psw300 rattle

[scva4]

Hello everyone,

I have a Polk PSW300 that has a nasty rattle when the volume is turned up. Its comming from within the enclusure. sounds like wood on wood, but can't tell for sure. Anyone else with this problem? Something loose within the subwoofer? I've resorted to turning down the volume on the sub, which defeats the purpose. Thanks in advance.

[Zen Dragon]

Polk subs are probably their weak point. The drivers have a tendancy to over extend at high volume, but that is not a wood on wood sound, at least to my ears. It is more of a nasty pop sound.
Is this something that just started happening on a unit that used to perform differently?

[Eric W]

Yes it may be something loose within the enclosure. Please unscrew the woofer from the unit and have a peek inside, or call/email us.

[emcrites]

This is just bizarre...

I JUST aquired the same sub over the weekend, and guess what? SAME problem! I think I have found the nature of the problem though. I was coming to the forums to post my (our) problem and the apparent nature of said dilemna, when I found your post.

I had to disassemble the amp and enclosure to find the nature of the noise. The driver's voice coil is rubbing on its pole piece. I assume this is from gravity causing the woofer surround to sag over time. My driver has a 1998 production date. I wnt ahead and flipped the woofer upside-down in the hope that this might eliminate the interference. It didn't eliminate it, but it did improve a little. I wrote Polk CS to ask whether replacement of the MW1081 with another would be the prudent solution here, or whether they had a newer driver that might not fail as readily as this one did in the same period of time.

I just found some more info via this older thread:

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5242