Can Magnepan survive Wendell Diller?

@bdp24

One of my major shortcomings on this forum is that I have never attended a stereo show. There are so many speakers made that I will never hear because of availability, and I am not in a large market and what is available locally is limited. One of the dealers happened to carry Magnepan’s and I was drawn directly into that location and did not look farther.

The Eminent Technology LFT-8b look like an excellent choice in this price range.

No offence intended, @william53b. Eminent Technology is an even smaller company than Magnepan, has far fewer dealers, and doesn't advertise or attend CES regularly to sell their wares. But like Magnepan, they have survived in this tough business. They're both doing something right!

@bdp24 

I am never offended when people offer me honest informed advice, about anything really. I will attend a show once they start having them again, I was thinking RMAF.

The best upgrade path for Magnepan owners is to move up the product line. The 20.7 has satisfied many and the 30.7 takes it to another level.

I met Wendell and his wife at a demonstration they gave at the shop where I purchased a pair of 0.7s. The 0.7's were right for my little 26 foot diameter house which has a dome ceiling and walls because it was the biggest speaker that would fit with room to be far enough away from reflecting surfaces. It also has only two quasi-ribbon elements and no pure ribbon which I fear because it is more fragile than quasi-ribbons. It also has a simplified crossover which I do not think needs any upgrade. I did get after market upgraded stands for them.
I chose the 0.7s because when I auditioned them they sounded more like the live orchestra in the 19th Century built opera house I go to and its acoustics than speakers costing $50,000. For the audition I heard them with a solid state amplifier. At home I hooked them up to an SET using 833A radio station transmitter tubes using 1000 Volts and Hammond 1642SE output transformer which sounded better to me than the solid state amplifier the store used when I auditioned them.
I showed Wendell and his wife pictures of the amplifier with its quart-sized vacuum tubes and they told me such an amplifier would suffer wife acceptance factor problems, much as they liked the idea. But I can see why Magnepan does not make specific brand name recommendations for amplifiers. I can also not blame him for dismissing many "high end" speaker cables costing thousands of dollars designed by people who have no advanced graduate school education on the physics, which does not calculate out to support their designs. They are as independent as hell. For instance, they did listener tests with untrained listeners experimenting with three channel stereo using Pro Logic for the center channel.
I hope they remain in business for a long time. Some upgrades do not hurt. For the 0.7s, the crossover inductor they chose out of several iron core or air core which need more wire and might not be any better is probably as good as any and I do not know that a Teflon capacitor for the tweeter would be worthwhile, but I did get better stands for them.