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In Reply to: RE: Cutting the socks posted by yawg on August 06, 2008 at 15:12:09
I agree with the other posts - I have a pair of MGIIIas and there is just no room within the thickness of the panels for the kind of capacitors and inductors that are generally thought to provide a worthwhile upgrade. If going down this path the alternatives are to build an extension out the back of the crossover cut-out or leave a bulge in the fabric.
On the other hand, as well as improving things cosmetically, going for an external box crossover for all three panel components has a number of additional advantages :-
i) You end up with three sets of binding posts on the speaker (I don't know about 3.6 but on IIIas the holes in the backplate for the attenuator link do very nicely for the tweeter connector). The connections for the midrange and bass panels are thus short lengths of wire, replacing a lot of the very ordinary internal wire used by Magnepan.
ii) Similarly the very long connecting wires for the tweeter can be upgraded and connected straight into the back of the new treble binding post.
iii) The three pairs of wires from the XO box to the speaker can be hard-wired at the box end, losing six connections per channel, twelve connections in all. This can only be a good thing. I presume you are going to replace the standard Magnepan steel speaker connectors with decent binding posts, Vampire or similar.
iv) If you want to retain either or both of the fuses, they can be incorporated into the XO box and a decent fuseholder used, replacing the rather nasty spring holder that invariably rusts.
v) Any future mods or upgrades to the XO are made much easier since there is no need to do any work on the panel itself, all the components being easily accessible within the box.
vi) It's not too difficult to reverse the procedure should you ever wish to sell them. Prospective purchasers tend to want goods in their standard configuration - sounds daft I know but it's a general fact of life that owner-modified goods attract a lower resale value (or at least a smaller pool of potential buyers) than stock items.
There's no need to cut the sock anywhere, just remove the side panels, unscrew the backplate, remove the staples and roll the sock up to access the crossover components. Again, I'm not too sure how the 3.6 is rigged, on the IIIa it was definitely worthwhile replacing the old sock with the new type that Magnepan now supply - much better acoustic transparency and also more elastic so needing far fewer staples. It also looks much nicer and is very reasonably priced.
Good luck.
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