Old Reviews of Vintage Polk Speakers...

[jon s]

Since I have been getting so much assistance here from the Polk Club members I decided to make a little contribution in return. I was able to find copies of reviews of EVERY vintage Polk speaker from the old High Fidelity and Stereo Review magazines from the 80s (these magazines are LONG out of print and finding the copies was tough)... I copied the articles and I am in the process of transcribing the information into a MS Word file (currently 24 pages and growing) and will convert them into a PDF file. So far, the reviews I have transcribed are:

Polk Monitor 10
Polk Model RTA-12B x2 (both HF and SR)
Polk SDA-2A
Polk SDA-1C
Polk SDA-SRS 2.3
Polk SDA-CRS
Polk SDA-SRS

Still transcribing...
Polk SDA-1
Polk SDA-2
Polk SDA-SRS2

Now the fine print...
the file is LARGE... So far it is ~4MB in size, looking at over 6MB when done. I put in some pictures of the appropriate speakers in the file as a reference. The copied images and charts of the reviews did not come across well so no luck there. If the images come out okay, I will try to copy them into the file. If I delete the images, the file will reduce considerably in size. If you guys want the big file I can probably email them to you or I can just upload the non-illustrated file to the site. Let me know your choices...

UPDATE: I was able to reduce the file to under 2MB by lowering the resolution of the images.. here is the final document...

I was finally able to upload the revised file... apparently work PC prevents uploading of files to forums... file was posted 6/23/2008...

[daboyz]

Would love to see something on the SDA-2A's. PM me with info.

Thanks, Dave

[nadams]

I'd be happy to host it for you if you'd like... any and all versions.

[Face]

That's generous of you, thanks.

[heiney9]

Cool, bring it on!!

H9

[RuSsMaN]

Hit polksda.com, he has a good bit of stuff already, pretty much 'the' site for all things vintage Polk. Jon, just scan them in individually, and he can process them to pdf's for the GP.

Send him what you have, contribute to the greater good, and everyone that wants it can get it, easy.

[jon s]

Hit polksda.com, he has a good bit of stuff already, pretty much 'the' site for all things vintage Polk. Jon, just scan them in individually, and he can process them to pdf's for the GP.

Send him what you have, contribute to the greater good, and everyone that wants it can get it, easy.

I sent him a couple of emails and he never responded. Plus the copies i made are actually pictures of the pages since i did not have a scanner or copier available, just my trusty camera and snapped away... the files are BIG... 3MB per image.

[candyliquor35m]

Someone recommended http://www.faststone.org/ for reducing, cropping, rotating, etc images and I've been using it since my old editor was 16 bit and wouldn't work on large files over 1 meg.

[Face]

http://www.irfanview.net/

Another great FREE picture viewer and editor.

[McLoki]

Awesome - thanks for sharing. I am very interested in the end results. Let us know when it is ready.

[heiney9]

Hit polksda.com, he has a good bit of stuff already, pretty much 'the' site for all things vintage Polk. Jon, just scan them in individually, and he can process them to pdf's for the GP.

Send him what you have, contribute to the greater good, and everyone that wants it can get it, easy.

Good idea as he really only has 2 "official" reviews. Many years ago I threw out my Stereo Review magazines I had years 1982-1990 and I kick myself all the time for not keeping them as a reference.

[tx_polkhead]

Can't wait to read up on the vintage stuff, thanks! Any one know what the HFand Sr in this line refer to?
'Polk Model RTA-12B x2 (both HF and SR)'

[jon s]

Can't wait to read up on the vintage stuff, thanks! Any one know what the HFand Sr in this line refer to?
'Polk Model RTA-12B x2 (both HF and SR)'

I have reviews of the RTA-12B from Stereo Review and High Fidelity, so two reviews...

Odd thing, I was able to go through all the copies of Audio Magazine during the same period and there was not a single review of Polk speakers...

[capitan100]

great stuff..

thanks for doing..

Blake

[Schurkey]

Yes, I want to see those reviews.

There is one itsy-bitsy problem.

All that material is copyrighted; and you'd be violating federal law by reproducing it.
Maybe no-one will care.

Maybe they will. Think about those 13-year-olds who were threatened by the recording industry with lawsuits and court appearances for downloading music files...

[jon s]

Yes, I want to see those reviews.

There is one itsy-bitsy problem.

All that material is copyrighted; and you'd be violating federal law by reproducing it.
Maybe no-one will care.

Maybe they will. Think about those 13-year-olds who were threatened by the recording industry with lawsuits and court appearances for downloading music files...

that would be my one big worry as you are correct. my only hope is that since the magazines have been out of print for almost 20 years that the publishers would no longer care. I mean, you can't even get back issues or anything anymore... anyway, I just finished the draft copy and will be proofing it tonight and hope to convert it tomorrow sometime to a PDF format. if anyone one wants a copy, send me a PM with your email address. remember, the file is pretty big, about 5MB I think.

[jon s]

I have completed the file and it is in the original post on the top. I reduced the image quality to get it down to 1.66MB in size. enjoy...

:D

any comments?

[heiney9]

........nm...........

[heiney9]

Looks great Jon, nice work and thanks for the effort. It's nice to have it all in (1) .pdf file. Now I might make my SDA compendium into a .pdf for my own use.

[heiney9]

Can I make one request. Not sure how you got these old reviews, if you purchased them or have them lying around, but if you could also add the June 1984 Audio Magazine article of the SDA "white" paper. That would be very much appreciated.

H9

[jon s]

Can I make one request. Not sure how you got these old reviews, if you purchased them or have them lying around, but if you could also add the June 1984 Audio Magazine article of the SDA "white" paper. That would be very much appreciated.

H9

I had to request the old issues from the Hawaii State Library and they had to retrieve them from the archives. They bound the issues into annual book binders which made it hard to copy so I had to resort to photographing them. took me three hours just to find these and photograph them. When I have time I will try to find later reviews in Audio magazine and the later Polk reviews from Stereo Review (I think they did the RT20P). I also have to correct a couple of typo errors in the original file. if you guys come across any, let me know and i will corrrect them... i know about "blots" iso "bolts" in the RTA12B reviews.

[heiney9]

I had to request the old issues from the Hawaii State Library and they had to retrieve them from the archives. They bound the issues into annual book binders which made it hard to copy so I had to resort to photographing them. took me three hours just to find these and photograph them. When I have time I will try to find later reviews in Audio magazine and the later Polk reviews from Stereo Review (I think they did the RT20P). I also have to correct a couple of typo errors in the original file. if you guys come across any, let me know and i will corrrect them... i know about "blots" iso "bolts" in the RTA12B reviews.

Again great work and effort thanks!!!

H9

[Face]

Definitely a cool read, thanks again.

[dcmeigs]

Great work. I can see that you went ot a great deal of effort. It's commendable that you offer to share this with us. Thanks.

I think this worthy of a sticky but copyright concerns might be an issue.

[Disc Jockey]

That was am enjoyable read, thanks.

DJ

[dorokusai]

2mb is the limit for PDF's here. I would suggest you break it down by series or year perhaps. I'll ensure it gets sticky'd but it's got to be "portable".

I'd hate to sacrifice resolution of the photographs for the sake of filesize.

[avguytx]

That was a great read.....thanks for going to the trouble of getting all of those reviews. I particularly enjoyed the review on the SRS 2's. :D

[jon s]

Sorry guys, I removed the original file to upload a corrected copy but I am getting connection timeout errors when uploading the new file... will try again later...

[Ron Temple]

Glad I read it on Friday then :D. Thanks Jon. The reviews are pretty dry, but offer some great technical data and do give you an idea of how the models stack up.

[jon s]

I was finally able to upload the revised PDF file just now... corrected numerous typos... old age and a two fingered typing will do that to you...