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In Reply to: RE: Lovin my MMG's, except..... posted by tinnitusintx on February 15, 2012 at 21:20:01
"I listened to my MMGs once with the backside facing forward and didn't like the loss of midbass so I'm not sure I'm interested in following the Gunn recipe."
Gunned spekaers sound very different. Their midbass strength is their strength.
Follow Ups:
So, if I'm reading between the lines here it sounds as if there is no significant improvement in fidelity and dynamics until I step up to a true ribbon equipped model. Is this correct? I must admit, I'm heavily swayed in the direction of the 1.6 from this damn review from Stereophile...
http://integracoustics.com/MUG/MUG/reviews/stereophile_mg16qr.htm
...but I have to remind myself that just because they were the cat's meow to the author that may not be the case for me. But he sure makes them sound fantastic. Of course, his upstream gear was considerably better than what I have to offer them as well.
Ok then....let's put it this way. How many of you 1.6 owners that have owned or heard MMG's could go back to an MMG, mod it, and pocket the change and be completely satisfied? Maybe that's not a fair question, but I'd sure like to hear a few of you try to answer it.
Gonna set 'em back upright tonight and pull down the treatments tomorrow night and add them back one by one....starting with diffusion.
The Gunn mod that has the excellent mid bass....is that with the high-dollar Jupiter cap upgrade or his first generation xover upgrade (the one with the schematic in the "tweaks" section)?
Hey Ricky, this is Michael (tomlinmgt) from AudioKarma....you've been helping me out with my MMG's over there. Thanks for chiming in here as well.
Yes, I understand the 1.6 aren't true ribbons...what I was saying is I'd have to go further up the chain than the 1.6 (to something with true ribbons such as 3-series, 2.5 or 6, 20.1, etc) to get a significant increase in performance over the MMG.
By framed and braced I mean what you see in the image below. I threw these together over the course of a few evenings with scrap lumber I had layin' around kind of as a prototype to address and, hopefully, correct a few issues I felt I had. One, I wanted to give them more rigidity than what the angle brackets I first used to stand them vertical could offer. Two, I had them sitting on top of the subs and I wanted to get them off as I felt there was a good chance the subs were vibrating the mylar and causing some distortion. Three, when on top of the subs they were about a foot-and-a-half off the ground and I wanted to get them a little lower. Four, Gunn says he prefers a little tiltback (the flashlight beaming in your eyes analogy) so I spiked the pillars so I could adjust in a little tiltback to see how this worked out for me. I'll set them back to vertical here in a few minutes and see if I can tell a difference. BTW, my initial statement that I have around fifteen degrees tiltback was way liberal...I went out and measured it and it's more like five to seven degrees.
Hey Michael, glad to hear from you. I see you've been busy. I now see what you mean by "framed". JBen's Stixbee's is more along the lines of what you need. Their position, backing the frame rather than "framing" it works much better. If you could adapt struts to them, they'd work even better. That said, a hardwood frame is an even better mod. Compared to the stock MDF, I think the term jaw-dropping is appropriate. As PG mentioned you should do the crossover mod. I did the Magnestand series style crossover on mine. I did a few changes to save some $$. I used ASC oil-in-paper caps instead of Obbligatos and Jantzen Superior caps instead of Dynamicaps (30uF-ASC/5.6uF-Jantzen/.33uF Obligatto Premium's). Instead of the Alphacore inductor I used a 1.0 mH 15g Sledgehammer inductor. I ended up using wooden cigar boxes as external crossover enclosures.
Oh, man! When you said your MMGs were "framed" I expected that you had either replaced the frame or reinforced the frame. That is why I did not even address this. What I see in the pictures is side-trimming, which hardly does it, much less with common lumber.
So, there is yet another opportunity still to be tapped. No wonder you could not like the drums!
As you try the range of good comments here, please DO consider really reinforcing the frame, or building a new one. In my case, I simply put oak harwood sticks (search for "Stixbees") and the performance boost was instant, undeniably strong and...extremely cheap.
Of course, if you are planning to sell them and go for the 1.6s, you may not want to alter the MMGs.
I do have to say that to get 1.6s to clearly surpass properly modded MMGs you may have to properly mod the 1.6s.
JBen , how in the world I missed everything about those is a mystery to me. I saw the P-frames, but the Stixbees went right under my radar. I did however, use something similar to temporarily brace up my MG-2.5's. I used some 1"x2" Poplar set on edge and formed into right-angle triangles, screwed into my sockless 2.5's. I resisted the urge to pretty it up as motivation to get on with hardwood frames tho' :^)
Edits: 02/17/12
Neat test rig, Rickey! At least they don't offend the eyes as the P-frames did. Experimentally, the darn things worked great but, well...let's just say they could help those wishing for a divorce.The Stixbees were so named by my wife, relieved that the thinner & hidden things were now doing the trick.
Poplar was what I almost made the Stixbees with. Then I found that the oak was more likely to match the performance of the thicker wood I had used for P-Frames. The P-Frames were 2x2. The Sixbees had to be 1x2 in order to fit under the cloth. It worked. I posted the diagram and that was it.
LOL! Unlike Dawnrazor, I did not make much noise. As we all know, he bought all the stock he could on the makers of the stuff for Razoring PLUS as many shares of Radio Shack as he could afford after promoting the Magwire, Oak wood producers offered me no incentive. ROFLMAO!!! (wow, I had not used this acronym since, like last century!)
T_TX: I may still have a picture or 2 that show part of the Stixbees when unclothed. I'll have to boot an old PC for it and I'll post it later.
Edits: 02/17/12
Hey J,
LOL! Unlike Dawnrazor, I did not make much noise. As we all know, he bought all the stock he could on the makers of the stuff for Razoring PLUS as many shares of Radio Shack as he could afford after promoting the Magwire, Oak wood producers offered me no incentive. ROFLMAO!!! (wow, I had not used this acronym since, like last century!)
ALL I can say is that the venture capitalists who financed all this thought it was genius and they appreciated the shill based marketing approach. The ONLY check box on their list I missed was the Ponzi aspect which I AM working on...
I too missed the stixbees. I would have lost money that there was a Jben post I had missed. Looks like a nice addition but I would change the wood type for certain. Maybe the maple producers would work with you??? And why not an aggressive name like "The Vice Mod" or something...
Afterwards we discovered faith; it's all you need
And here are the MMGs as I had them before I built the braced stands. You can see the diffusor panels I built behind them with absorption panels behind the diffusors. I have since pulled the diffusor panels out closer to the MMGs by about a foot (in the pic they're three feet behind the MMG's, now around two feet and even with the front of the rack) and this improved clarity noticeably. I'd like to try a few more of these panels at first reflection rather than the 703 fiberglass absorption I have there now. In the right hand front corner you can barely see it but there is a hot water heater that is encased by 703 panels. I've since taken those panels away and this moved the soundstage out and back into that corner as the water heater acts as a big cylindrical diffusor. To balance the room, I removed the lower half of the 703 superchunk corner absorbers you see in the left hand front corner and replaced them with two hard shell bass drum cases (one stacked atop the other) to act as cylindrical diffusors just like the water heater in the opposite corner. This balanced out my soundstage as prior to creating the diffusion in the corners the right side always sounded weaker across the bandwidth and the center image was slightly left of center.
...the MG-1.6 isn't a true ribbon model.
What exactly do you mean by "framed & braced"?
Gunned MMG's have better, lower resistance inductors.
They also do not have their panels raised a foot in the air and are near vertical.
Gunned Maggies have hardwood frames, solid bases and struts.
The Jupiter caps have nothing to do with the mid-bass.
I feel these things contribute to the mid-bass performance I got from my Quasi-Gunned MMG's. One day after I did the mod, I was crankin' them up pretty good and standing about 18" in front of one of the speakers. I distinctly felt air passing by my legs being driven by the panel on bass notes. I wouldn't call it "flapping my pants leg" like you'd get from a big cone sub, bit it was suprising none-the-less.
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