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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
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.
magfan
1,583 posts
 
Yeah, Josh, I was being a stinker. The company I worked for and Vishay had a couple million dollar disagreement, so I'm not big on Vishay products.....

Now, about those awful jumpers.

The ones on my 1.6s are MAGNETIC, which as near as I can tell means steel.

I'm making replacements from 6ga copper wire, and whittled into shape.

First pair done and installed.

Does the 1.7 STILL use this jumper type? What have others done? Please don't suggest biwire....unless you can also tell me how to rid myself of those banana plugs, too.

sheesh.
paul121
3 posts
 
How would one go about biwriing, or better yet, biamping 1.7s? I thought it was "not possible."

-Paul
magfan
1,583 posts
 
No jumpers like I'm accustomed to on my 1.6s?
dsper
663 posts
 
I think that we have already talked about tweeters in and out and front to back.

You can change out the metal jumper. I replaced mine with a solid copper wire. I think that it makes the sound a little bit more detailed. Not sure how bid a deal that really is in my setup.

I pulled the back plates off and it looks like you cannot simply unscrew the wires like is possible on the 1.2's to bypass the fuse. I closed mine back up and decided that I would think about that before I messed with it.

The big thing is that I found a pair of Mye stands on Audiogon.

They make a noticeable sonic improvement. Everything is more tight. The bass has a little bit more weight. The sound in general is a bit more detailed. Overall, this makes the 1.7's sound more musical.

Having said that my local audio store has a set of Mark Levinson amps hooked up to Revel speakers (the $20K ones) That sound is better than my Krell and 1.7's (of course at a very steep price increase!).
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