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In Reply to: Tall and slender, wearing her white dress posted by Cory M. on March 7, 2007 at 22:09:20:
Hi Cory,I see you've turned your Maggies around, so you listen to the backs?
This means your mylar is at the "front" ... but you're also listening to the ribbon without the possible diffraction produced by the horizontal bars at the front of the "ribbon cage".
My IIIa bass/mid panels are "flipped", so I too listen to the mylar directly but I haven't flipped by ribbon cages.
Can you tell me what difference you heard in the top end when you turned your Maggies around? Listening to the sound from the ribbons coming directly from the ribbon through the open slot (normally at the back) seems like it would be the way to go but I wonder whether it changes the tonal balance?
Regards,
Follow Ups:
Hey Andy,I just flipped them again to their "normal" position to refresh my memory, reversing polarity on the Xover inputs and sub, playing one song, then flipping back- same volume, tweets on outside, no other variables. There is flat out no contest between the two configurations, mylar/ ribbon in front wins hands down. Laid back sounding/ veiled with drivers in back, live and energetic sounding with them in front while being more natural at the same time.
Trying to narrow the actual ribbon high end output apart from the rest of the improvements... I would say that there is more sparkle and resolution, detail, it just sounds more "live" to me. The horizontal dispersion seems to be a bit better also. My roomate was in the room too, and he agreed. He also added that "they look cooler, and you can see the ribbons shimmer."
My IIIAs have had the factory rebuild, so they have the foam baffle strip around the perimeter of the ribbon. This is not the case on the backside, where the ribbon sits closer to plane. I have bypassed the mid fuses, which brought out the midrange a bit more, and the tweets being unshrouded kind of compensates for this, evening out the tonal balance.
for your detailed comparison.As I said, I've already got my bass/mid panel assembly flipped so the mylar is at the front (and I've removed the mid-panel fuse) but, when I replace my MDF frames with something else (a Peter Gunn hardwood frame, perhaps!! :-)) ) I think, as a result of your advice, I will arrange for the ribbon cage to be mounted from the front (not the back) ... which will mean the open side of the cage faces towards the listener, like yours!
Re. one further comment you made: "so they have the foam baffle strip around the perimeter of the ribbon"
... can you explain what you mean by this?
If you PM me your email address, I can send you a picture of the way my ribbon slot has a felt strip either side ... which was how they came from the factory, except I removed the felt, routed a curve to the sides of the ribbon slot and then glued the felt back on.
Regards,
Yes, the ribbons definitely sounded better to me this way- it just brought out more of the attributes that make them tops in the first place. The toughest part was secluding this from the whole picture- they just open up "backwards!" Who designed them like that anyway? Good thing they got it right with the progressive models. Now routering the channel out- that is a good idea! I would like to tackle mine soon and do your mods.There was a thread here awhile back about "factory rebuilds" of the IIIAs, asking if the foam pad was installed around the ribbon- so I just assumed they didn't come with this in the first place and it was an "improvement." I bought mine right after a rebuild, so I guess I don't know for sure. Yeah, I can PM you and we'll see if we're talking about the same thing here.
Cory
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