Monitor 5

Faustin

Were the Monitor 5 speakers originally designed as a book shelf speaker or floor? If used on the floor, is it recommended to have them raised up on a tilt back stand like the 10's?

Mystery

Their size isn't made to be used without stands.

mhardy6647

floor (with stands) or bookshelf.

Indeed, the 7 and even the 10 were described as bookshelf speakers in their day - floor-standing speakers were often thought of as being the size of Altec Nineteens and Klipschorns in those days.

I seem to recall little simplified tilt-back stands for the Monitor 5, but I may be creating memories ab initio again ;-)

Faustin

Thanks for the input.

silentchaos15

I have four Monitor 5 speakers and from experience they work better on stands. I have a 20"X20" cube stand for the front two.

rehcleb

I'm a new member and just picked up a pair of 5b’s this week in pretty nice shape with all the original boxes/paperwork and, according to the guy I purchased from, original Polk stands. He had them stored away with no way to test and unfortunately one of the tweeters seems bad. It works but is extremely "muffled" sounding compared to the other. The general consensus around here seems to be that I should probably go ahead and bite the bullet and just replace both tweeters with the new RDO-194.

One other thing is that at some point he thought it was a good idea to screw them to the stands so each has two small holes in the bottom. Should I just fill these with wood putty or is there something better to use?

Anyhow, here are some pictures of the speakers/stands. It is hard to tell in the pictures but the stands do tilt the speakers back slightly.

Thanks for everyone’s contributions on here, it has been helpful as I've been shopping for speakers.

Mystery

Could be bad tweeter but could be bad crossover component as well.
Take that tweeter out and put it in the other speakers. If it's works good on the other one, then it's crossover.

Updating crossover is cheap if you go with cheaper capacitors and that'll help even if the you replace tweeters later.

BTW, it's better to start your own thread for separate issue.

rehcleb

Thanks Mystery, Ill try that. I realized after the fact I shouldn't have brought up other issues. Sorry.

nspindel

My first Polk speakers ever. 1988. Loved those speakers, but traded them in towards my CRS+s. And so the journey began. Hope you get them singing properly, they will sound great when you sort out whatever is wrong.

If the tweeter is muffled it could be the polyswitch is dead. First thing I'd do is pull the tweeter and measure it for a short.

mlong

I didn't use them as bookshelf speakers but I used them in my garage (my motherinlaw liked to listen to music when she smoked out there). They are about 8 feet off the ground and sound very, very good. I think the height does a lot to add to the sound.