Mechans: Bill has done this very job many times before from what he told me. As such, it is nothing new to him or too complicated to handle. He simply can't dedicate the amount of necessary time to do the job now. If he were to do that, he would end up loosing money and alienating other customers, which he won't do because he's a good businessman.
Other than that, Ohm doesn't work on these speakers and hasn't done so for several years now. As it is, i wouldn't want to use the stock parts after having talked to Bill and knowing what i do now.
Woodman: I'll try giving them a call in the morning and feel them out. Thanks for the info.
As a side note, i pulled apart a set of Polk 10's that i had sitting in my basement last night. The mid-woofers had previously been replaced with newer, higher grade drivers by my Brother. One of the binding posts had broken off, so i repaired that problem. While i had the one apart, i decided to rewire the cabinet. I replaced the stock tweeter wiring with 22 gauge Silver / Teflon twisted pair conductors. The mid-woofers, which were originally wired "daisy chain" fashion with something like 18 gauge or so, each received their own 12 gauge Silver / Teflon twisted pair feedlines. I used Cardas solder on all connections.
After firing them up, i was expecting to be killed by the typically bright sound of fresh Silver cabling, but i was pleasantly surprised. The sound was actually much smoother than anticipated. Bass was drastically improved in terms of attack, definition and over-all tightness i.e. much less overhang. Bass had surprising "slam" for having only two 6.5" mid-woofers with a 10" passive per cabinet. Then again, the lack of overhang and improved impact may have to do with the rest of the system. Given that i've never had the Polks hooked up to a true voltage source that can easily deliver 1200+ wpc into their 4 ohm load, the sheer "gripping power" of this type of amp may have something to do with this also.
The warmth region now sounds much cleaner, but is a little lean sounding. This is something i've noticed on previous re-wiring jobs i.e. the sound tends to fill out a bit as the wiring / connections settle in. I know that some folks may have a hard time believing something like this, and i did too at first, but i've almost come to expect this now.
The treble response took a change for the better too. Overall, it sounds noticeably cleaner. On one disc that i listened to, the drummer kept striking the "bell" ( center dome ) of a cymbal repeatedly. Quite honestly, i was amazed at how sharp, clean and "real" this sounded. Then he started wailing on the cymbals and everything went back to the old Polk treble that i was used to, but not quite as bad. That is, the treble was smeared and lacking definition. My guess is that individual cymbal strikes are handled reasonably well by the tweeter, but it just doesn't have the transient response to keep up with high intensity rapid fire reproduction of multiple signals all at once.
For now, these will have to suffice for the mains in my HT system. This may give me some added incentive to get busy on the original speakers i had in that system. Not only did i pull them apart to do some more work on them, i also lent out the matching rears that i had for that system. I'm rebuilding some speakers for a friend, so i gave him the towers that i was using as rears to use until i could get his speakers done. As such, my HT system is a real hodge-podge of mix-n-match speaker brands and designs. Sean
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