Any magnepan users here?

[jelle]

I am restoring a set of Magnepan MG-1 for a friend. I pulled the sock on one and my gawd, do they need work. Both lows and high need to be rewired. Never heard a set. Should I tell him to trash them? I see they have a following.

[jelle]

Ok, rewired them...OMG. The mids are out of this world with a good amp. Serious HiFi speaker. I grabbed a set of MGIIIA for myself. Line array ribbon tweeter.

[Colossal]

A local engineer has a pair of Magnepans. Upon visiting his shop, I was seated between them and then had my head blown off. Pretty incredible. Very detailed and clear.

[xtian]

These planar speakers, can they kick out low frequencies? I'm trying to imagine how that baffle moves...

[jelle]

Believe it or not, but the mylar sheet/baffle moves back and forth...lol. The bigger the baffle the lower the frequencies.

The MG3A I just got do 37Hz to 40KHz, and are 6 ft tall. It is a very clean bass, not that box-resonant peaky stuff I was used to with normal speakers. I hate listening to box artifacts. But I am sure the next guy will complain it does not sound like his other speakers....heh.

The mids and highs are very fast and real to me. I like them.

Oh, make sure you have an amp powered by the Hoover dam. These are seriously current hungry.

Below a pic of the new Magnetic wires on the sheet of mylar, with silver colored magnetic stators below them. The magnetic wires run in between the magnets.

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[jelle]

A local engineer has a pair of Magnepans. Upon visiting his shop, I was seated between them and then had my head blown off. Pretty incredible. Very detailed and clear.

Yes, exactly my impression. These are bipolar, so placement is tricky but if there is space, they are fun. And certainly too revealing for bad sources.

[xtian]

Explain bipolar in this context please and thank you

[ER]

They are like a figure 8 mic pattern, in fact they are very similar to a ribbon mic in design. The actual term applied to panel element and ribbon type speakers is "dipole". Another type of these speakers are "electrostatic" panel speakers. Imagine unrolling a big giant capacitor and making a panel out of it and the high voltage discharge vibrates the element.

Due to their low mass, size, and lack of enclosure, these types of speakers can sound very open and natural, but in general are inefficient and power hungry and can have problems with reflections in the wrong room (but so can almost every other speaker). Low impedance load and mid to high 80's per watt per meter.

I'm more of a horn guy, but I'd go to planars or open baffles, before the normal bookshelf type box speakers that are the norm.

[Reeltarded]

I'm dipolar but magnepan made me hear voices and have stand-ofds with cops

[jelle]

ER, thank you...yes Dipole instead of bipolar. Long day and I had just been hunting for crossover caps....funny how that works.

I love horns too. Such system takes up too much space for me right now. And I have never heard the woofer and horn integrate perfectly to my liking.

[ER]

ER, thank you...yes Dipole instead of bipolar. Long day and I had just been hunting for crossover caps....funny how that works.
I love horns too. Such system takes up too much space for me right now. And I have never heard the woofer and horn integrate perfectly to my liking.

Bipolar works too!
I downsized my giant 3 way horn-loaded setup, like you said, hard to integrated the bass and took up too much space. I settled on a 2-way with a direct firing 15" and a 90x60 constant directivity horn, they're as close as physically possible, time aligned, and the polar beam width at the cross-over point is really close between the drivers, so they integrate really well. I put them in corner cabinets a lot like the old Tannoy corner speakers so they get 1/8th space loading on the bass, and the directivity of the horns keeps room reflections to a minimum, but since they're in the corner, they need the right room and listening distance so you don't get a 'hole" in the soundstage. Cobbled together with some old Cerwin Vega 380SE woofers, QSC 152i waveguides, and an RCF neo 1"driver that has an annular slit throat like the old RCA theater drivers. 25-18k at 102db/watt/meter and a huge sweetspot with the constant directivity horns. It's nice to have the luxury of playing with low powered tube amps.