Can Magnepan survive Wendell Diller?


I bought my first set of Magnepans in 1976, and I currently have a pair of 1.7i's.

It is difficult for me to upgrade to the 3.7i's because their are so many things that the company can do to improve their product that they simply won't offer; upgraded crossover components, a solid wood/rigid frames and better stands are examples.

Other companies are now doing this, but Magnepan always says Wendell doesn't think that is a good idea.

Can a man who suggests using lamp cord for his speaker line really have that much control over an otherwise unique technological approach to speaker design? I must be missing something obvious when a product is hand assembled in MN and any of these upgrades would, in my mind, warrant factory upgrades. Who wouldn't spend an extra $1k for a 1.7i with a hardwood frame and an upgraded x-over? Adding a ribbon tweeter to the 1.7i would warrant an additional $1k, still bringing them in $2k under the 3.7i.

Is it common for one person to hold an entire company back in high end audio? 
128x128william53b
I love mine!!!
I've upgraded the fuses and replaced the the factory tweeter/attenuatorwith a pure silver one. Other than that the are stock and sound great.    
When I first started in this hobby, I bought a pair of Maggie 1’s improved. They were, at least to me, not only a spectacular sounding speaker at the time, but compared to anything else I could buy for the same money ( or even considerably more), a real eye opener. At the time, i had a choice between a big box stores' Magnavox speaker or the Maggies...the choice was easy. I remember thinking at the time that the sales person must have misquoted me on the price of the Maggie’s, and was expecting something not even close to my budget. As a twenty something year old novice, it was a pleasure to have a speaker like these available to me. Today, i continue to applaud Magnepan for their ongoing value in the market. I would suspect that there are a lot of folks on this forum, and others, that are in the hobby solely due to their products, and the value that they offer. Just as an aside, i have a very good a’phile friend who happens to be a pro audio reviewer....and yes- he uses Maggies as his reference!
Spatial Audio labs open baffle speakers ,excellent build quality and sonics ,very efficient, and
don’t require a lot of space .

I owned the Spatial M4s, both Turbos and Triode Masters. Great speakers, though I now own and prefer the Maggie .7s. They’re not as detailed and don’t play as low as the Spatials but they disappear better and the imaging is tighter.

Magnepans are some of the very best at what they do well — remove box resonance from the equation. All speakers have trade-offs, no matter the price tag. Speakers in the ~$2K/pair range tend to have major trade-offs. That’s just the way the industry operates. What you sacrifice in a pair of Magnepans for $2K are bass dynamics and resolution, in exchange for an open transparency that rivals or surpasses some $50K speakers.

If Magnepan suddenly decided to use Mundorf or Jantzen caps and Mills resistors in the crossovers, the $2K/pair 1.7s would likely become $3K/pair 1.7s. The same sort of economics apply when you have your car serviced by a dealer. They’re going to charge double or triple what you’d pay for the same part if you were to source it yourself. Not surprisingly, most speakers employing crossover parts of that quality level, that are sold through a traditional dealer model, cost upwards of $5K/pair.

If you want better stands, buy the Mye Stands. If you want better caps, you can buy them from Madisound. Jeesh, you got panel speakers that were hand-built buy American labor for only $2K/pair. Quit the bellyaching and pick up a soldering pen.


Lots of points made here, all valid and of interest imo. After all, we're all planar lovers first-and-foremost, right? If you're not, get lost ;-) .

I would just like to remind everyone that Magnepan is far from the only loudspeaker company using crappy x/o parts. If you watch Danny Richies' GR Research YouTube videos---in which he shows you what is inside the mass-produced speakers people send him for upgrades---you know the x/o parts in almost all speakers are junk. Magnepan chooses to make their speakers that way to be able to sell them at a given price point, as do all the other company's (well, not Wilson, etc.). Hi-fi fanatics have always looked for ways to make better sound, and it's easier now than ever.

As for you guys who like your 1.7's, but would love to own 3.7's were it not for their size: why, why, why, do you all continue to ignore the Eminent Technology LFT-8b? 13" wide, 5' tall, 1' deep, and at $2499/pr an absolute giant killer! The UK reviewers soiled themselves while describing the sound of this marvel, as did Robert E. Greene in TAS, and VPI's Harry Weisfeld, who described the LFT-8b as having the best midrange he has EVER heard, including that of the QUAD ESL.  
We are an audio dealer but not a dealer for Magnepan
At the CEOs shows we found Wendell to be quite short it's not very receptive