FrankenPolk's
Sorry for the long post, here goes.
Well out of nowhere today, my friend dropped off a pair of Monitor 5's. This is my second pair, and immediately I thought these were much older than the ones I have already. Aside from them cosmetically being kind of beat up and my other ones being almost like new, the other differences I noticed were:
The grille frame's were made of MDF (not plastic like on my first pair) and instead of the "feet" being on the grilles, they were on the speaker cabinets themselves. Second, the tweeters are sl-2000's. I opened up my first pair of M5's and found them to be from 1991, so I figured mid Eighties for these puppies.
So I hooked them up to see if all of the drivers were working, which they were. Cool, a free pair of Polk's with nothing wrong.
I then noticed that one of the mid drivers was in sideways (the "Polk" name stamped in the rubber surround was facing left instead of facing down. I know, stupid, but I wanted to turn it around.)
This led me to believe that it was a replacement driver. I found the date of April 26, 1991 on it, and was very shocked because these were definitely older designs than my other ones. So I decided to check out the other drivers.
I found these dates: Crossovers were both marked March 24, 1988. The first tweeter I took out was from February 28, 1989. The other tweeter was marked January 21, 1991.
Both passive radiators were marked April 4, 1988.
This just struck me as very odd, because I have had several pair of Polk's apart and haven't seen anything like this.
Does anyone know if this was caused by Polk's sales just being slow, thus all the parts being left over and assembled into the speakers?
Is there any inofrmation available about when they went through the model changes on their monitor series?
Not really expecting much feedback, just wanted to write down what I found because I thought it was interesting.
Thanks. Mike
Well out of nowhere today, my friend dropped off a pair of Monitor 5's. This is my second pair, and immediately I thought these were much older than the ones I have already. Aside from them cosmetically being kind of beat up and my other ones being almost like new, the other differences I noticed were:
The grille frame's were made of MDF (not plastic like on my first pair) and instead of the "feet" being on the grilles, they were on the speaker cabinets themselves. Second, the tweeters are sl-2000's. I opened up my first pair of M5's and found them to be from 1991, so I figured mid Eighties for these puppies.
So I hooked them up to see if all of the drivers were working, which they were. Cool, a free pair of Polk's with nothing wrong.
I then noticed that one of the mid drivers was in sideways (the "Polk" name stamped in the rubber surround was facing left instead of facing down. I know, stupid, but I wanted to turn it around.)
This led me to believe that it was a replacement driver. I found the date of April 26, 1991 on it, and was very shocked because these were definitely older designs than my other ones. So I decided to check out the other drivers.
I found these dates: Crossovers were both marked March 24, 1988. The first tweeter I took out was from February 28, 1989. The other tweeter was marked January 21, 1991.
Both passive radiators were marked April 4, 1988.
This just struck me as very odd, because I have had several pair of Polk's apart and haven't seen anything like this.
Does anyone know if this was caused by Polk's sales just being slow, thus all the parts being left over and assembled into the speakers?
Is there any inofrmation available about when they went through the model changes on their monitor series?
Not really expecting much feedback, just wanted to write down what I found because I thought it was interesting.
Thanks. Mike
Post edited by dthomps on
Comments
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Could it be that someone replaced them at one time? I see people here replacing parts all the time here....that would be my best guess. Especially when you say they are pretty beat up.
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May take one of the Polk Folk to answer this one...
When compared to the older, presumably factory, connections, does the soldering of the later drivers give any indication of their being replacements?More later,
Tour...
Vox Copuli
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. - Old English Proverb
"Death doesn't come with a Uhaul." - Dennis Gardner
"It's easy to get lost in price vs performance vs ego vs illusion." - doro
"There is a certain entertainment value in ripping the occaisonal (sic) buttmunch..." - TroyD -
Soldering... I would have guessed the connections were push-on connectors on the driver side of the run. Perhaps solder at the crossover end. My Monitor 7Cs were manufactured in the fall of '89, and I could replace every driver with nary a need for a soldering gun.
