Tell me how magnepan speakers are considered a great speaker when you have to completely rebuild it to make it sound good? Why can’t they put good parts in it to start with?
Magnepan Upgrades, Silver and New Crossovers!
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota and have wanted maggies since I first heard of HiFi. How cool to have one of the greatest manufactures of speakers in our backyard! So last Spring '22 I bought the 1.7i. I'd been watching Nelson Pass put his 3.3's on 4 1000 watt Emotiva amps and I was just in awe. So I bought 2 1000 watt Emotiva amps, new and different than Nelson's, and ran them on the new maggies. Guys, the maggies literally blew up, coils melted off the panels, the damage was so severe Magnepan had never seen anything like it, they graciously covered much of it under warranty. That goes to show what a bad example Nelson Pass is. So after getting back from repairs they're brand new again and I put them on the traditional Bryston 4BST classic audiophile pairing, they sounded great, but I'd been watching OCD HiFi guy Mikey with all his maggie magic tricks and I got the itch to improve things. I bought the silver fuses and jumpers "insta-upgrade" and OMG clarity, timbre, every aspect improved in sound, was truly shocking. But then there's more, the crazy guys over at GR-Research and took the 1.7 to a new level. They did extensive testing and designed all new parts. I gutted the crossover, steel parts, and wiring and put all new guts in it. Well after 2 weeks of working on it off and on I've got the new crossover and terminals installed. What OCD HiFi did with the silver fuses and jumpers, take that effect and multiply it by 5! Astonishing! I've never heard anything like this, it's like holographic heaven sonic ecstasy. GR-Research really has provided the pinnacle of what Magnepan can do. It was a really hard technical upgrade, Magnepan does not make it easy, 6 inputs that are backwards opposites on left and right, but after getting it perfect, I'm in heaven and all the pain, destruction, hard lessons, and seeking higher sonic ecstasies has paid off.
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@ronboco +2 Mike |
@ronboco The story seems "interesting". The Magnepan (I own the 3.6R’s) sound great out of the box, people have claimed rebuilding the crossover with better quality parts, adding stiffness to the frame help the sound, but I rather doubt it; and reviewers have tried all of these things with no effect other than the usual effects when you change something and you really want to hear a difference. The existing stands could be sturdier, but the third parties making replacement stands want $500 which is preposterous. The only real downsides is their power demands are tremendous and you have to fine-tune placement more than with other speakers (and the 3.6 line is about 6 feet tall). But the flip side is that even played at high volume the sound says clear and well balanced, which I can’t say for a lot of speakers. To each their own. |
Magnepans sound great as is...but can be improved with various tweaks or rebuilds, some of which can be quite expensive, though some are cheap...sometimes have to decide between tweaks and stepping up a model or two...and after years of debate, Magnepan now offers upgrade stands for some of it's models... |
Even though Magnepan emerged from the primordial soup of early 70s HiFi virtually joined at the hip with Audio Research Corp., Wendell Diller, who helped guide the company from the getgo, is a man of the people. His world view is closer to Hubert Humphrey’s than Thurston Howell’s. He has resisted inflating the cost of the speakers beyond what’s necessary. He is an evangelist for boxlessness and wants people of modest means to be able to enjoy. |
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