Upgrade Kits/Any Good?

smglbrth

Does anyone know anything about the upgrade kits offered on Ebay for the older Monitor/RTA series speakers? I am kind of playing with the idea although I've never done anything with crossovers in speaker before. I realize there have been numerous posts about this sort of thing. Just wondering if anyone knows who this person is on Ebay and if it's legit...

dbnh

Don't know anything about them.

I do note I've had excellent help from forum posters regarding upgrading my 1Cs. "ben62670" did a helluva job on upgrading my crossovers; other posters have given ideas re: Mortite tweek, building the A-1 IC, binding post upgrades, etc.; Polk customer service offers upgraded tweeters.

Best of luck with your efforts. I know my aftermarket research, and a modest amount of $ outlay re: upgrades, have tweeked my 1Cs to substantively better than stock performance levels and kept money in my pocket for other purchases. Happy listening!

dorokusai

You're best served to do that work yourself.

deville

Yes, it is legit but, what you get is a bennic 12uF cap for the high pass and a 31uF electrolytic for the bass (you move the stock mylar 12uF cap to the contour network), some solder and solder wick. I did this upgrade but I was not totally happy with it, hence thats why I am doing it again with the advice from this forum. It did open the sound up in the mids, more airy but the highs seemed to have lost detail and separation. For what its worth, the instructions are good, but I believe you could do better with the info on this site. Wish I would have known about it earlier.

Neil

ben62670

You are better off getting the parts yourself.

John30_30

I used his kit to upgrade my RTA 11T's. When I picked them up, the trebles were just about unbearable.
This guy says if you replace the non-polar electrolytic cap in the RC Contour with the mylar cap you pulled, it smooths out the harshness. He really pounds the pulpit about using mylar over an electrolytic or poly with a resistor in series on the tweeters.
He could be shining on with techno-babble and superior B.S. for all I know, but his kit did exactly what he claims for my speakers.
Polk has upgraded the stock sl-2000 tweeters, in this case I think to RDO 194, which everyone recommends, and they're very affordable. I have not gone to those for the following reason:
They are now freaking great.
I will admit here I've got hearing loss at and over 12k, but I surely heard and was bothered by the harshness when they were original. Also, my son's ears are like a bat's sonar, and he loves these speakers.
I have also done the mortite and sticky-tape tweaks on the driver baskets.

heiney9

Do the work yourself with quality parts......the parts offered on e-bay are avg at best. There are lost of threads, advice and info here at CP to get the job done. It's not difficult at all and using the more premium parts.....like Dayton, Clarity, Solen or Sonicap along with Mills resistors will give you better bang for your buck.

The RD0's are the next step if you have sl2000 tweeters and they bother you with their forward, harsh, grainy and peaky output.

smglbrth

Thanks for the replies guys, it's always better to ask. I am always "aware" of stuff that pops up on Ebay promising that someone reinvented the wheel, sort of speak.

I already have the new tweets and they are much smoother than the old SL2000's. As a matter of fact, all the drivers are newer as well. All of them are less than 7 years old. Since the crossovers have never been touched and are more than 20 some years old maybe I'll do a little more research here and see what I come up with.

It's funny, cars, trucks and motorcycles I can tear down and rebuild but it's just something about electronics. A new arena I'm not familiar with.

rallyshark

I have the Monitor 11ts and I upgraded my xover(first xover I ever attempted for what it's worth). I agree with everyone else, you will definitely get more bang for the buck if you do it yourself, and of course, you can't beat the satisfaction level of knowing you did your own xover and being happy with the results. I used mills resistors, sonicaps on the tweets, and dayton caps on the rest, and it sounded much better IMO. If I remember correctly you will need 4 12uf caps, 2 34/33uf caps, 2 2ohm 5+watt resistors, and 2 2.7ohm 5+ watt resistors. I'm not positive about the values as I'm going on memory and that was a couple or three months ago. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm incorrect:) Good luck:D

heiney9

The schematic is right here. Post #2

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38755

H9

P.s. Always check your actual x-over against the schematic, in a few cases they might be slightly different.