RD0194’s DO IT!!

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percivilla
percivilla Posts: 18
in Vintage Speakers
Hi Polk fans!

First post but I just couldn’t help gushing about how good these tweeters are.

So I picked up a set of Monitor 7’s after months of looking for a pair that weren’t being sold for ridiculous amounts by flippers. Finally scored a pair in great shape. Awesome!... or are they... SL2000 tweeters... maybe they’re not as bad as many think... ok, they’re not bad... they’re aweful! Trebles are beyond forward and that spike right at the edge of my hearing range had me taking an Advil and putting them in the basement after an hour. Hmm, read up on threads about the RD0 tweeters, called Polk, super friendly, shipped them off and they arrived today!

Tweeter swap done in 10 minutes (black is + btw). Throw on some Dire Straits making movies at medium volume, heyyy that’s more like it! Soundstage a bit recessed but these are fresh outta the box. Let that album play through, then some Bill Evans, wow! They’re getting clearer and I’m loving what I’m hearing, Crystal clear and absolutely smooooth. Ok, they’ve had a couple more albums... Telegraph Road time (loud). Goosebumps... neck hair at attention... eyes even welled up a couple times. Un-freakin believable. And they’re not even broken in! Soundstage, CLEAR, piano runs gives chills, Bass is awesome, absolutely no fatigueing harshness.

If you’re on the fence about swapping out your SL2000’s, get as far away from that fence as you can. Run, don’t walk to the phone and do it.

For reference, setup is a Dual 701 with Grado Black into a recapped Marantz 2240. Polks are sitting on top of Large Advents.

Get them!
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  • FestYboy
    FestYboy Posts: 3,861
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    Wait till you hear what a recap will do...
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  • F1nut
    F1nut Posts: 49,805
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    Welcome to the fold.
    Political Correctness'.........defined

    "A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."

    President of Club Polk

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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    FestYboy wrote: »
    Wait till you hear what a recap will do...

    I don’t know if I can handle these sounding any better :o

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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    F1nut wrote: »
    Welcome to the fold.


    Thanks F1nut!

    I completely get why you get so frustrated with the people who won’t listen when you try to tell them how much of an improvement these things are!

    Everyone’s ears are different and every speaker has been exposed to different conditions, but holy moly, mine were agonizing with the SL2000’s. Wife agreed. They seriously only lasted half an hour before I put em’ in the storage room.

    My previous favorite speakers were PSB 50r’s with the superb Phillips tweeters. The Polks have surpassed them by a large margin. The most pronounced difference is soundstage. The speakers disappear, it’s just a wall of music.

    Spinning Bill Evans Trio 64 right now. They might as well be in the room. Superb.
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  • pitdogg2
    pitdogg2 Posts: 24,585
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    Welcome aboard
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  • xschop
    xschop Posts: 4,707
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    "Spinning Bill Evans Trio 64 right now. They might as well be in the room. Superb"

    Agree with Festy here. A re-cap will bring the Trio even closer to life.
    Don't take experimental gene therapies from known eugenicists.
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  • erniejade
    erniejade Posts: 6,315
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    I had the same feeling with I put the RDO 198 in my 3.1 TL. Amazing how it sounds like a different speaker and how much better it is. BTW Making Movies is a great LP. I still remember the Skateaway video from when I was a kid.
    Klipsch The Nines, Audioquest Thunderbird Interconnect, Innuos Zen MK3 W4S recovery, Revolution Audio Labs USB & Ethernet, Border Patrol SE-I, Audioquest Niagara 5000 & Thunder, Cullen Crossover II PC's.
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  • dromunds
    dromunds Posts: 9,984
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    Sweet. There’s a thread recently with the plans to make stands for the 7’s - if you can do it, make some stands and get those babies off the Advents. The stands are nice with slight tilt of about six degrees. Easy to make.
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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    xschop wrote: »
    "Spinning Bill Evans Trio 64 right now. They might as well be in the room. Superb"

    Agree with Festy here. A re-cap will bring the Trio even closer to life.

    I’ll bet! It’s definitely part of the plan. Recap and JB welding the magnets. Sonicaps and new resistors. Not in a huge rush with how amazing they sound though. Bought them off original owners who said they’d barely been used. Tweeters stamped 1989.

    I’ll also be picking up some Walnut veneer and tan grille cloth. Our living room is hipster mid mod with walnut and teak. Big shiny black speakers looking a bit out of place.

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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    dromunds wrote: »
    Sweet. There’s a thread recently with the plans to make stands for the 7’s - if you can do it, make some stands and get those babies off the Advents. The stands are nice with slight tilt of about six degrees. Easy to make.


    Cool, I’ll check them out. Stands are definitely part of the plan as well. Already have a big sheet of walnut plywood, just have to clean all the crap off my workbench :D

    As has been noted, these speakers do not sound their best on the floor. Having them stacked on the Advents in the living room looks a bit too “Kiss concert”, so I’ll have to get that sorted soon.
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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    erniejade wrote: »
    I had the same feeling with I put the RDO 198 in my 3.1 TL. Amazing how it sounds like a different speaker and how much better it is. BTW Making Movies is a great LP. I still remember the Skateaway video from when I was a kid.


    Absolutely! I was expecting to just lose the harshness but they changed the character of the whole speaker. Was listening to Chuck Mangione before bed and there’s one song with a flute solo, I could clearly hear every time the guy breathed in while playing. Amazing detail.

    Skateaway is great! Their first four albums are fantastic. I’m a weirdo and don’t really dig most of Brothers in Arms *ducks and covers*
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  • dromunds
    dromunds Posts: 9,984
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    That stand thread is under DIY Mods, Tweeks and is called Hybrid Monitor 7 Stands or something like that. I need to build another set myself!
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  • F1nut
    F1nut Posts: 49,805
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    Big shiny black speakers looking a bit out of place.

    They are not big and black goes with everything.
    Political Correctness'.........defined

    "A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."

    President of Club Polk

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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    F1nut wrote: »
    Big shiny black speakers looking a bit out of place.

    They are not big and black goes with everything.

    How much more black could they be? None, none more black :D

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  • gyosa
    gyosa Posts: 701
    edited March 2019
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    Got mine in the mail the other day .....

    It’ll be interesting to see if I can hear a difference ....
    My hearing isn’t what it used to be - been flying jets for the last 35 years ....

    BK
    Dayens Ampino , Yamaha wxc-50 , Polk SDA 1c’s ( my first love .. ) , Kimber Kable 4TC, Sony 42” - BEDROOM

    B&K EX-442 ( it will go in my casket when I die ... ) , PS Audio 4.6 preamp ( old school , but it still jams on ... ) , Eversolo DMP-A6 , Boston Acoustic voyager 7’s - POOL

    Parasound A21, Eversolo DMP-A8 , Yamaha wxc-50 , Kimber Kable 4vs , Salk Supercharged Song towers ( difficult choice between these and my family if I had to choose ... 😩 ) , Sony XBR-A8F 65” OLED - DEN , MAIN RIG

    PS Audio S300 - sitting in the closet for now …

    Onkyo TX-nr609 , Polk atrium 7 , Boston acoustic sound ware (4) , Boston acoustic sub , B&W center , Sharp 65” TV - PATIO
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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    gyosa wrote: »
    Got mine in the mail the other day .....

    It’ll be interesting to see if I can hear a difference ....
    My hearing isn’t what it used to be - been flying jets for the last 35 years ....

    BK

    Oh I think you’ll hear a difference.

    One theory I have (not based on anything, just a theory) that may explain the divisive opinions on the SL2000’s, is how the dome material ages depending on use, temperatures, production variance, all kinds of things. I can’t imagine Polk would have sold too many speakers if the SL2000’s sounded that ice picky in showrooms when new. The set in my speakers were quite yellowed. I’ve seen pics of them that look much more silver. I’ve also got pretty good hearing and am not very tolerant of harsh tweeters.

    Then again, maybe people mistook ice pick for detail in a quick showroom demo...

    My set is obviously the only sample I have, but the difference cannot be overstated. They went from a speaker I couldn’t stand listening to, to one I can’t wait to get home and listen to.

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  • F1nut
    F1nut Posts: 49,805
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    It's nothing to do with aging, the SL2000 was always a hot one.
    Political Correctness'.........defined

    "A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."

    President of Club Polk

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  • heiney9
    heiney9 Posts: 25,082
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    It does get slightly worse with age, but even new the sl2000 was a bit harsh on the ears with it's spike and it never was a smooth sounding tweeter.

    The advent of cd's really made it stand out (in a bad way), especially the early players with their rudimentary filters, etc.

    RD0's were engineered by Polk to correct many of the issues with the original tweeters.

    H9
    "Appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. Measurements can provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment. Why are we looking to reduce a subjective experience to objective criteria anyway? The subtleties of music and audio reproduction are for those who appreciate it. Differentiation by numbers is for those who do not".--Nelson Pass Pass Labs XA25 | EE Avant Pre | EE Mini Max Supreme DAC | MIT Shotgun S1 | Pangea AC14SE MKII | Legend L600 | BlueSound Node 3 - Tubes add soul!
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  • CH46E
    CH46E Posts: 3,554
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    I never had a problem with the SL2000 until I put the 194s in. Much nicer tweeter.
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  • motorhead43026
    motorhead43026 Posts: 3,892
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    My M7, M10, SDA2B's all have newer tweets. Yeah, big difference it made in all.
    2 channel: Anthem 225 Integrated amp; Parasound Ztuner; TechnicsTT SL1350; Vincent PHO-8 phono pre; Marantz CD6005 spinner; Polk SDA2BTL's; LAT International speaker cables, ZU Mission IC's and power cables all into a PS Audio Dectet Power center.

    Other; M10 series II, M7C's, Hafler XL600 amp, RB-980BX, Parasound HCA-1500 amp , P5 preamp, all in storage. All vintage Polk have had crossover rebuilds and tweeter upgrades.

    The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

    It is imperative that we recognize that an opinion is not a fact.

    Imagine making politics your entire personality.
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  • boston1450
    boston1450 Posts: 7,474
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    Rd0's svck :)
    ..
    ..
    ..
    Randy/Maine
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  • boston1450
    boston1450 Posts: 7,474
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    glad you like em. Enjoy
    ..
    ..
    ..
    Randy/Maine
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  • gyosa
    gyosa Posts: 701
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    I’ll let y’all know after I get them in ...
    Just superglued #10 washers today ....
    Hopefully will install soon , flying schedule permitting .....

    BK
    Dayens Ampino , Yamaha wxc-50 , Polk SDA 1c’s ( my first love .. ) , Kimber Kable 4TC, Sony 42” - BEDROOM

    B&K EX-442 ( it will go in my casket when I die ... ) , PS Audio 4.6 preamp ( old school , but it still jams on ... ) , Eversolo DMP-A6 , Boston Acoustic voyager 7’s - POOL

    Parasound A21, Eversolo DMP-A8 , Yamaha wxc-50 , Kimber Kable 4vs , Salk Supercharged Song towers ( difficult choice between these and my family if I had to choose ... 😩 ) , Sony XBR-A8F 65” OLED - DEN , MAIN RIG

    PS Audio S300 - sitting in the closet for now …

    Onkyo TX-nr609 , Polk atrium 7 , Boston acoustic sound ware (4) , Boston acoustic sub , B&W center , Sharp 65” TV - PATIO
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  • gyosa
    gyosa Posts: 701
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    Swapped them today ....
    First impressions, smoother but not as bright ....

    Bk
    Dayens Ampino , Yamaha wxc-50 , Polk SDA 1c’s ( my first love .. ) , Kimber Kable 4TC, Sony 42” - BEDROOM

    B&K EX-442 ( it will go in my casket when I die ... ) , PS Audio 4.6 preamp ( old school , but it still jams on ... ) , Eversolo DMP-A6 , Boston Acoustic voyager 7’s - POOL

    Parasound A21, Eversolo DMP-A8 , Yamaha wxc-50 , Kimber Kable 4vs , Salk Supercharged Song towers ( difficult choice between these and my family if I had to choose ... 😩 ) , Sony XBR-A8F 65” OLED - DEN , MAIN RIG

    PS Audio S300 - sitting in the closet for now …

    Onkyo TX-nr609 , Polk atrium 7 , Boston acoustic sound ware (4) , Boston acoustic sub , B&W center , Sharp 65” TV - PATIO
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  • percivilla
    percivilla Posts: 18
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    gyosa wrote: »
    Swapped them today ....
    First impressions, smoother but not as bright ....

    Bk

    Less bright a good thing in this case IMO. I still only have probably 15-20 hours on them, but have noticed them opening up. Cymbals for example coming out of the background. Such a sweet smooth tweeter though. No fatigue. Could listen to these speakers all day.

    I’ve read on here that they need to break in and I completely believe it. They’re getting better all the time. Of course I also went and swapped my Cart for a Grado Silver II two nights ago, which is also breaking in, so that throws objectivity out the window...

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  • gyosa
    gyosa Posts: 701
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    My high frequency hearing isn’t so good anymore .....
    They are definitely smoother .....less harsh .....

    Had my 1c’s since new .....
    Trying to talk myself into new crossovers .....

    BK
    Dayens Ampino , Yamaha wxc-50 , Polk SDA 1c’s ( my first love .. ) , Kimber Kable 4TC, Sony 42” - BEDROOM

    B&K EX-442 ( it will go in my casket when I die ... ) , PS Audio 4.6 preamp ( old school , but it still jams on ... ) , Eversolo DMP-A6 , Boston Acoustic voyager 7’s - POOL

    Parasound A21, Eversolo DMP-A8 , Yamaha wxc-50 , Kimber Kable 4vs , Salk Supercharged Song towers ( difficult choice between these and my family if I had to choose ... 😩 ) , Sony XBR-A8F 65” OLED - DEN , MAIN RIG

    PS Audio S300 - sitting in the closet for now …

    Onkyo TX-nr609 , Polk atrium 7 , Boston acoustic sound ware (4) , Boston acoustic sub , B&W center , Sharp 65” TV - PATIO
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  • gyosa
    gyosa Posts: 701
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    So far , so good .....
    Listening to The Chromatics ...
    At low volume ( bedroom setup ) , they don’t have the “sparkle” that the 2000’s have ... but when volume cranked they really come alive .... 👍u2z8dadswlp5.jpeg
    14fw97d6d19p.jpeg
    Dayens Ampino , Yamaha wxc-50 , Polk SDA 1c’s ( my first love .. ) , Kimber Kable 4TC, Sony 42” - BEDROOM

    B&K EX-442 ( it will go in my casket when I die ... ) , PS Audio 4.6 preamp ( old school , but it still jams on ... ) , Eversolo DMP-A6 , Boston Acoustic voyager 7’s - POOL

    Parasound A21, Eversolo DMP-A8 , Yamaha wxc-50 , Kimber Kable 4vs , Salk Supercharged Song towers ( difficult choice between these and my family if I had to choose ... 😩 ) , Sony XBR-A8F 65” OLED - DEN , MAIN RIG

    PS Audio S300 - sitting in the closet for now …

    Onkyo TX-nr609 , Polk atrium 7 , Boston acoustic sound ware (4) , Boston acoustic sub , B&W center , Sharp 65” TV - PATIO
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  • audioluvr
    audioluvr Posts: 5,438
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    If those 1C's have the stock crossovers, you are not hearing, even close, the capabilities of the RDO's or your speakers.
    Gustard X26 Pro DAC
    Belles 21A Pre modded with Mundorf Supreme caps
    B&K M200 Sonata monoblocks refreshed and upgraded
    Polk SDA 1C's modded / 1000Va Dreadnaught
    Wireworld Silver Eclipse IC's and speaker cables
    Harman Kardon T65C w/Grado Gold. (Don't laugh. It sounds great!)

    There is about a 5% genetic difference between apes and men …but that difference is the difference between throwing your own poo when you are annoyed …and Einstein, Shakespeare and Miss January. by Dr. Sardonicus
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  • gyosa
    gyosa Posts: 701
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    They do ....
    Trying to talk myself in to it .....

    Bk
    Dayens Ampino , Yamaha wxc-50 , Polk SDA 1c’s ( my first love .. ) , Kimber Kable 4TC, Sony 42” - BEDROOM

    B&K EX-442 ( it will go in my casket when I die ... ) , PS Audio 4.6 preamp ( old school , but it still jams on ... ) , Eversolo DMP-A6 , Boston Acoustic voyager 7’s - POOL

    Parasound A21, Eversolo DMP-A8 , Yamaha wxc-50 , Kimber Kable 4vs , Salk Supercharged Song towers ( difficult choice between these and my family if I had to choose ... 😩 ) , Sony XBR-A8F 65” OLED - DEN , MAIN RIG

    PS Audio S300 - sitting in the closet for now …

    Onkyo TX-nr609 , Polk atrium 7 , Boston acoustic sound ware (4) , Boston acoustic sub , B&W center , Sharp 65” TV - PATIO
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  • audioluvr
    audioluvr Posts: 5,438
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    Let me help. I did the RDO swap in my 1C's and though that it couldn't get much better than that. Listened to them for about a month like that and then broke down and had @westmassguy rebuild mine with optional new Erse inductors etc. The first thing I noticed was everything was evenly blended from the lowest of lows to extreme highs. Like I was listening before with pillows pressed up to my ears and now they are gone.

    Gustard X26 Pro DAC
    Belles 21A Pre modded with Mundorf Supreme caps
    B&K M200 Sonata monoblocks refreshed and upgraded
    Polk SDA 1C's modded / 1000Va Dreadnaught
    Wireworld Silver Eclipse IC's and speaker cables
    Harman Kardon T65C w/Grado Gold. (Don't laugh. It sounds great!)

    There is about a 5% genetic difference between apes and men …but that difference is the difference between throwing your own poo when you are annoyed …and Einstein, Shakespeare and Miss January. by Dr. Sardonicus
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