Nightmare with 3.1's....

Ricardo

So I sold my 3.1TL's to Paul (Stubby); he would drive from Kansas to pick them up (9-10 hours). In the meantime I got my Tylers and unhooked the 3.1's.

Paul called me one Friday afternoon saying that he was hitting the road. A couple hours later I hooked the 3.1's so that he could listen to them when he arrived Saturday morning. Hit the play button, no SDA soundstage ...hmmmmm....I forgot to plug the interconnect I thought...no, interconnect was fine; I check all wires, negatives and positives are where they should at both speaker and amps sides. I then thought that I might have damaged the interconnect when pulling it out ( I had it wired in the wall), and try with a different cable. NOTHING!!! Now I am starting to sweat and decide to call Paul to call it off.....no response; left a message and called 10 more times without reaching him. Later I found out he had given me his home phone, so no way to reach him.

So here I am, with a pair of non working speakers, and with no possibilities of contacting Paul to make him turn around. I removed crossovers, checked components, checked internal wiring, checked drivers, confirmed that my amp was still common ground....could not find anything that would explain why the SDA was not there, even though the SDA drivers were working. Probably the worst night of my life. What would I tell Paul in the morning????

So Paul gets here and I receive him with the bad news; luckily he's a reasonable man, because he's quite big
I offered him two options: I would cover all his expenses and he would go back without the speakers, or he could take the speakers at no cost until we could find out what was going on and fixed them. He decided to take the speakers.

So Paul leaves and I stay wondering what could have happened. I know my son did play with them a couple of times; could it be he made some bad connections? What could be damaged?

Paul removed the crossovers and sent them to Ken at Polk; no problems there, and Ken suggested the SDA drivers could be bad. Paul tried with different drivers, and voila, the SDA was there. This really surprised me, since I am positive the drivers were working..or at least sound came out of them. But something was deffinitely bad with them.

So it seems this is coming to a happy ending; Paul is just waiting for Polk to receive some 6511's to place the order, and I am still wondering what the heck could have happened to them

Thought I'd share; Paul is a great guy and understood that sometimes $hit happens.

schwarcw

Polkergeist?!?!? I wonder what happened to them?? Let see what theories the Forum has.

Interesting story. I'm glad this looks like it will have a happy ending. Kudos to you both for handling it so well. Polkies have class.

Carvers still sounding good Ricardo!

jtgranby

You must of broken there heart:)

JT

rskarvan

These 3.1TL's stayed in a closet for about 4 or 5 years before I hooked them up again about a year before I sold them to you HTRookie. I remember when they first got power again... it took a few seconds for a few of the drivers to get thumping.

These speakers were new in 1991. So, sixteen years later (and, many listening sessions later)... the single SDA driver on each side goes bad. Seems reasonable.

By the way... all of the other drivers in both speakers are absolutely original.

- Ron

Ricardo

And after 16 years they still sound very good; Paul told me today that even without the SDA drivers working completely as they should, he is listening to details he hadn't listened before in some of his music.

venomclan

Whew, I thought you meant Gallo 3.1's before I opened the thread.
V

TroyD

It's amazing how/when the gremlins strike gear.

BDT