Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

Well, given I have been running Maggies for over 20 years :-)) ...

I would have to say "Maggies"!! :-))

I started off with a mildly tweaked pair of IIIas - the personal pair of my local Maggie dealer, when he decided to "switch sides" and become an Apogee dealer. He had removed the mid-range fuse, flipped the main panel so that the mylar was front and replaced the XO wiring with Cardas litz wire.

I then spent about 8 years upgrading them - like rebuilding the passive XOs, stiffening the MDF frame and having a braced stand made up - then I went 3-way active.

Then I got to thinking about how to make them even better! :-)) It struck me that the classic Maggie construction of having 2 drivers sharing the one sheet of mylar generates (undesirable) IMD ... and if the mid panel could be on its own sheet of mylar, it should sound "cleaner".

The Tympani-IV/IVa are the only ones in the Maggie range which do this (plus, have a "true ribbon") ... but these are unobtainable in Oz - and too wide for my room (and my wife! :-)) ).

So I mulled over how to make up some IIIas which had mid and bass panels on different sheets of mylar (which is effectively, a T-IVa having only 1 bass panel per side) and found that what was needed was to use T-IVa mid/ribbon panels plus 2.5/2.6 bass panels.

It took me 12-18 months to source these components but I was eventually able to build these "Frankenpans", as I call them. :-)) They use the same 3-way active XO I was running on my IIIas and the result is everything theory predicted it would be; because the bass panel is separate to the mid panel - and in a separate hardwood frame:
a) bass-mid IMD has been eliminated, and
b) vibrations generated by the bass panel are not transmitted to the mid panel or the ribbon.

So I expect to remain with these unique Maggies until I have to downsize to go into a retirement home! :-)) The only thing that would make them sound better, would be a pair of subs ... unfortunately "the wifey" is not too keen on this idea. :-((


Regards,

Andy


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