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In Reply to: RE: Jumper Cables Assistance on Maggie 3.3R posted by Davy on August 09, 2014 at 05:39:44
I have a Pioneer VSX 1121. Just not sure if that will be powerful enough for my Maggie's.
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That Pioneer is a reasonably recent mid range model. I think it would do ok as a stop gap until you can get something better. Will it drive the speakers optimally? - likely not, but it should sound ok within a sensible volume level and do better than many other more weedy amps. It's rated into 6 ohms into 7 speakers so I think you should be ok with 4 ohms speakers running on two channels. All these modern av amps have good protection circuitry and if the amp gets too hot it will just cut out until it cools down. There is an impedance selector for 6 or 8 ohms but some people suggest leaving it at 8 ohms as the lower setting just limits the rail voltage. Keep the amp well ventilated and you should be fine.
See how it sounds. Like I say Pioneer receivers have a reputation for being bright (and that might not be ideal with a speaker equipped with a ribbon tweeter). If the Pioneer is too bright or lacking grunt you could potentially sell it and maybe get a slightly older more potent av amp from another manufacturer for no price difference. I would usually recommend Yamaha receivers as they are quite neutral and usually sound quite good in stereo. Maybe an older z7 or 3067, 3000 or 3010. Older Denons are ok but might be a bit too warm and soft sounding.
In the longer term I would look at proper hifi pre/power amp combos. For the power amp you really want something with a decent power rating, low impedance drive and good current capability (i.e rated on paper into 4 ohms) and having at least 4 output transistors a channel. 8 or more is better, especially for single amp drive. Beware of buying amps more than 10-15 years old as if they have not had a service they will probably need all the electrolytic caps replacing, so the cost of doing that would need to be factored in when buying.
So if I were you I would now just concentrate on getting an external crossover sorted out for the speakers so you can at least try them with the Pioneer and get a proper idea of how the speakers are supposed to sound. I think your simplest option for a coherent and well matched crossover for the speaker would be to get someone to build the stock external crossover for you using stock quality parts. (Iron core inductors throughout, bipolar electrolytics on the bass low pass and (at least) polyester caps on the mid/tweeter high pass. You could then think about changing the crossover values, upgrading components or going for active biamping later on.
Though I am not overly keen on it due to the midrange dip If you get copies of the stock crossover built then it's just a simple plug and play issue of hooking it up between the speaker and amp (which is good if you are not a techie.).
You could potentially save money getting the external crossovers built using the MGIII crossover values or my similar crossover ( there are less inductors and lower value caps in those than in the 3.3r crossover so it's cheaper to build) but the internal crossovers inside the speakers would need also to be altered too (in terms of cap and inductor values) and if you can't solder that's not an option. Unless you learn?
Hope this helps.
thanks
You're welcome. Good luck, let us know how you get on sorting out your crossover issues.
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