MGIIIa's up and running

Planar Speaker Asylum

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Just happened to acquire a set of IIIa's that needed some work. Desocked them to begin the diagnosis. As it turned out, the tweeters needed to be soldered in correctly and now are working. I was able to confirm continuity of each transducer with an ohmmeter, and all three of the respective (bass, mid, ribbon) resistances match right to left.

The minor downside is that the bass panel wires are in the beginning stages of delam with up to 2 inches of banana peel. A few are completely OK, a few have up to the 2 inches, and the rest average about one inch of the delam. I know how to fix it, and have done some delam work on other Magnepans already, I just need to get a morning set aside to tackle the task. With the exception of the ends, the bass panels are in surprisingly beautiful shape with their middles only very slightly tacky. The mids appear to be flawless with the minor exception of two individual three inch runs in one panel that appear to have stretched, or something, and are laying oddly out of alignment. Maybe the panel took a hit and those two wires got pulled over, but they appear to be anchored in the adhesive, and for now I'm going to leave them alone. No oxidation whatsoever on any part of the drivers (Yes!).

These are my first sessions (just beginning today with initial repairs complete) hearing Magnepan ribbons being driven by my system. I already have MG1.6's and SMGa's. Although my initial impression is that these IIIa's can run a bit "hot" in the treble sometimes compared to what I'm accustomed to (depending on the material) -- the ribbons are sweet sounding, entirely unfatiguing, and offer extension not available in the standard wire tweeters or the QR's. Looks like I need to order a couple good quality 0.5 ohm resistors, but there is no huge hurry.

The SACD of Beethoven string quartet Op. 18 No. 5 (Quartetto Italiano -Pentatone) and Goldberg Variations (Vinikour - Delos) sound very very good. The solo harpisichord on the Delos recording is really something....

I'll probably be wanting to pick some folk's brains about their favorite IIIa tweaks at some point.... new caps, biamp, wood frames, etc. But, I'm very pleased with these first hours with the ribbons!

Best Regards!! - DNM

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Topic - MGIIIa's up and running - dnm 21:25:47 02/05/12 (13)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - neolith 13:01:35 02/06/12 (7)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - Roger Gustavsson 07:30:38 02/08/12 (4)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - dnm 12:47:21 02/11/12 (0)

Not doing much until above 40kHz - neolith 15:13:40 02/08/12 (2)

RE: Not doing much until above 40kHz - Roger Gustavsson 01:53:21 02/09/12 (1)

RE: Not doing much until above 40kHz - neolith 05:27:06 02/09/12 (0)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - dnm 20:07:08 02/06/12 (1)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - neolith 09:09:30 02/07/12 (0)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - josh358 05:56:36 02/06/12 (0)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - tyu 05:24:05 02/06/12 (0)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - stigs 22:26:00 02/05/12 (2)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - dnm 06:03:13 02/06/12 (1)

RE: MGIIIa's up and running - Satie 14:02:44 02/07/12 (0)

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