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Tweaking the Magnepan 1.7s

Looking to tap the Audiogon crowd to come up with inexpensive tweaks for my new Magnepan 1.7s. Here is what is planned so far:

Have room treatments. I am a bigger fan of sound absorption than sound dispursement. I have four 2' x 4' x 2" sound absorption panels that sit on each side of my stereo shelving unit between my speakers. Does a great job of removing the reflections off of my electronics.

Having Magnepans for 30+ years, I do like to deaden the front wall behind the speakers a little bit. From hanging an oriental rug to curtains or whatever. Will be trying out some of these ideas with my new location.

Mye stands. I am waiting for my bank account to grow a bit before I go for these. I believe Mye has the new updates for the 1.7s (although, I can't see any difference between the 1.7s and my old 1.6s).

I want to bypass the fuse and that stupid metal jumper with the least disruption of the speaker itself. Anyone remove the back panel and replace with better speaker connects? If so, what do you recommend? How about wiring tips - anything I should be know before I start the project?

Debating on using a 1 ohm resistor to tame the high end. Any suggestions for high quality 1 ohm resistors?

Anything I am missing?

Sound notes: full description of my experience with Magnepan 1.7s and the electronics I am using in other Audiogon threads, just search for ronwills.
ronwills

Showing 4 responses by josh358

josh358
286 posts
 
Kehonka, I read somewhere that Wendell Diller of Magenpan suggested try them both tweeter in and tweeter out. He said that a majority of people prefer them tweeter in, but some like them tweeter out. It may depend on your room.

Also, to those who are comparing mylar front/mylar back -- remember to flip polarity when you do, otherwise the difference in polarity can confuse the comparison. As I recall, Magnepan switched to mylar front to get a brighter sound, it was mentioned in I think TAS when they first did it years ago.
josh358
286 posts
 
One thing you can do is get a wirewound rheostat and use it to adjust the tweeter level to your liking, then remove the rheostat, measure the resistance with an ohmeter, and buy high quality fixed resistors to match.
josh358
286 posts
 
I'm not sure when they started shipping the tweeter resistor. I confess I'm one of those who's reluctant to use it, because I don't like the shelf effect on the frequency response. This may not apply to the 1.7, I'm not even sure where it's wired/what the crossover points are! But it seems to me that some kind of adjustment is necessary in any wide dispersion speaker, since room acoustics are going to change the HF balance and not everyone has the option of tuning their listening room.
josh358
286 posts
 
Sure. The idea here is to use the rheostat to zero in on a figure, and then replace it with a non-inductive fixed resistor. I'm assuming that the series inductance won't make enough of a difference in the frequency response to render the results useless, but without running the numbers (or trying it) I can't be absolutely sure of that.

Wslam, a lot of people recommend the Duelund resistors. Whether they actually make an audible improvement over run-of-the-mill wirewounds, I don't know.
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