Anyone considered modding the new RTi As?

[JimAckley]

I have some A3s, and in light of undertaking the upgrade on my LSi's, I was wondering if anyone had modded any of the brand new RTi series.

[F1nut]

When I picked up the Rti A7's that I won at the last Polkfest from Polk HQ, Patrick said he'd give me 5 minutes after I got them out of the boxes before I had the crossovers out to see what it would take to mod them. It was more like a few hours. :biggrin:

Anyway, what I found was two boards stacked and mounted to the binding post plate. All of this came out of a hole barely large enough to get the crossover boards inside the cabinet. I quickly realized that there is no way to use the original boards for mods, that there is no practical way to remote mount a separate board inside the cabinet and that I wasn't interested in having boards outside the cabinet. I told Patrick at a later date that Polk needs to have the engineers design this things with us tweakers in mind. He just laughed. :frown:

[JimAckley]

I would at least kind of figure that my A3s would be simpler than 7s since all I have is one tweeter and one midbass driver. I'm gonna open one up tonight and take a peek and tell ya what I find. My A3s do have a peak around 140 Hz and I'm wondering if a mod would do away with that. I have to put a pretty big cut @ 125 and 160 on my EQ to balance them out, and since there are other speakers running through the same system in other rooms, I'd like to have the EQ as neutral as possible (except for that boost at 40 Hz :biggrin:)

On a side note, how the heck did you win some A7s? What's Polkfest? I'd like to win some speakers!

[F1nut]

It can't hurt to take a look.

Polkfest is our annual get together. Information on the next one can be found here, http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108694

We have a raffle with the proceeds going to the Githen's Center in NJ. People attending donate items and gear. Polk Audio usually donates something as well.

[JimAckley]

I'm going to attempt to attach some pictures. The left cap is 8.2mfd, 50v. The middle (yellow) cap is 0.47mfd, 100v. The right cap is 27mfd, 50v. I'm not sure how to discern it, but the resistor on the top left says 5W2R4J, and the right one says 5W5R7J. If you can translate that, more power to you. The board is just one board with all of the components on one side and plenty of enclosure to encase them, so I've got room for whatever I wanna stuff in there. Moving on, I'm not sure of the rating of the inductors. Maybe a call to Customer Service will answer that. Looks like the RTi A3s will get modded after I'm done with my LSis. Clarity Cap MRs are a definite for these. They're already a great speaker, so I can only imagine what a redone xover can do for them.

[F1nut]

Jim, I'm not trying to put you off, but you'd be lucky to get one Clarity cap on that board.

The resistors are 2.4 ohm, 5 watt and 5.7 ohm, 5 watt.

[inspiredsports]

Hi, I am new.This is my frist post ...lol.
say hello to everybody.

That's exactly what your other "first post" in another thread says.

[VR3]

It looks feasible to me??? The other series other than MR is normal aftermarket size??

[VR3]

It is definitely no smaller than my DT crossovers and the DT crossovers uses way more parts..

[JimAckley]

You're not putting me off :) I figured a second board of some sort would be necessary, or maybe make a new board altogether and leave the OEM board untouched. The RTiA series is insanely deep, so I'm not necessarily worried about stacking everything on a board if I have to, or installing a second board in the enclosure to fit it. Where there is a will, there is a way :wink:

[JimAckley]

Is there anywhere to get MRs that's cheaper than Madisound? My 27mfd cap will cost me $200ea on madisound, whereas the ESA line is only $64ea. It will run me $723 for caps alone if I go with the MR line, $196 with the ESA line. Are the MRs worth nearly 4x the cost?

[VR3]

I bought mine from Caps and Coils - but last I checked they were not stocking them anymore.

They are still very expensive, you will only save 20-30 bucks.

Clarity Cap MR will NOT*** fit on that board, period and is NOT worth it for RT speakers. Waste of money for sure.

[VR3]

Clarity MR is worth the money for speakers that cost over 2-3 thousand...

Your crossover should only cost 25% of the total speaker cost, IMO

[JimAckley]

Scratch that fellas, I'm grabbing a set of LSi9s to take the place of my RTi A3s, and you know I'm not gonna let my LSi's go unmodded :biggrin:

edit:
Do note that I still plan on modding my A3s. They are just further back in line now. LSiC, then LSi9s, then LSi25s, then RTi A3s, then LSiFXs... and probably my JBL Northridge E50s just for kicks

[JimAckley]

Correction, I'm getting LSi7s and will probably sell my A3s. I just spent the last hour or so with AsSiMiLaTeD and did an A/B comparison with the A3s and his LSi7s, and am just floored at how much more I like the sound of his LSi7s. They don't reach nearly as deep as the A3s (which the A3s do shockingly well for a bookshelf), but when we flipped from the 7s to the 3s, you could immediately tell the midbass punch was gone (but was replaced by sub-bass presence). The clarity, although decent, was not quite comparable to the 7s, which are honestly an all-around better speaker. I'm picking up his whole 2-channel rig, which was an HK unit, Sony SACD player, and some very nice speaker cables and interconnects. I will probably keep my Kenwood AVR and drive my JBL E50s as a pair of subwoofers to complete the sound.

On a side note, I'm sure that, if modified, the sound of the A3s could have been competitive with the LSi7s in stock form.