I have a pair of 3.7's. Before that I had 1.6's. No experience with the 1.7's. Based on my experience, go for it on the jumpers and fuses. I sacrificed an old pair of anti cable's and made my own jumpers. Oh my, what a difference. Then I got some Audio magic liquid air fuses, and it was Oh my again. Lastly, Jerry made me up some Liquid air jumpers. There was a phenomenal reduction in grain. The stock maggie jumpers are nasty.
Stands---- with the 1.6's, Mye stands made a huge difference. With the 3.7's, not the same order of magnitude difference, but still worth doing.
Enjoy your 1.7's, but---- have you heard the 3.7's? |
Empirical Design custom maggie jumpers are awesome. I prefer them over cardas (have brand cardas if anyone wants to buy them). Hifi supreme tuning fuses made a big difference in my 3.7s. |
Run 'stock' panels for a while, perhaps 6 months, before making big changes. Especially know you are not going to blow fuses.
Than, if you had any pre x.7 series panel, i'd recommend jumpering out the jumpers and fuses by doing under-the-connection panel changes. You can, on my 1.6s, remove 8 or 10 connections, or more.....
Since the 1.7s have a series crossover, you may already Have a simple connection panel, with the exception of removing the fuse + connections.
In Maggie Lore, ribbons are considered fuse savers.
I made my jumpers from #6 solid wire. Bent to shape using Vice Grips and than sanded, using 320 SiC to 0.152" to fit the banana jumper.
As for amps? 'd' amps get great play with panels. I have a W4S lookalike in the form of a PSAudio GCC 250, using ASP ICE modules. The integrated W4S and PS look nearly identical, right down to backpanel layout and single XLR pair input.
Don't forget the power of 'd' amps is Time Limited. max RMS for the kilowatt module is 30 seconds. |
Thanks for the jumpers/fuses suggestions.
@Brownsfan, I know another Browns fan out there, my father in law, so you are not the only one. In all seriousness, I too have an old pair of short (2') Anitcables (I switched to Signal Cables), that I was thinking of sacrificing into jumpers. I will try that first. I also have Mye stands.
@Poeschi, I will look into the HiFi Supreme fuses. |
You can only jumper the tweeter attenuator. The 1.7 is different from the 1.6. You can't bi-amp or bi-wire the 1.7 because it has a series xovr. You can replace the fuse |
I'd consider the Mye stands seriously, don't know anyone who's used them without hearing a significant improvement.
Oh, and let the audiophiles frown. The critics tell a different tale. They far outpunch their price point. You're an old planar hand, so you no doubt know the importance of placement. BTW, many Maggie users swear by diffusers at the first reflection points on the front wall, though a minority prefer absorption there. |
I tried the modified anti-cables and an instant improment was had.
@Podeschi, how much for the Cardas? |
Tabascocat,
it includes custom maggie jumpers for attenuator pin openings -- one pair made for tweeter, and second pair made for midrange. I think they were $80-90 bucks when I bought them a few months ago. I would sell for $70 plus shipping...so you would save 15-20 percent. |
I had the 1.7's for less than a year and then traded them in for dealer demo 3.6's. The 1.7's were way too sterile for me. The 3.6's are much better to my ear.
I bought Mye stands on Augiogon and they improved the 1.7's tremendously. Better bass and focus.
The stands are available if anyone wants to buy them! The wife is frowning on Mye stands for the 3.6's and I need to raise cash! |
I may be interested if the price is right Dsper. |
Don't waste your money on jumpers for the 1.7... when you remove the speaker jack panel you can easily direct connect the wires together on the back of the panel eliminating a useless jumper that adds coloration when used. Do replace the capacitors in the crossover with better ones, they come with a 10uf Axon for the "super" tweeter, and a combination of 4 for the mid range (6.8 ERSE, 10 R.T.I, 25 Axon, 75 no-name in uf values). I've replaced the 6.8 with a Mundorf Supreme, and the 75 with an Axon resulting in better percussion sounds, and greater depth in tone color details. I have clarity caps on order for the super tweeter 10uf to try to get more resolution /sweetness in the extreme treble. Haven't figured out yet where to get a quality 1.4mh copper foil inductor for the bass as thats an uncommon value. Dueland makes them but $360 a side is pretty steep. |
how much for your mye stands? |
Mye sound is the best upgrade for Maggies !!! |
I can relate to your system.
I recently acquired new MG 1.7s and driving them with W4S ST-500 for the moment (and W4S DAC-2 with no preamp in between)
I went to the Magnepans after 3 yrs with the ML Source (everything else same).
In my other place i still have ML SL3's driven by a Bryston and Theta gear, so generally i have an affinity to planar speakers.
Also the first thing i got was jumpers. I am using DH-Labs Q10 in all my systems (Logan and Magnepan) and had jumpers made from the same material for the 1.7. At first the provided U-jumpers do seem to have a bit tizzy sound to them. Depending on the break-in time you give to the Magnepans you may feel occasionally some instruments rich in HF (say strings) being positioned much closer to the listener, than the rest of the instruments. This was remedied with the custom jumpers.
Actually in my case, one of the twitter jumpers was missing its allen screws from the factory (but the jumper was there) and i didn't notice it before 2 weeks had passed (LOL!!). I had always felt the image off-center for some reason and then when i finally noticed that the U-jumper was not securely fixed. By that time i received the custom jumpers so that took care of imaging, balance and tizziness but without losing resolution at the HF. I also have Synergistic fuses in order for the 1.7s.
In any case, i've been able to get a very good center image on the 1.7's driven by the W4S. Great soundstage and dead quiet background. In some ways it is very very close to the ML sound but with very different dispersion pattern which you can tell when moving off-center. Sometime in the future i will probably go for a Bryston as well for the 1.7s but so far no major shortcomings at my listening levels (reasonably high volume but not deafening..) Sometimes with the MG 1.7 you almost feel that the time slows down and you are able to delve into the music and pick up individual cues, reverberations etc. This is similar to my SL3 system perhaps due to comparable panel size.
Best, |
I've always thought the best tweaks for Maggies was placement adjustments, and a bigger amplifier... |
Maggies deserve better than class D amps
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Maggies deserve better than class D amps
Supposedly, the Merrill Veritas and the Spectron Musician III Mk.2 sound amazing with Maggies. |
