdy pair of stands with a big top plate like the Skylan's is strongly advised.

VR3

Thank you Mike!

They definitely gained some weight!! That is for sure!

Mikey081057

I let them burn in a bit overnite with low volume. Listened to some sacd source today... Like butta..They are starting to open up a bit and are very fast and dynamic. Cant get over the difference from stock ...wish i had more to compare with

VR3

That speaker fully broken in will be a force to reckon with. Best sounding modded speaker I have heard since my Super Towers (right out the gate)

Toolfan66

Nice work Trey as always, it does look like it was a little bit of a pain..

Conradicles

Fantastic work on an already great speaker.

Summerwind2

great post!

TroyD

I'm as hard as a diamond in an ice storm right now.

BDT

VR3

I wish all my customers were as excited as BDT! LOL

Thanks guys!!

Obsession18

I'm assuming the upgraded crossover is quite a bit larger then stock, by decreasing the overall cabinet volume is there an impact on box tuning, paricularly since this is a smaller book shelf speaker?

northernwind

awesome job,I wish someone did something like this in canada,would totally pay the price for upgrade.Mike,how much did it cost you?

Mikey081057

northernwind wrote: »

awesome job,I wish someone did something like this in canada,would totally pay the price for upgrade.Mike,how much did it cost you?

Trey has it at $1050 US + paypal and shipping...so I guess there might be a little variance based on the exchange rate at the time. I don't even have a guess as to what you would pay new or used to get something sonically comparable.

PolishDude

I wish I could hear something like this to see what great speakers should sound like

Mikey081057

PolishDude wrote: »

I wish I could hear something like this to see what great speakers should sound like

They are earbuds times infinity squared.

tonyb

Sweeet !!

Congrats man, best keep those puppies a very long time. Trey as usual did an outstanding job.

teekay0007

Sorry, but am I missing something here? I really don't get it. I'm completely blown away by how nice stock 703s sound...and I compared them on MY gear to pairs of bookies by B&W and Sonus Faber (at multiples of the price of the 703s) on MUCH pricier gear than mine, using the same familiar media to compare them. So, what is it that Polk isn't doing to these speakers that they should be?

No disrespect to Trey here. He does, by all accounts, fantastic work, but doing these kinds of upgrades on SDAs, Monitors, etc. makes a whole lot more sense to me than doing it on Polk's latest and greatest.

Toolfan66

teekay0007 wrote: »

Sorry, but am I missing something here? I really don't get it. I'm completely blown away by how nice stock 703s sound...and I compared them on MY gear to pairs of bookies by B&W and Sonus Faber (at multiples of the price of the 703s) on MUCH pricier gear than mine, using the same familiar media to compare them. So, what is it that Polk isn't doing to these speakers that they should be?

No disrespect to Trey here. He does, by all accounts, fantastic work, but doing these kinds of upgrades on SDAs, Monitors, etc. makes a whole lot more sense to me than doing it on Polk's latest and greatest.

Nothing wrong in taking them to another level with higher end internals, all though I do understand what your saying.. I my self love tweaking gear..

Mikey081057

teekay0007 wrote: »

Sorry, but am I missing something here? I really don't get it. I'm completely blown away by how nice stock 703s sound...and I compared them on MY gear to pairs of bookies by B&W and Sonus Faber (at multiples of the price of the 703s) on MUCH pricier gear than mine, using the same familiar media to compare them. So, what is it that Polk isn't doing to these speakers that they should be?

No disrespect to Trey here. He does, by all accounts, fantastic work, but doing these kinds of upgrades on SDAs, Monitors, etc. makes a whole lot more sense to me than doing it on Polk's latest and greatest.

When Polk designs a speaker system, they design it with a price point in mind and have a cost objective that they need to meet to produce it. It means they have to compromise on component quality. Their decision to produce it at that price point with those components is what they choose to do.

When consumer decides to take his stock whatever and risk making it better, scrutiny from others regarding their decision to do so is probable.

If I had a Shelby GT500, I would probably send it out for the Super Snake treatment and would enjoy the 800HP and 200 MPH. That is the spirit of being an enthusiast. Of course to someone who drives a Prius ( no knock on Prius drivers intended) this would make no sense.

Obviously I don't see improving something that is already good as senseless. Your mileage may vary.

VR3

This is an interesting topic and I think the answers will depend on who you talk to.

I search periodically for what people are saying about my modifications on other forums and occasionally I see someone who may something like, anything "mylar or higher is all you need" $30 in parts max and then you find people like me who would put a $800 capacitor in the circuit to draw out that last 1%!

With that said you have to keep in mind what Polk is trying to accomplish...

For $1,500 a pair they have to supply you with drivers, enclosure, crossover, r&d cost, shipping from china, etc etc etc etc etc etc. With that they have to make compromises somewhere along the way. A lot of the time the compromises are in the crossover components or a little bit of everywhere. In the LSiM they really did a good job everywhere. The enclosure is extremely nice, finished very well. The drivers are top tier, the design and engineering. The crossover actually uses better than average parts in the tweeter circuit.

The key here is the tweeter circuit. Once you dive down to the midrange and bass circuit you run into a long list of parts that can all be drastically improved and with good reason. The parts to build these crossovers right in a manner that is not even "cost no object" would be 70% of the new retail price of the speakers. This should explain a lot of why this can make such a difference.

The one thing that caught me off guard though was just how improved the highs were after the modification. It was not a subtle difference, I posted a pre/post mod video on Facebook using just my cell phone microphone and it is quite obvious of the differences in the videos.

VR3

Modified Video -

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=430270157099525

Stock Video -

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=430272597099281

northernwind

can I ask,how much does parts alone cost for something like this?