Tweeter issue with SDA 1C's

gdphoto

I am now hearing a raspy sound coming from the tweeters mostly on the left side on certain older Beatles songs. Other songs sound fine. Is it me, or could it be the recordings? It's not always noticeable. I just bought a couple of the Beatles remastered mono LP's and was playing A Hard Days Night. The title song had a lot of rasp, but a softer song like And I Love Her sounded great. I installed new RDO's in 2010.

Easy Runnin

Is it only on the new albums? Does it happen at the same point in the song everytime? Have you cleaned the record? Is it warpped? Have you cleaned the stylist?

If all this checks out it is probably the recording

Faustin

I would try to isolate which tweeter it seems to be and then swap 2 of them to see if the problem follows the tweeter

DaveHo

Vinyl only? Could be inner groove distortion or mistracking.

pongshi

If your other records in the box set are playing well, I would suspect the record itself has a few imperfections. By the way, I also have the Beatles Mono vinyl set, and I have played the set on my un-modded stock 1Cs and I have not noticed what you have. Of course, I have 53 year old ears that have endured lots of concerts and heavy metal music at ear splitting levels, so I am sure my ears aren't as sensitive as yours.

The Mono set was done from the original tapes so it is also possible that there was some saturation in the original recording that your sensitive ears are picking up as well.

PolkieMan

yea it's the record, with good speakers good input sounds real good bad input sounds really bad. You could up the tracking force a bit and always clean new records

gdphoto

Thanks everyone! I'll do some trouble shooting and get back to you. I do hope it's the record.

gdphoto

Pongshi, I only have A Hard Days Night in mono so far. I plan on buying 1 or 2 at a time. I am OK going mono on the first 4 albums and from what I have read mono is supposed to be the best sound, but having been brought up, with my 62 year old ears, on the stereo versions, I keep going back and forth as to which to get. How do the later albums sound in mono? I do like the fact that the mono's are pure analog.

pongshi

There is a similar thread on this, but in my opinion (it ain't worth much), the following sound best to me in mono:
Please, Please, Me
With the Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
Beatles for Sale
Help!
Rubber Soul

gdphoto

I isolated the raspy sound to the top main RDO in the left speaker. I flipped it with the other RDO which brings in a little of the signal from the right channel and it cleared up the raspy sound. I'm guessing that there is a problem with the RDO and by moving it down where there is not as much demand on it the problem is not noticeable. Beings I just bought the RDO's in March of 2010, I called Polk and they said send it in and they will look at it. I don't know yet if they will replace it.

gdphoto

By the way, I have bought all of the mono Beatle albums, except for Let It Be, and they all sound great! The Abbey Road in stereo also sounds great. I do have quite of few original albums and when I get the time I will compare.

westmassguy

gdphoto wrote: »

I isolated the raspy sound to the top main RDO in the left speaker. I flipped it with the other RDO which brings in a little of the signal from the right channel and it cleared up the raspy sound. I'm guessing that there is a problem with the RDO and by moving it down where there is not as much demand on it the problem is not noticeable. Beings I just bought the RDO's in March of 2010, I called Polk and they said send it in and they will look at it. I don't know yet if they will replace it.

Err, no, both tweeters on the left speaker receive the left channel signal only.

F1nut

The tweeters are a progressive point source, the bottom tweeter does not produce the entire range like the top tweeter.

Polk SDA1c's(Rebuilt XO's by Ben)

You should have your crossovers gone over.

gdphoto

Thanks! The problem seems to have gone away since I flipped the tweeters, so I guess I will buy a new one. I hope it's not the crossovers. Thanks for clearing up how the tweeters work. Because the bottom one is lower in volume I always figured it was part of the SDA effect.

gdphoto

I told Polk about my problem and they sent me a new RD094 no charge.

Nightfall

gdphoto wrote: »

I told Polk about my problem and they sent me a new RD094 no charge.

Seriously? What an awesome company.