New Maggie 3.6 OR 10 yr old Sound lab A-1 s

If the Sound Labs are in excellent condition, they will do some things the Maggies won't do. I've only heard the big Sound Labs with the new toroidal transformer - without it, I'm not certain of how they would compare. But the Sound Labs have always been praised for their timbre and resoltion.

I have owned several Maggies, and I own and sell Sound Labs. Both are excellent loudspeakers. I've compared the 3.6's to Sound Lab M-1's (sonically the equivalent of modern A-1's) side-by-side. The Maggies were actually a bit more efficient. But I kept wanting to turn the volume up on the Maggies to hear the details that were so readily audible on the Sound Labs (actually, Sound Labs are extremely enjoyable even at quite low volume levels). Their tonal balances are similar, but the Sound Labs naturally go deeper (they're twice the size). You know how the 3.6's have a wonderfully lifelike presentation that "feels" vastly different from a box speaker? Well, the big Sound Labs can give you even more of that.

Just for the record, if there wasn't a local Maggie dealership already, I'd love to pick up the line. I think Maggies are wonderful. However, electrostatics seem to have greater ultimate potential than ribbons or planar magnetics.

The most dangerous time in the life of a Sound Lab speaker is when it is being shipped. Many if not most problems can be traced to not shipping the speakers in factory crates. Please factor this in! You may need to buy factory crates.

If you can find out the serial numbers on the Sound Labs and e-mail them to me, I'll find out as much as I can for you about them. But the factory won't be open again until Monday - hopefully you can wait that long.

Hope this helps!

Congrats, Bob! I think you're gonna like your new babies!

I have a friend with fifteen year old Sound Labs (I've never actually heard his pair). He has never had a thing done to them - no upgrades, nothing. He's a much more mature human being than I am - me, I'd be wanting the latest & greatest. He is quite familiar with the latest advances - he used to work for Sound Lab, and he helps Roger West every year at the CES. Roger would update his speakers free - they are best of friends - but the man isn't interested. I have heard of even older pairs still in use. My point is, Sound Labs can last a long time, and even older models continue to sing.

For the benefit of anyone not familiar, Roger West of Sound Lab (formerly of Janszen - remember them?) designed the A-1 ("Audiophile"-1) about 20 years ago. The same basic design is still in production today - a large faceted-curve panel that radiates over a 90 degree arc. There have been incremental improvements over the years, but the basic design is the same - it wasn't Roger's first try, but when he designed the A-1 he really got it right. The M-1 ("Millennium"-1) is a relatively new development - it's essentially an A-1 with less wood trim, and a bit lower price. The U-1 ("Ultimate"-1) is an A-1 with an ultra-rigid tubular metal frame, and a higher price. For the traditionalist, the A-1 itself is still in production.

One nice thing about the Sound Labs, as Bob discovered, is that Roger West does his very best to design improvements that can be retro-fitted to older speakers, so that customers haven't just spent a pile of money on a speaker that in a couple of years will be obsolete. To put it in Maggie terms, it would be like being able to bring a 3.5 up to 3.6 standard.