Upgrading Monitor 5 Xover and new tweeters?

Orangeman

Hello all,

My stock Monitor 5's with fish eye tweeters sound great to me as is.
However - I've read here that I should get the RDO 194-1 drop in tweeters. What kind of improvement in treble can you expect ? Are they even available now, and how much for two ?
Plus- are new audiophile caps and resistors really necessary once you drop in new tweeters ? Decent caps are not cheap. I have the parts list and schematics needed for the upgrade. Am I correct to take the poly switch out of the circuit ?

I got these great sounding speakers free from a friend. He wanted to make some room in his house. Lucky me !

Thanks for the answers - Mike

pitdogg2

Even with better caps the old tweeter will still have that spike in the upper freq range. The RD-0194 is a vastly superior tweeter. Much smoother across the entire range. Yes i would take out the poly switch and use a .50 ohm 10-12 watt resistor. Many use the mills brand resistor but they may no longer be available. Mundorf is also a good option. Do not replace with generic sand cast resistors. Before ordering any parts open up and look at the parts you have in your to save yourself from any headaches.
Last i knew the tweeters cost $48 ea. Mention you belong to the forum and it should be very close to that price. Failure to mention this and the will be much more costly.

Welcome to club Polk.

[Deleted User]

I'm currently waiting on my monitor 5 thread to post it needs approval or something. But anywho you should look into the "tl" mod. Especially if you're going to do xover upgrades. The RDO198s are the same price and you'll only need to add a 34uf cap and 5w 2.ohm resistor. It was like night and day with the upgrades.

Orangeman

Thanks for the welcome , and ER308L and pitdogg2 for the answers. But now I have more questions.
What advantages are there with the 198 over the194 tweeter ? And I found a number of 33uf caps but no 34uf. Won't a 33uf work fine ? It must be in the tolerance range.
I think I would like to first just get the 194 tweeters and drop them with out any xover mods and see if I'm happy. I'm pretty sure I will be. I can always do the xover mod later. I'm trying to keep costs down. Does sound like a plan ?
I can't get over how good these old simple 2 way with a passive radiator particle board speakers sound. Sandy Gross and crew did a great design job.

[Deleted User]

Sonicap has a 34uf 200v cap but it's like $50. But you can have two 17uf caps run parallel. Or 16 and 18, whatever it takes to reach the correct value.
With the 194 's you'll definitely be happy, it's a significant improvement over the sl2000's.
Totally agree pretty impressive speakers I underestimated them when I first listened to them.
Didn't realize your new so welcome to club Polk.

shilmoe

I'm new here myself and just upgraded two sets of the Monitor 5s. One with the 194s and one with the TL mod and 198s. Just doing new caps and adding the 194s to one set was a huge improvement. On the second set I did the full TL treatment using the 198s. The TL mod was a definite improvement over the 194 upgrade but both sound very good. I like the sound of the 194 version over the 198 for my HT but the 198s sound much nicer for 2 channel listening.

The next huge improvement was getting a good amp. The new to me Adcom 7100 really woke them up, even without playing them loud.

Orangeman

Thanks guys.
I'll check out the posts for the tl-198 mod and see if I would want to go there figuring in the cost etc. I think I'll end up just dropping in 194's for now.
They aren't my main system speakers. I'm using them on the screened in back porch durring nice wether. Along with a Halfler DH200 kit amp I built, a rare but great sounding Audio General 511 preamp, a cd player and an ipod for streaming.
Good amplification sure will "wake up" speakers !

Orangeman

Oops... I forgot an ART 12 band EQ is in the system also.

pitdogg2

Orangeman wrote: »

Oops... I forgot an ART 12 band EQ is in the system also.

And with one sentence you just lost cred....

Throw it away

PolkieMan

pitdogg2 wrote: »

Orangeman wrote: »

Oops... I forgot an ART 12 band EQ is in the system also.

And with one sentence you just lost cred....

Throw it away

Maybe he only uses it when his friend brings over his speakers.

Orangeman

Its only used for low level listening as a loudness curve when normal levels may tic the really close neighbors off. I don't know about you but I like to hear some bass at low volumes and the EQ works well. If you don't like EQ used for a specific reason fine with me.