Question: Oldest Polks still in use?

Axeman463

I just bought a pair of F/X500i surrounds to go with my Polk 7C's that I'm using for the front channels. I bought the 7C's new in 1982 or 1983, and they're still in great shape and sound pretty good, although I don't have anything at home to compare them to. (Don't worry, I'll probably be replacing them with some new Polks in the next year or two.)

My questions:
1. Is anyone out there using anything older?

2. Do speakers degrade over time? These have always been in an air conditioned environment, fwiw. I'm planning on replacing them anyway, and will use them for music in another room.

3. How old do speakers have to be to be considered antiques?

joelll

I'm sorry this is long... vintage audio can be addictive! As far as I can tell, "vintage" is used for speakers older than about 10 years, and "antique" for speakers made before 1964 or so.

Your Monitor 7C's are very good speakers. If you think about replacing them, try to arrange bringing home store demo speakers for direct comparison.

I'm not quite sure what the very oldest Polks in use would be. I have a pair of early-series Monitor 12's, but they aren't the oldest model.

If you look at the Soundstage interview with Matthew Polk, you can see that the company started out doing pro soundsystem work, but then apparently realized that their true calling was creating speakers for home systems.

Although the interview isn't definitive, it does sound like the Monitor 7 speakers came first, followed by the Monitor 10 and then other models, starting around 1974.

As far as speaker longevity goes, there are people using speakers of all eras, back to the beginning of recorded sound. Follow this link, and poke around a bit, there's a lot of audio history and a page just for loudspeaker technology .

As far as I can tell, as long as they're kept maintained, speakers don't degrade with time. The speakers that I listened to first, Acoustic Research AR-3a's, still sound the same to me, as do my own first set of speakers, EPI A70's.

Maintaining old speakers really isn't too demanding; if they're well-treated, there isn't much that can go wrong. Generally speaking, the higher the quality, the easier they are to maintain.

The most common maintenance problem is foam rot on drivers that have foam surrounds around the cone; the foam rings appear to have about a 20-year lifespan. Polk drivers (as far as I've seen) use butyl rubber surrounds, which don't have this problem.

Blown drivers need to be replaced or rebuilt, and there are services around to do so (one can sometimes get replacement drivers from the manufacturer; the web is a great place to search for this kind of thing).

Sometimes crossovers need to be rebuilt, but they tend to be made from simple electronic parts. Speaker terminals can be replaced, or you can also solder a short length of speaker wire to broken terminals with new terminals on the end.

Cabinets are usually pretty durable, with wood veneer being able to be treated like furniture veneer, but I know of no good way to fix wear-and-tear on vinyl finishes. Speaker grilles can be re-covered, or remade.

Most of my speakers come from the 1970's: the above-mentioned M12's; Original Large Advents; Genesis Physics Model I and Model 10; EPI A70, 105, and 120C. All of these have had their foam woofer surrounds replaced (except the M12's, of course, which don't have them). I covet my father's mint-condition pair of AR-3a's, finished in walnut veneer.

The only loudspeaker in my apartment younger than 20 years old is my Polk CS400, in the center channel of my otherwise all-EPI home theater setup.

johnnyamerika

I'm also running vintage JBL 4311b control moniters. They have a huge range of sound, and really generate good bass. One of them has some degradation in the foam that I need to replace though. They really shine in music (what they were made for! they are studio moniters actually)

I was thinking about giving these up for either the 55is or the new i70 towers. But do these generate a wide enough sound, and include good bass?