Monitor 10a Back In Action

lawdogg

These got the Polk Forum Masses approved Clarity ESA caps and Mills resistors with Dayton shunt caps, along with hurricane nuts and stainless hardware, and PE 3/4" thick sound deadening behind the MW6500s which have epoxy'd magnets.

They cleaned up real nice and sound great. Debating plastidipping the PR baskets for vibration damping, and putting some foam around the Peerless dome to help with diffraction.









Put them into a poor man's MTM arrangement which I found to help with imaging and they really sound fantastic. So far have throw an assortment of music at them via Tidal -> McIntosh C24 (re-capped with Nichicon MUSE) -> McIntosh MC502. Extremely pleased with them and can't wait until they have 100 hours on them to A/B against my fully Dayton Monitor 7v2's.





In the meantime need to fix my 3.1TLs which toppled over as a result of using $3 speaker spikes.

Cheers,
Ryan

F1nut

The masses approval has been and remains Sonicap caps for the entire crossover. Use Dynamat Extreme to dampen the baskets. The Peerless does not need help.

pkquat

Interesting about the MTM. Oddly I have tried my M4A's on their side and they sounded ok depending on the height relative to the listener. They were more picky than in the vertical orientation IMO. I also tried this with M5jr+s but never found anything I thought worked.

[Deleted User]

look good to me!

oldrocker

^^ What he said..

Nice work LD.

JPete

Pretty cool man. Bet they're sounding nice.

CGTIII

Hope the 3.1TL damage is minimal.
Who would use $3 speaker spikes??? -LOL-

lawdogg

Haha that was a joke ... the $3 spikes are great and working fine.

Stevenmbell

I don't know what it is but the 10's always make my nipples hard.Love the crossovers I think they helped!

motorhead43026

I am going to give myself a nurple.

lawdogg

Well I'm on hour ~35 and my goodness these are awesome. I took a small break to make sure the drivers in some JBL L20t3's I grabbed worked, the ones with that famous JBL 035T titanium tweeter, and granted the internals of the JBLs are all original, but dang if these Polks don't blow them totally out of the water in terms of clarity, precision, and depth. (I mean, yeah I didn't expect much depth out of the tiny JBL, but still ... )

solarrdadd

hey lawdogg, congrats on the crossover upgrades, I just had mine done too and they sound great. I do have a question, I noticed in the pictures, you have the monitors sitting on their sides, tweeters on the insides; why do you have them on their sides? does having them on their sides change the sound signature or is there some other reason they are on their sides?

lawdogg

Congrats on your upgrades!

Playing them on the sides is for imaging. People seem to feel that the Monitor 10's imaging is compromised by the side-by-side midwoofers, so I was thinking of the easiest simplest (read: cheapest) way to solve the problem (merely perceived or otherwise). So I put them on the sides to mimick an MTM array (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwoofer-tweeter-midwoofer) just to see how it sounded (not a perfect MTM array since the tweeter is offset from the MW-to-MW centerline). Turned out sounding great - more specific placement of the instruments, etc... maybe just perceived, maybe not? Maybe all in my head but costs nothing to try for yourself!

solarrdadd

lawdogg wrote: »

Congrats on your upgrades!

Playing them on the sides is for imaging. People seem to feel that the Monitor 10's imaging is compromised by the side-by-side midwoofers, so I was thinking of the easiest simplest (read: cheapest) way to solve the problem (merely perceived or otherwise). So I put them on the sides to mimick an MTM array (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwoofer-tweeter-midwoofer) just to see how it sounded (not a perfect MTM array since the tweeter is offset from the MW-to-MW centerline). Turned out sounding great - more specific placement of the instruments, etc... maybe just perceived, maybe not? Maybe all in my head but costs nothing to try for yourself!

cool, thanks for the response. my 10A's are in my bedroom and they are and to me, the imagine is great. I listen to a lot of classical, jazz, classic rock and the imagine is perfect. again, that's to my ears and we all hear things differently. oh and the 5A I'm using as a center, man o man does that boy sound good with it's upgrades!

perhaps some day, i'll give turning them on their sides a try and i'll be sure and get back to you when I do. for now, I'm loving them with their upgrades.

xschop

Cool looking setup sideways like that. WMG replied in an older thread that an iductor on one of the MWs would probably rid the lobing.

motorhead43026

While I appreciate my 10's, when the 7's came along the 10's went to storage.

lawdogg

On the 7 vs. 10 - a win/win comparison in any event if you ask me but I will say, A/Bing my 7s and 10s, I was certainly a fan of the 10s' ability to dig a little deeper than the 7s which to me added some 'depth' to the music ... I felt like I could get away without a subwoofer with the 10s. But ymmv, grain of salt, emperor's new clothes, and so on.

mhardy6647

I've always felt that the 10s were a little "thick" sounding relative to the 7s -- but that assessment should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, as when I bought my 7s (1978), I couldn't afford a pair of 10s -- so I may just be harboring residual bitterness.