Michael8it

Oh, I forgot, THANK YOU for the 'young' part..... I don't hear that much anymore...

Primarily because they are 31 years old..... and from all that I have read both here and at the ClubPolk.com forum, the caps dry out and change their values with time, and it is well worth it (if you intend to keep the gear) to replace the caps. It's not a particularly hard job in this case because the crossover is mounted on top of the cabinet. But it can get extremely expensive if you start using high end audio caps. From what I have read, any modern day cap is going to out perform the original, made in Me-hi-ko caps that were on these. Although they were good for their day, there have been some great improvements in the manufacture and design of them. New caps (plus some TLC to the interior of the cabs themselves) would make these speakers come alive even more than now. Using Erse caps and Mills resistors I can redo both crossovers for $80 total. That's in the budget.....

I am getting all the parts together to do a major overhaul of my Polk RTA 12's. there are quite a few capacitors in the crossovers, which are mounted on top of the cabinet, along with the tweeter. I have looked at several different manufacturers of caps including Solen, Clariticaps, Sonicaps, and Erse. Erse seems to be the best cap for the price, based on several reviews I read. Clariticaps and Sonicaps would simply be too costly as each crossover has six very large caps and 2 small ones. However, one of the things I would like to get out of this is improved (tighter) bass response, and that may lead me to a different cap for the LF side (it's only 2 caps per speaker), and if I can get significant improvement with a different cap I may do that. Does anyone have any feedback on Erse caps in general, or on caps specifically for the LF module ? Thanks, Mike