Monitor 10B familiarization

[ryboltroad]

3 weeks ago I smoked a pair of R30s (Meters said 60W continuous???) Carver TFM 35
In any event, while waiting for the replacement parts I decided to thumb through the local "trader" and I found a pair of 10B's in excellent exterior condition along with the stands. I didnt know anything about the 10B other than the name was Polk and I needed something to get me by until the others get fixed.
Upon hooking these beauties up, I was shocked, what a great sounding(and looking) speaker. Holy !@#$ !!!!!!!
In the past week I have been crash coursing in 10B's. Can someone shed some light on these bad boys? Specs? Heck, I am looking at buying spare parts as a preventive measure.
Competition in their day? The guy I bought them from also had a pair of Magneplanar MG-1C for $100. He said if I didnt know what they were I should not buy them so I bought the cheaper 10Bs from him. (As a sidebar question is the MG a good speaker?)

Anyone that can help me understand the idiosyncrasies of these fine 10B's; advice appreciated. The R30s are disposable, I have learned these 10Bs are NOT.
Regards,
Gregg

[F1nut]

Welcome to the forum.

Here's a link to help answer your questions.

http://www.polkaudio.com/home/produc...=279&vintage=1

Great speakers, enjoy!

[nadams]

You got them for under $100, in good shape? What is it with people getting good deals lately?! :D

i guess the trick is to find a seller that doesn't know what they're selling?

[dorokusai]

Great speaker from the Monitor line, I have a couple pairs of them. They really have a nice full sound and great bass. It's a perfect speaker IMO.

It's always good to have spare parts. There are some repacement tweeters available in the Polk Flea Market.

[krimney]

If the magnepan are working fine they are a good buy at 100 bucks. If they need work, then leave em. I had a pair of the MG-1, they were impressive driven by a 200wpc philips amp. I sold them for about 300.00.

If you are looking for parts for the mon 10, I have a set of the PR and a pair of crossovers. 50 bucks for the lot and that includes shipping to US or Canada. As I bought them as parts, I do not know which model of 10 they came from apart that they had the sl-2000 tweeter in them.

[ryboltroad]

10B update.

Restored to vintage. Thanks to Chuck 2 premo SL2000- tweeters;
2-drivers from Polk and using my EE background to check crossover circuits they are as good as new.
Don't think I have ever heard Alan Parsons "I Robot" as it sounded tonight. Heck the only reason I bought these was to limp through until the R30 get repaired. Why repair the R30 is the question now?
I think I'll collect a stockpile of parts and enjoy these for a few more years.

[danger boy]

nice pair of 10's you got there. I hope to own a pair of 10's some day too. The vintage monitor series of speakers sound very good still today.

I own a pair of 7B's. and I love them as well.

[madmax]

So now you have all new drivers! The next thing to do if you want even better sound is to look at the xover, make a list of the capacitors and resistors and order some high quality replacements. www.partsconnexion.com is a great place to order them. Good DIY project. :)
madmax

[ryboltroad]

Danger Boy, you got that right, yes they still sound good today. I kinda fell outta the audio scene for a few years and these jewels have my attention again. It really is amazing how versatile they are. I am hitting them with a pair of TFM 35's. Everything from Pink Floyd to Nine Inch Nails just absolutely jumps out at you.
Thanks for the link Max, I was not aware of that supplier.

[ryboltroad]

arghh
Carver 35 Amp - gone
Carver MV-5 - gone
Denon - PRA1200 - acting goofy
Home PC - Offline
Laptop - Online

Thanks Mr. Hurricane Ivan - you a better man than me.
Yeah, I was dumb. No surge protectors, no UPS. Thanks

Anyone that can advise on Carver repairs (no service manuals) please advise.

Gregg

[danger boy]

you may want to unplug your components next time a hurricane is even remotely close to you.

good luck.. and hope the repairs don't break the piggy bank.

[madmax]

Oh no!
Sorry to hear about that! Did the spike get through the amp to the speakers? Hopefully you got lucky. Sometimes lightning will only rip up a small track on a pc board without going through the rest of the circuits. If you take the cover off the amp you could probably see what it did. Unplug it first. Oh yea, get a surge protector, even if it is a cheap one.
madmax

[Tour2ma]

Originally posted by ryboltroad
Anyone that can advise on Carver repairs (no service manuals) please advise. Gregg

I've used Sunfire (Carver) in the past and loved their service. Flat bench rate of about $149 (give or take depending on model) handles most issues and includes return shipping.

Here's their web-site: http://www.sunfire.com/

Here's their number: 425-335-4748

Sorry to hear of your troubles. But hey, at least the 10's are OK... right?

[ryboltroad]

Thanks all for the advice.
I never thought about calling Sunfire. I wonder if I will get laughed off the phone. Considering how Carver *Corp* treated the founder; I wonder? Thanks Tour , I'll give it a shot

Most important: The 10B's are intact and alive and well.

I hit the pawn shop and got an old onkyo t-403 tuner and kenwood Cd to get me through( $80.00 for both can you believe it?). Reverted back to the other Carver 35 unbridged. Damn I miss the extra ooomph.
Could be worse.
Thanks all
Gregg

[Tour2ma]

If you called, you now know no laughter... Especially if Rita, the Sunfire CS rep for the Carver line, is still there. She's is anything but a barrel of laughs...

When Bob started Sunfire he grabbed the Carver service business as well, at least for models designed while he ran his namesake. Sunfire did service my Carver M-1.5t.

So what did they quote you?

[ryboltroad]

I've debated long and hard for the last 3 hours whether to share this post or not, but I learned a big lesson today. I am so sick to my stomach I figured I would move away from debugging broken Monitor 10's (and other Stuff SH*T) for a TBD time.
Here's the drill; at lunch today I decided to visit the pawn shop. As mentioned in earlier posts I bought some nice stuff from them after Ivan damaged some of my equipment(my own stupidity for not unplugging it); however, today they had a just recently traded in Onkyo full system M504, CD, Tuner, PreA, ... the whole bit. Well they had it hooked up to huge pair of JBL something or another speakers and I **ASSUMED** it work. I negotiated a price for the system and figured this would be a great Friday night project - NOT.

I did NOT test the system on a cheap pair of test speakers when I got home

I wired it all up, checked it twice, and hit the power button.

60 Hz AC hum and the Onkyo protection LED went ON.

To make a long story short, the monitor 10B's tweeters are smoked( I am really pissed off about that since I just bought them from MadMax), I took all the Onkyo S*@T and unhooked it and hooked up old faithfull. I am now in the process of uncovering what damage happened to what equipment.

I am a EE by background which is a double edged sword. Complacency will bite YOU.
I knew better! Based on the 60 Hz hum and damage I am guessing (note the lack of the use of the word 'assuming')
120 VAC walked through the system. GOD F!@#$!&@ing Damnit !!!!!!!!!)

What could have happened?
- Bad wiring job, cockpit error - NO NO NO
- Bouncing down the freeway in the backseat of a Hemi Ram 2500, maybe...

Lessons learned
- you guys tell me, hell it might help someone else.
- Have a disposable test available !!!
-
-

I am not looking for any sympathy, most of you guys would have checked it out on a disposable system. For those of you who might get complacent.........LEARN!
p.s. The pawn shop has a 90 day warranty on all of their stuff. Let's see what happens tomorrow when I take it back and they hook it up to verify...........No, I am not that bad....

Regards,
Gregg
( I need an 18 pack of something strong)

[faster100]

Did the M504 amp work? id love to have another one of those? or was it something else that caused the problem..

[ryboltroad]

Faster........that's why I bought the G!@#$*& thing.
I have never heard one either. I was just curious and it looked like a good deal.
I have it apart now with the oscilloscope on it and the DVM, with no load of course. I see nothing wrong. What the hell upstream could do that kind of damage? This baby was one 30 seconds max before it went..............HUMMMMMMMMMM

[George Grand]

You will find the Onk M-504 is a LITTLE more comfortable with low impedance loads than the Carver TFM-35. You will also find there is not much comparison between the mids and highs on the amps. The Carver is much more refined and a lot sweeter up top.

I recently compared those exact same amps, trying to figure out what to drive the mids and tweets on my AR-9's with. The Carver walked away with it, and I sold the M-504. However I did keep an even bigger more powerful Onk (M-5090, 200wpc) to drive the very low impedance load presented by the AR-9's four 12" woofers.

George Grand (of the Jersey Grands)

[madmax]

Bummer man! Yea, I always use a cheap bench setup to test stuff. Well, there were a few times I just popped them into the system. Actually all those toshibas I modified went straight from the mod bench into my reference system. Never even ocurred to me that I could have blown up $1000's worth of equipment. It happens. You bring out a good point and hopefully others (as well as myself) will take heed. Were those the standard $20 SL-2000's I sold or the "best of the best" $50 dollar ones?
madmax

[Tour2ma]

ryboltroad,
Very sorry to read of your continuing troubles, but many thanks for making the decision to make the post.

I've tested new acquisitions on many different speakers, including maggies and DQ-10's. Have been lucky so far, but not going to press my luck. The little LS f/x's will "take the point" from now on... at least until I can bag something even cheaper for hazardous duty.

[krimney]

The original monitor 10, with the Peerless tweeter had a fuse protecting the tweeter. Might be a good idea to wire a fuse into the current version of 10 too????? This might have saved your SL-2000??

[dorokusai]

There is a polyswitch protection device in the later models.

[krimney]

If there is protection in the later models could the tweeters be ok and the protection device "tripped" "blown" or something? Should it not have protected the tweeters, or would it not have had time to react fast enough?

Just thinking out loud :)

[Tour2ma]

Good thinking out loud... I'd say...

[ryboltroad]

With a clear head I decided to jump back in tonight after a hiatus from last week.
Turns out the Onk PreA is the culprit.
MadMax, sorry it was the $50 ones...

I went out to the pool house tonight and took apart my wife's Sams club boom box $200 special. Stickers on the back say 100W continous, 200W Max. HA HA HA. Well, as this written they are getting ripped by the TFM 35 @ 60W and believe it or not they sound pretty damn good.
I've had the Onk 504 hooked up and it is a formidable opponent as far as I can tell based on these cheesy speakers.
Thanks to fellow Polkie I have some tweets on the way. I think a driver or two is mushy so anyone with 6503's please PM.

Thanks all for the comments. If it wasn't for the fact that the 10B's sound so damn good I wouldn't even bother with it. By the time this over I'll have too much $$$ invested. Oh well.....

[ryboltroad]

in the so what category...
Tattoos hurt.
Ouch.
As Tom Petty would say...........Born a Rebel. $140 for that rebel flag on my arm, sheet, coulda bought the Parasound PreA for that..........wife is pissed...

[reeltrouble1]

My local goodwill has a wonderful pair of Bose 21 for 6.99, now there is a bench test speaker worth blowing up!!!

Sorry to read about your bad luck, but on the bright side look what you have discovered about the Polk sound!!