A question for Maggie owners


I am curious about Maggies in the $3-4K range. I currently have Von Schweikert VR-4JRs fed by Wyred 4 Sound 500 monoblocks, a Modwright pre-amp and a computer based source. I have always been intrigued by planar speakers and a friend of mine sold them out of his store until the store closed. I know the entry level Maggies have a return guarantee but I am sure that they are not everything Maggies can be. What are your thoughts on switching speakers? I am used to the bass of the VSAs, but have a very musical Hsu subwoofer to pair with them. I am satisfied with my system and I am asking out of curiosity and can buy the Maggies to try but don't know if it is worth the effort.
tgrisham
When I was setting up a biamp rig for MG1.6 I discovered that the high end needed a more powerful amp than I had expected. The trick is that I was looking at the amp's ability to swing instantaneous voltage peaks. not at power. Since voltage capability generally goes along with power you end up with a more powerful amp. You don't need the continuous power: just the voltage. Because of the way amps are designed you have to buy power to get the volts.
Pass amps are the only ones I've seen which call out voltage as a 'spec'.

How much more power? My 'guess' of 60:40 is based on the following link, which makes reasonable sense..

http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm

My guess of 150 watts @ 4 amps (mid/tweet fuse in 1.6) is about 38volts....certainly that should be within reason for any 150 watt amp? No?
The Pass X-150 is rated at about 50 volts.....and stereophile got 200@8 out of it during bench tests.
Magfan... The fuse in the MG 1.6 is for the whole speaker; not just the tweeter.

A "4 amp" fuse will carry a lot more than 4 amps for brief intervals like music peaks. All fuses are, to a degree, "time delay" fuses. Blow time is a function of current. Depending on the fuse type, it will carry its rated current, or a bit more, forever. Near instantaneous blow time is typically twice the rated value.
Sorry, Eld, the Schematic clearly shows the fuse for ONLY the mid/tweet. I have a copy right in the other room......
And yes, it will briefly carry more current than 4 amps. I haven't looked at fuse specs but I know it will carry a bunch more for very short times.
I doubt a panel will be damaged by this behavior. Even my MG-1, with a 1.5 amp fuse did the same. i could pop the fuse with somewhere north of 200 watts, but all that would happen would be the highs would go away.

I understand their is another class of fuse which is REALLY fast and designed to protect the most delicate electronics......in addition to 'sloblo' .

On the DIY front, some people will bridge the fuse out and others will pull the connection panel and do a minor rewire job to the same end. Eliminating all those extra connections / wires while of necessity doing away with the biamp / biwire option is said to have some sonic benefits. If I did that, I'd be tempted to install binding posts at the same time....
Magfan... You are right about the fuse. I just checked my schematic. I was going on memory from several years ago when I rebuilt my crossovers.

At work about fifteen years ago I had occasion to look into superfast fuses. These fuses would be located in test equipment and protect transistors in one assembly under test from power coming from a second assembly of the unit under test. (Missile guidance system). The only thing to blow faster than a transistor is another transistor, and that is what the superfast fuses really were. As I recall these fuses would cost about $1,000. The transistors we wanted to protect were inside a sealed gimbaled inertial measurement unit, and to tear it down, fix it, build it up again and test it would cost far more than $1000, so the superfast fuse was not completely ridiculous. In the end we didn't use the fuses. The concern was about reliability of the protected transistors if the ones in the test equipment had blown. Maybe they would still be working, but perhaps not with the extreme reliability we had to meet in the guidance system.