Maggies Love Linaeum
75.165.1.172 |
||
| Posted on November 1, 2009 at 09:41:13 | ||
|
Posts: 137
Location: Pacific Northwest Joined: November 10, 2008 |
   I don’t post much here but do a ton of reading and have picked up a ton on valuable information here on the Asylum. I wanted to share my excitement on something that has been discussed here in the past but I don’t believe anyone has done this mod to their Gunned Maggie or posted pictures so here it goes. I’ve owned and loved my DIY Gunned SMGa’s for the last eight months. I’ve listened to more music during that time frame than any other period of my life. My modified SMGa’s are not perfect but they play music that allows me to listen for hours at a time. They are very musical speakers but the one area they lack would be top end extension. Just to clarify, the one thing I cannot tolerate is a speaker that is fatiguing and hard to listen to over time. If I had to choose, I’d rather have a polite presentation over one that it a little hot. Because of this, I’ve often thought about modifying a pair of MG III’s or a pair of 2.6’s with a ribbon tweeter until I stumbled onto a Magnepan dealer in the San Francisco Bay area. I was traveling on business a few months back and entered this stereo shop. Playing in the front room was a pair of MG 1.6’s with a Linaeum tweeter mounted on the top of the panel. It was playing Eric Clapton’s “Unpluggedâ€. I was blown away with the soundstage depth and high end detail. I sat down and listed to a couple more tracks on the CD and the dealer encouraged me to play anything from his collection of music. I spent the next hour just listening to familiar songs mentally comparing what I was hearing to how my speakers sounded. The dealer was extremely friendly and continued to chat with me even though I told him that I was out of town and just killing time. Over the next few days, I spend time in the archives here on the Asylum, and found posts noting this shop and modification as it has been briefly discussed in the past. I believe what makes this tweeter so special with Magnepans is because it is bi-directional as Maggies are. The Linaeum tweeter is very unique in appearance and is no longer being manufactured to my knowledge. They are however available on eBay. I found a NOS pair and won the auction for $67.00. I mounted them directly over the tweeter section of my SMGa’s. I made a gasket that went under the tweeters from some left over sound deadening material that I used to make a projector hush box. It is very dense stuff and helps tame vibration. I used what I believe to be a first order cross over running the tweeter in parallel with the crossover for the SMGa’s. I used a 2.0uf Obligatto Film Oil as the crossover for the Linaeum. I experimented with values for 1.0uf to 2.56uf and found the 2.0uf to be the sweet spot. I ended up reversing polarity on the tweeters. I also tried a bybass cap with the Linaeum but did not care of them. The SMG’a crossover is the PG recipe which consists of (2) 22uf Obligatto old film caps, (1) 6uf Dynamicap and a .78mh Alpha Core inductor. I also added a .01uf Vishay MPK 1837 bypass cap in parallel with the Obligatto’s and Dynamicap. After about 50 hours of run-in, I’ve been enjoying my SMG’s/Linaeum’s for a couple of months now so the honeymoon phase is over and I still love this set up. It took many hours of trial and error but it was fun and well worth it. I’m running the SMGa’s and tweeters without fuses and can play my music wide open with no ill effects. The Linaeum’s seem fairly robust and can handle more than the advertised power handling capacity. I’m running 500wpc into 4 ohms. Also incorporated is a REL Sub. The end result is what I had hoped for. My speakers still have the Maggie magic but I now have a larger sound stage and have a top end that sounds smoother and bigger than that of the true ribbons. Just for kicks, I disconnect the Linaeum’s the other day and I could not believe the amount of top end information that I was missing. My speakers almost sounded as if something was broken. The next upgrade; designing a frame that will blend the physical appearance of the tweeters in a more visually appealing manner with the rest of the speaker.
|
|
| interesting..., posted on November 1, 2009 at 15:34:04 | |
|
Because an arrangement like that should theoretically cause many more problems than it could ever solve.
|
|
| RE: Maggies Love Linaeum, posted on November 1, 2009 at 15:48:01 | |
|
Posts: 114
Location: Maryland Joined: October 23, 2003 |
Holy $hit! I have all of the makings here- should I?
|
| RE: Maggies Love Linaeum, posted on November 3, 2009 at 14:53:42 | |
|
Posts: 137
Location: Pacific Northwest Joined: November 10, 2008 |
Bernard, Yes, my tweeter looks like two round barrels under the cage.
|
