Monitor 10 newbie questions

jwrosenthal

Greetings guys,

I am a vintage audiophile who recently rediscovered his passion for vintage audio after my venerable Marantz 2250b took a crap on me 6 months ago, and have found myself chomping at the bit as my reciever of 20 years (my fathers since new) is being serviced (by a friend who does tube audio repair, hence why I'm not pushing the time it is taking to "get around to it").

During the interim I found a very clean Marantz 2215b for a steal and picked it up to tide me over....problem I found was that with only 15 watts/ch, my "efficient" 20 year old JBL's sounded flat, shrill and punchy with limited soundstage. My beloved Whardales (purchased new with the 2250b in 1975) delaminated thier gelatin tweeters several years ago, and are doing time in the basement until I can find replacement tweeters (good luck right) so I found myself without speakers...and I was not going to pair a new set of plastic imports with a Marantz (nor would I waste the money on that crap to begin with)...so the search for efficient speakers was on!

Long story short (too late), I found a set of walnut Monitor 10A's on Craigslist for $200. When I went to pick them up, the owner (who was the second owner) said he had a third speaker (????) and it turned out to be the LF14 (I had never seen one in the flesh). Needless to say, I didn't even haggle, I just handed over my money and went home with them...without ever hearing a set of Monitor 10 Polk's before (I was going on the reputation).
WOW, these speakers are fantastic, and although I am only running them on 15 watts (Marantz's were conservative with their RMS ratings so it's probably around 20-25 watts) the bass is tight and responsive with fantastic resonance, the highs are bright but never shrill, and the mid-range is full and complex....I am impressed and am going to start harrassing my friend to get my 2250b back to see what these things can do with 50 watts/ch.

Now my questions. I know the Polkstands (I have the original owners manual so I know it's one word) are long sice gone, but has anyone found a company that makes attractive, wood stands for speakers of this size. I found one company on e-bay named "G-Wiz" that makes what looks similar to the old ADS/JBL stands, but don't know anything about them. Everything on the market now seems to be metal and designed for bookshelf speakers in an ultra-modern, Darth-Vadar styled home...hence looking very out of place among the Cherry and Mahagony furniture in my study.

Secondly, I have not run the LF-14 with my 10A's as I don't currently have enough power to feed all of them (and I seem to be losing the left channel on remote on this 2215) When I do get my 2250b back, should I run the LF-14 off of the remote speaker terminals, or should I double them down with the 10A wires (under the screw-posts with the main line in via banana jacks).

Thanks in advance for any advise,

James Rosenthal

ben62670

Welcome to Club Polk. I also love how loud, and clean those old Polk's are. I don't know how to help with the stands, but I am sure someone will chime in with good advice. Stick around, and learn a couple tricks to really improve those speakers.
Ben

avguytx

I have a pair of Monitor 10B's and I had emailed Ken at Polk about the original size. He gave me some good specs to work off of so I threw a set together one Saturday with some scrap MDF I had around. I just sanded them down and painted them black and they work like a champ. I'm not much on buying something like that when I can build it! But, then again, woodworking is a another hobby.

Here is the specs he gave me from the email reply.

I'm afraid the Monitor 10 stands have passed into audio history, we don't have any plans for them remaining. In general terms the stand's bottom plate was 16" wide, 11" deep and probably 3/4" thick painted black. The top plate was about 2" less wide and deep than the bottom plate. There was a four sided box-like structure connecting the upper and lower plates, this was 10" high and gave a 6 degree backward tilt to the upper plate. So, the stand raised the speaker off of the floor by about 11 1/2" and tilted the speaker backward by about 6 degrees.
I hope this is helpful. Regards, Ken


Hope that helps in case you don't mind building them. If not, at least you have a size range and angle to work with in searching. Welcome to the "Club". Great place!

greyranch

Hi Jim and welcome.If you do a search in this forum for "monitor stands",you will find,about 12 threads down the list, a complete thread on stands with pictures and specs.I too have the Monitor 10's and are still amazed after 10 years of owning them how well they sound and hold up.With every upgrade I do to my system they sound better,which tells me they are not the weak link in my system.Good luck!

Polk65

Great writeup James and welcome to the club. As suggested a search of the forum for Polkstand will bring you to the thread with photos and measurements. The LF14 is an unusual find. Look around www.polksda.com and you will see the LF14 manual. I'm not 100% sure but I think that the LF-14 is rated at 4-ohms. Find out and also if your receivers are 4-ohm compatible before hooking it up.

edit: The LF-14 is 4-ohms nominal according to the "Early (198?) Polk Sales Flyer" @ http://polksda.com/srsad.shtml (specifications are the last pages).