Meet my new SDA's

nspindel

So I have another thread here talking about my purchase of these new (old) SDA-1C's. Now that I've got them, I figured I'd create a new thread to talk about 'em a bit.

Long story short, they appear to be one of the in-between models that were built during periods when Polk was transitioning models. From a crossover and driver standpoint, you can see the details in the above thread that we've determined that they are definitely SDA 1C's, but they're unusual in that they have a blade/blade SDA interconnect, whereas the 1C's normally have the pin/blade connector. Yet when I pulled them apart the SDA connection is only a single conductor, whereas a blade/blade usually is dual conductor. So I guess Polk had a few spare blade/blade connectors and cables they wanted to get rid of at the time... :rolleyes:

So I immediately ordered up the Sonicaps, Mills resistors for a crossover upgrade, and some nice Cardas posts and of course new tweeters. Unfortunately there's no upgrade for these crossovers so I could use the RD0198 tweeter, so RD0194's it is. Don't even start Carl....

If you read my 2B mod thread, I did inductors on those as well. I decided not to do inductors here, though. The 2B's use quick connect posts for the inductors, making the mod easily reversible. Not so easy with these, so I decided to just leave the inductors as is.

Ok, so pics....

Here they are before I started ripping into them, posing for a picture in front of their baby brothers:



I pulled the passive radiator, here's what I saw inside:



(Notice the single conductor going to the SDA interconnect in the above shot...)

and




Ok, well that's just not going to suffice, time to start upgrading!!!!

I pulled both crossover units, one is mounted to the back of the binding post assembly, one's mounted to the large inductor and attached with a screw that you need to remove from the back with an allen wrench.

So, parts:



Yummy! Spent more on those caps than I did on the speakers! :cool: The third binding post assembly is to replace the blade/blade connection so I can use speaker wire for the SDA interconnect. Frank at Signal Cable made me a cool Ultra with one banana and one spade at each end, so I could connect both strands to the single binding post. Now that's an SDA cable!!!

These xo's were a bit trickier to do than my 2B's. Yanking the polyswitch was tough because it runs underneath one of the little inductors on the high-end xo. Need to be real careful prying the inductor loose to get at that polyswitch. Also a few places where one component needed to solder onto the next component, rather than each piece having a dedicated soldering post on the circuit board. Nothing too difficult, just a bit more involved than the 2B's.

So here's the finished product. First the high side:



Three Mills resistors and the 12uf Sonicap (I did not use a bypass) on top of the board as seen above, and a 4.4uf Sonicap mounted below:



It's kind of hard to see in the above pic, but the 4.4uf Sonicap just fit in between the tops of the regular binding posts and the SDA binding post. If that cap had been any bigger, I would have had problems.

Now for the low end. I just think this looks so bad-****. Three 20uf Sonicaps - over $80 in caps just for one low-end xo! The schematic calls for a 20uf and a 40uf. There's no such thing as a 40uf Sonicap, so I used two 20's (so did the stock xo):






Here's the binding post assembly. Shame to put tape over those gorgeous Cardas posts, but making them red/black makes things soooooo much easier. Jesse, sorry, I used the boots again. I know, I know....



Took two nights to do that work. I put the new tweeters in and fired them up last night. They were making music on the first go, so didn't have any diagnostic work to do (whew!) I've had them burning in for about 18 hours now. I'm not noticing a whole lot of difference in the sound yet, the only thing that's changed is when they first came up there was a bit of static - crackles and pops kind of thing. Same thing happened with my 2B's, it takes a bit of time for the Sonicaps to settle down. The crackles are gone, but they still need more hours before they really start opening up.

So another fun mod project. Next up are the grill cloths, I'm telling you right now I'm going to need a bit of advise with that end of the project!

Looking forward to getting them fully burned in so I can do a bit of 1C vs 2B-TL comparison...

Ok, I got no sleep last night, so I'm heading to bed. Time to get up for work soon enough, gotta earn a buck or two to pay for these Sonicaps!!!!! Nite all....

ben62670

Sweet. Always nice to see SDA's getting the treatment they deserve.
Ben

candyliquor35m

Good thing you only did the left one so you can compare it to the sound of the untouched right one

nspindel

Yeah, well, I did both, sorry to let you down Carl.

DarqueKnight

nspindel wrote: »

Here's the binding post assembly. Shame to put tape over those gorgeous Cardas posts, but making them red/black makes things soooooo much easier.

Yeah, that was a shame to buy all that jewelry and cover it up.:eek: You are denying yourself the pleasure of taking an occasional peek behind your speakers just to look at the shiny binding posts.:)

I put a dot of red paint on the boot under my positive Cardas posts.

nspindel wrote: »

Jesse, sorry, I used the boots again. I know, I know....

I actually prefer the look with the boots. I know, I know...

nspindel wrote: »

There's no such thing as a 40uf Sonicap, so I used two 20's (so did the stock xo):

They will make custom values. Did you ask? Although, a 40 uF might have been harder to place on the board than two 20 uF's. The 30 uF Sonicap is nearly 1.5" in diameter by 3" long. The size of a 40 uF Sonicap might be of some concern.

Great review. Thanks.

Face

Nice work!

F1nut

Oh no, not the boots again...lol. What the hell is that stuff anyway?

Rather than the "boots", I use pin stripe tape available at any hobby shop.


Nice job, I hope they bring you years of joy.

nspindel

DarqueKnight wrote: »

Yeah, that was a shame to buy all that jewelry and cover it up.:eek: You are denying yourself the pleasure of taking an occasional peek behind your speakers just to look at the shiny binding posts.:)

I put a dot of red paint on the boot under my positive Cardas posts.


I actually prefer the look with the boots. I know, I know...



They will make custom values. Did you ask? Although, a 40 uF might have been harder to place on the board than two 20 uF's. The 30 uF Sonicap is nearly 1.5" in diameter by 3" long. The size of a 40 uF Sonicap might be of some concern.

Great review. Thanks.

Thanks for the positive thoughts. I think a 40uF would have been a disaster, actually. I don't think I could have fit it on the board side by side with the 20uF that is behind it, so it would have been a bit of a hack job. I kinda like the look of the three twenties stacked up like that!

nspindel

Lasareath wrote: »

You should remove that hot glue that's on the 7.5 Ohm mills resistor

Why? I put the glue there to make sure the resistor and the inductor don't bump heads. The Mills are quite big, so in most places they're larger than the distance between the two solder posts on the board, so they need to stick up in the air like that. Components with exposed leads flying loose in the air make me bit nervous, so I put the glue there just to keep things intact. Do the resistors get hotter than the melting point of the glue or something?

heiney9

Nice job! You should get decades of enjoyment from them. I think you'll find the 1C's slightly edge the 2B TL's. I'm sure each will do some things better than the other. You should notice just a bit more scale to the presentation with the 1C's due to the extra drivers, etc.

I still love mine and they put a smile on my face every single time I listen to them. Best audio purchase I've made in 20 years .

Keep us updated

H9

nspindel

F1nut wrote: »

Oh no, not the boots again...lol. What the hell is that stuff anyway?

Rather than the "boots", I use pin stripe tape available at any hobby shop.


Nice job, I hope they bring you years of joy.

No, by the boots I mean the plastic pieces that have the fitting for the shoulders on the base of the Cardas post, whereas you've done a much more detailed job of drilling out the plastic housing so the shoulders grab the housing properly without needing the plastic pieces.

Years of joy, perhaps, that's what I thought my 2B's would provide. But then we never know what kind of crazy prices might pop up on some 1.2's that are too close to me to turn down...:D

nspindel

heiney9 wrote: »

Nice job! You should get decades of enjoyment from them. I think you'll find the 1C's slightly edge the 2B TL's. I'm sure each will do some things better than the other. You should notice just a bit more scale to the presentation with the 1C's due to the extra drivers, etc.

I still love mine and they put a smile on my face every single time I listen to them. Best audio purchase I've made in 20 years .

Keep us updated

H9

I'd actually have to say that the Squeezebox is the best audio purchase I've made. As much as I love the rest of the componentry, most of all the Polks, the Squeezebox has completely revolutionized the way I listen to music.

I'd started down the HTPC path for a while, but forget about a quality analog signal out of a pc, the best you can do is a bit-perfect digi out to a good dac. But just getting a bit-perfect output with a pc is such a pain in the ****!!! Asio drivers, kmixer, re-sampling, foobar configurations, not to mention trying to set it up for use with a remote control. Then you have to start with the crazy water cooling of the computer, otherwise you get fan noise. Screw all of that. Plug the Squeezebox in and you're done (well, until you start modding it!!!). The flexibility is beyond compare, and I'm convinced that the sound quality after the Bolder mods will stand up to a $5000 cd player...

There I go crapping my own thread again. I do this all the time!

heiney9

nspindel wrote: »

I'd actually have to say that the Squeezebox is the best audio purchase I've made. As much as I love the rest of the componentry, most of all the Polks, the Squeezebox has completely revolutionized the way I listen to music.

I'd started down the HTPC path for a while, but forget about a quality analog signal out of a pc, the best you can do is a bit-perfect digi out to a good dac. But just getting a bit-perfect output with a pc is such a pain in the ****!!! Asio drivers, kmixer, re-sampling, foobar configurations, not to mention trying to set it up for use with a remote control. Then you have to start with the crazy water cooling of the computer, otherwise you get fan noise. Screw all of that. Plug the Squeezebox in and you're done (well, until you start modding it!!!). The flexibility is beyond compare, and I'm convinced that the sound quality after the Bolder mods will stand up to a $5000 cd player...

There I go crapping my own thread again. I do this all the time!

My brother uses a SQbox for his system. He built his own server with 2 Terabyte of space. Raid drives with one redundant drive if one goes south. Took him about 2 years to rip his 4500 cd's to FLAC and he uses media monkey as his file manager/player. All 3 of his SQb's are hooked to high end DAC's and he just loves it. As the computer is a completely different room. This will be my winter project.

Here is his original configuration and I plan to do something similar on a smaller scale

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37169&highlight=monster

H9

nspindel

Sweet! My flac library is stored on a 2TB terastation nas, with raid redundancy as well, so effectively 1.5TB.

I debated the dac vs. modded analog approach, but the reviews of the Bolder analog mods were so positive, that I decided to give them a try. I could have probably gotten a decent dac for the cost of the mods, but I decided to roll the dice because the Bolder modded Squeezebox can be resold easily. No regrets, I love the way this sounds.

Planning on giving the 1C's a good listen tonight at about the 40-hour burn-in point, I'll blab a bit tonight on how they sound.

F1nut

nspindel wrote: »

No, by the boots I mean the plastic pieces that have the fitting for the shoulders on the base of the Cardas post, whereas you've done a much more detailed job of drilling out the plastic housing so the shoulders grab the housing properly without needing the plastic pieces.

Ah, those boots. All I was seeing was the colored tape, but I gotcha now.

zingo

Great job on the 1Cs and I like the sexy stack of 20uF caps also. I'll be interested in hearing your comparison between your two babies once the 1Cs burn-in.

nspindel

Well, scratch the listening session for tonight....

We're having a pretty crazy lightning storm here. There's no better surge protection than unplugging your gear. I just went down and unplugged the system, but before I turned it off I did notice that things had started opening up a bit. I'm at 40 hours now. From the looks of this storm, I'll be staying at 40 hours for the time being.

Gaara

We are getting a small part of it up north, pretty impressive lightning. Last I heard you guys had a tornado watch.

New SDAs look huge. I would say they dwarf the gear but everything except for the amp is small. All this talk and I don't hear a word about how they sound? Still burning them in? You just playing them quite or doing the old out of phase with a blanket over em trick?

I remember first reading about modded squeezeboxes. The guy was ranting and raving about how his Bolder modded SB3 easily beat a Benchmark DAC1. I tried a bunch of DACs w/ a unmodded SB3 to try and beat my "giant killer" Jolida CDP. Thing was modded + had $100 tubes in it, phenomenal sound. Finally found a DAC to beat it, then tried a modded SB3...well the rest is history. I am still amazed how drastic the sound difference is between un modded and modded SB3s.

nspindel

Gaara wrote: »

We are getting a small part of it up north, pretty impressive lightning. Last I heard you guys had a tornado watch.

Correct. It's calmed down a bit now, but I don't think it's over yet. Stereo is still unplugged...

Gaara wrote: »

New SDAs look huge. I would say they dwarf the gear but everything except for the amp is small. All this talk and I don't hear a word about how they sound? Still burning them in? You just playing them quite or doing the old out of phase with a blanket over em trick?

Dude, read the thread, I said they sound ok Seriously, the Sonicaps take a long time till they're cooked enough to be ready for prime time. The sound on my 2B's kept changing within the first 200 hours. I finished the mods at about 1am Tuesday night (well, Wednesday morning...) and I only listened for a few minutes just to make sure the mods were kosher. I listened for a while last night, they'd settled in some, the pops and crackles were gone (as expected, same thing happened with the 2B's), but they still sounded pretty veiled. I listened a bit more this afternoon, they seemed like they started to open up a bit, but I remember with the 2B's they seemed to start to open up, then they'd regress a bit, then they'd open back up again. You really can't do any serious evaluation of these until they get to the 200 hour mark, just to be safe. Oh, why would you think I'd need blankets? A couple of GIKs in front of them does a much better muffling job than a blanket :cool:

Gaara wrote: »

I remember first reading about modded squeezeboxes. The guy was ranting and raving about how his Bolder modded SB3 easily beat a Benchmark DAC1. I tried a bunch of DACs w/ a unmodded SB3 to try and beat my "giant killer" Jolida CDP. Thing was modded + had $100 tubes in it, phenomenal sound. Finally found a DAC to beat it, then tried a modded SB3...well the rest is history. I am still amazed how drastic the sound difference is between un modded and modded SB3s.

Can't even compare the two. The stock SB3 is clearly consumer-grade sound. But the beauty of it is, on the transport side it is still equal to or better than the best cd player money can buy. I'm sure the flames will begin, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. I don't care how juiced up a cd player is, an optical scan simply cannot outperform tcp/ip packets for moving the 1's and 0's into the internal dac. So some solid upgrades to the SB3's dac, power supply, and analog circuitry and you've got yourself one amazing sounding piece. I'm not saying it's cheap, I'm into the SB3 for heavy bucks - $300 for the Squeezy, $200 for the power supply, $525 for the mods, and $70 for the Magic Digital cable. So I've got an $1100 Squeezebox. Throw in a $300 controller and we're clearly out of consumer-grade pricing now. But I'm holding my ground here that this thing meets or beats a $5000 cd player....

ben62670

Hey boy you lookin for a fight!

I heard lightning actually heps burn in the caps?

nspindel

Hahahah!

It'll certainly help burn them, not sure about burn-in!

Man, there was some wicked lightning going on here a little while ago. Bummer I had to stop the stereo, but whatever. It was freakin' cool to watch!

schwarcw

Congrats on the new SDA's nspindel! Real nice job on the crossovers! I never heard the noises that you described after rebuilding the crossover. I used the same parts I agree that after a while the sound will smooth out real nice. I love these projects!!!:D

Keep us posted on your listening observations.

nspindel

The sounds are not real loud, and they don't last long. Just some subtle crackling here and there. Almost like a static sound, but only a single pop here and there. Almost like dust on vinyl. Happens for the first couple of hours a bit here and there, then disappears as the caps start cooking. Same exact thing happened with my 2B's...

nspindel

Here's a question, I'm wondering if I'd benefit from putting spikes at the bottom of these speakers? As you can see from the top picture, they're in a carpeted room. It's in the basement, so there's a concrete slab, then a layer of carpet padding, then a berber rug. Spikes or no spikes???

Face

http://www.myesound.com/Page3.html

http://www.oregondv.com/spikes.htm

nspindel

So when would be the application for the speaker stands and outriggers as opposed to just using the spikes? What determines the size of the spikes you would use, they come in a lot of different sizes. The second link is also recommending putting larger spikes in back and smaller spikes in front, to give the speakers the correct tilt for the best imaging. What's up with that? I'm thinking I don't want to screw with anything like that with SDA's....

MillerLiteScott

I found 3 spikes instead of 4 worked better for me. I just have the cheap ones from PE right now. I do not know if any tilt would be beneficial for SDA's but my gut says no. I built some out riggers for my RTA 11t's because they are tall and relatively narrow.

Scott

Face

On my Tannoy's, I also use three spikes and have my speakers tilted back so the tweeters are aimed towards my ears. I don't believe tilting SDA's would be a good idea either.

nspindel

Why three spikes instead of four?

MillerLiteScott

Three points are much easier to level than four and three puts more weight on each point.

How's that for my 1400 post.

treitz3

Not bad, sir! That was gonna be my response to the same question.