Top Hats for RTA 12B Speakers

[rmaiers]

Does anyone know if the plastic corner braces for the top hats of the RTA 12Bs are available from Polk? I got some top hats that are in great condition, they just need the corner braces.

[jon s]

I figure you are out of luck on that... You could probably make a set using 1" diameter dowels...

[geppy1]

I may have one you could use for parts keith

[dorokusai]

Does anyone know if the plastic corner braces for the top hats of the RTA 12Bs are available from Polk? I got some top hats that are in great condition, they just need the corner braces.

They are not available.

[rmaiers]

Geppy1, Thanks for the offer. I'm going to see if I can get these speakers working first. Something is wrong with them, tweeters aren't playing. I only paid $50 for them so I'm looking at this as a project. I'm hoping the tweeters aren't blown as they are the peerless. The 3/4 amp fuses were still in and they weren't blown so I'm hoping the problem is in the crossovers. I've dug out my soldering iron, solder sucker, VOM and have a capacitor checker. Anyone have experience rebuilding the RTA-12B crossovers?

[geppy1]

Where are you located.? I laso have some top crossovers from a 1985 12C Keith

[jon s]

The RTA-12B/C speakers have a LOT of caps. I picked up my set for $50, and like you found out the tweeters weren't working. After investigating, I found that a resistor in the crossover burned out and that the tweeters were indeed blown.

There are two caps in the speaker cabinets and about 10-11 in each top assembly. I decided to replace all the caps with Sonicaps. This turned out to be a very expensive endeavor as it cost over $700 and reassembly was quite cumbersome due to the size of the soniccaps.

Even going with new Dayton or Jantzen crosscaps, the cost is going to exceed $250 total because of the crossover's complexity (I think this is the most complex crossover Polk ever made).

I can tell you that going with the Soniccaps made a tremendous difference but $700 is an awful lot to spend on a pair of old speakers.

[rmaiers]

I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Depending on what I find when I start testing I may just keep these for parts. Hopefully some of the drivers are ok. The cabinets are in better condition than my other 12Bs and the top hats look very good too, just missing the corner braces.

I can't see spending hundreds of dollars on capacitors as I really don't have any room for these even if I get them running. I already have a set of 12Bs, 12Cs, and SDA 2Bs.

This will be a good project for me to relearn soldering. Some day I will recap the SDA 2Bs.