Magnapan MMG


What's anyone's opinion on these inexpensive quasi-ribbon speakers? They seem like too good of a value not to buy as a second pair of speakers. Even if they don't pump out the bass, good subs are available for moderate prices on the secondary market.
jklotch
I bought a pair for exactly that reason. I put them in my bedroom to listen to when I go to sleep. They have a very pleasant sound even with my 15 year old Luxman Integrated amp. In a small room, these speakers have plenty of bass, for my taste at least. However, they do not play very loud. They are worth the money, but Magnepan is always behind with their orders. It took 5 months to receive my speakers. Happy listening.
I bought mine four years ago, and had them in less than a week. (I've since bought and sold several more expensive speakers)............Well, if you have a wimpy amp, they won't go very loud. I use mine in a small room with correct ASC and RPG acoustic treatment, and they'll traverse beyond 100 dB at the listening position indefinitely with my amp (500 watts/channel rms into 4 ohms). The louder, the better, to a point. They're AWEsome, and at least the best speaker buy in the world, if not beyond. They need many hundreds of hours with a powerful amp to break in, and you need to do some simple mods/bypasses to get true highend sound from them (no soldering necessary). I augment mine occasionally with the Sunfire Subwoofer Pro (same as Mk 2), and feel that this combo betters the Wilson Watt Puppy 5.1 system, at least in my small room. $1,700 (including sub) versus $17,000; hmmmm......I feel that to go without buying these (especially considering their price), would be like a vow of celibacy before a year's stay at the playboy mansion. HOW CAN ANYONE NOT OWN THESE SPEAKERS???? It is a shame that everyone doesn't.
To Carl_eber (on 5/25/00 posting) would you please tell me what kind of mods/bypasses you've done that don't require soldering? So far, I've raised the MMG's 2ft off the floor. thanks
I've not raised them off the floor, not sure they'd need that, although a very rigid and massive stand to clamp them to would be terrific, I'm sure..............I have replaced the fuse with a coiled up silver wire, and the other tweeter bar with wire (I had been using several "bypassed" resistors, but once I got my room dialed in, found that the tweeter didn't need padding down after all). I've recently gotten the Vampire spade to banana adaptors, which work well for cables that don't already have banana connectors.
Thanks Carl, I just replaced the fuses on my 2.5r's with silver wire and the improvement was amazing.
As with all Maggies, a strong foundation is vital. I use SoundAnchors' revolutionary stand that allows for substantial adjustment on the vertical plane and very rigid coupling to the floor for non-resonance. I originally tried spiking the bases with Walker Valid Points, and they do work well, but the weight of the speaker is spread over too small of a footprint for their height and they become unstable. The Soundanchors take care of both these problems very impressively on both large and small Maggies. If you are interested in seeing what the stands look like for Maggies, check them out at Soundanchors.com on the "dedicated speaker" pages.