Greetings from Los Angeles

[dpuopolo]

Though new to this forum, I have been a broadcast and recording engineer for over 25 years. Right now all my stuff is in storage in Boston, so I've put together a cheap, good quality stereo.

I started out with a pair of Polk Audio RT600 speakers that I bought at a thrift store for $75.00. Though the cabinets are in good shape, both woofers were blown and Polk wants $75.00 each for new ones. This is WAY outside my budget now (I live on a showstring, having lost $80,000.00 with a failed business and I have five children including two under 4), so I bought some Panasonic woofers on ebay (the pair for $15.00 shipped). When I installed them, it was very clear that they would not work with the present crossovers, so I changed them to a simple single pole crossover on the tweeter and used the self inductance of the woofer for its crossover. The Polk tweeter sounded harsh crossed over at 2 kHz anyway so I moved it up to 3.5 kHz (where the woofer begins falling off). The crossover is a 4.7 uf nonpolar cap with a .1 metal film across it. I also put a 3 ohm resistor in series with the tweeter to move the crossover freq. up a bit and to lower the tweeter's output. The result is a smooth sounding speaker from about 100 Hz through 20 kHz. The mids sound just great on them!

Next, I bought a cheap KLH powered subwoofer on Craigslist. It handles the low stuff fairly well. Fortunately it has line in jacks that are not connected together.

Then I discovered the Sonic Impact T amp. I bought one for 22 dollars shipped from Buy.com (using Google checkout). I changed its input caps (see my other post) and use it to power the Polks.

The sound is AMAZING...in some ways better then my Celestion SL600's back east when driven by a McIntosh 240 amp and coupled with a Velodyne subwoofer.

My next thing to do (when I save some $$) is to get full range drivers for the Polks (either Fosdex or Hemp Audio) and cross over the existing Polk's tweeter at above 12,000 Hz.

So..I have a pretty decent stereo system for under 200 dollars complete.

Next project is to build a preamp. National Semiconductor has some new really high quality opamps out and they're sending me some samples.

[FastEddy]

Welcome aboard. You seem like you are quite resourceful when it comes to cranking out the music from a tightly squeezed piggy bank. ...

[Cal Weldon]

Welcome to the forums. I think many here can relate to your story.