Showing posts with label amplifier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amplifier. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Repairing Polk RTi12 speakers

So I just got a crazy good deal on some Cherry Polk RTi12s from Fry's (lets just say it didn't break the cost of lunch).  That's the good news, the bad news is that they had many issues:

  • Missing screws (#6-7/8") (really people?)
    • ~$0.50
  • Disconnected speakers (uh?)
    • $0 fix
  • Blown tweeters
    • luckily $0 fix
  • Blown crossover
    • Ok so for people that may have the same problem, I can post a diagram of HF crossover board.  The issue I found was that a 2 Ohm 5w resister had opened (only external sign was some glue had turned brown on the side of the resistor).
    • $3.00 fix after a few hours of disassembling the crossover, tracing circuit, and removing and replacing the same resistor in both speakers.
  • Missing 1 front cover
    • ~$16.00 (not bought yet)
  • Missing front face plates and brackets
    • ~$30
  • Missing rear power ports and brackets
    • ~$40
  • Missing feet and brackets
    • ~$30
  • Punctured mid range speaker
    • Temporarily $0 fix using nail polish
    • Eventually will be a $50 fix
  • Several dings, dents, scratches
    • $0.0, but cost to my pride :)  Perhaps fill and paint with something special.
  • Loose front port cone
    • $0, fixed with my glue gun

So if I were to actually bring this back to all working parts it would be ~$180 total for both.  But for now I've spent ~$100 for both.

So now that they work, the hard part is amplifying these puppies.  I love the tweeters, they're bright and really accurate.  The issue is that there are three woofers, and two mid-ranges, which means I need a LOT of power to get them all moving.

I have a Panasonic SA-XR57, rated 100 wpc RMS x 7 @ 6 ohm, and tested @ 93 watts with 8 ohm load, which I love terribly. It has both bi-wiring (with HF-LF balance) and bi-amping features. This means in stereo mode I can have 2 amps powering the LF, and 1 amp powering the HF.  In this mode the speaker is pretty nice, however I tend to bump up the bass by 1 to sound a little better.  The bad part is that in 5.1 mode I'm back to only 1 amp on HF and 1 on LF (using the unused amps .  In 5.1 I'm not sure if bi-wiring, or bi-amping would be better.

I think to really enjoy this speaker I'd need separate amplifier just for these guys.  I'll post back after I do more research.

update: I finally found my diagram.  Its slightly different from Zach's in terms of some resistor values and inductor values.


update: Here's a crossover diagram from Zach.  He provided me a copy since I think I threw mine away. Thanks!