Any thoughts on mixing magnepan and apogee?

[martyh]

I have some apogee 26/6 ribbons and have recently found a pair of Magnepan smga with bad tweeters. I’m confident I could rebuild the tweeters on the Magnepans but I really like the sound of the apogee tweets. I want to build a new frame anyway so getting them both into the same panel is not going to be an issue.

Thanks,
Marty

[geraldfryjr]

i think it would be a great project and would like to see your progress. Jer

[LineSource]

Hi martyh,

PERSONALLY,
(1) I would rebuild the Magnepan smga tweeters. Magnepan invested a lot of engineering to get a balanced sounding speaker, and rebuilding the tweeters would give a solid reference design to listen to, and even resell at a later date. Remember Frankenstein? There is no data to support that the Apogee ribbons will mate well with the Magnepan panel, so you could end up with monster junk.

(2) I would experiment with adding a midbass line array of three 8" speakers next to each Apogee 26-6 ribbon, crossed LR4 at 800Hz. A DIY project with good educational value and potentially great sonics. The three 8" midbass should have greater dynamics than the Magnepan planar. I would look for 8" speakers with a Qts of 0.7-1, good Xmax, and an Fs ~ 30Hz. Shape the baffle similar to the original Apogee and model on the free EDGE simulator before construction. You may enjoy this DIY and go on to build monster ribbons that will be legendary in diyAudio.

[a.wayne]

Originally Posted by LineSource

Hi martyh,

PERSONALLY,
(1) I would rebuild the Magnepan smga tweeters. Magnepan invested a lot of engineering to get a balanced sounding speaker, and rebuilding the tweeters would give a solid reference design to listen to, and even resell at a later date. Remember Frankenstein? There is no data to support that the Apogee ribbons will mate well with the Magnepan panel, so you could end up with monster junk.

(2) I would experiment with adding a midbass line array of three 8" speakers next to each Apogee 26-6 ribbon, crossed LR4 at 800Hz. A DIY project with good educational value and potentially great sonics. The three 8" midbass should have greater dynamics than the Magnepan planar. I would look for 8" speakers with a Qts of 0.7-1, good Xmax, and an Fs ~ 30Hz. Shape the baffle similar to the original Apogee and model on the free EDGE simulator before construction. You may enjoy this DIY and go on to build monster ribbons that will be legendary in diyAudio.

I would also recommend rebuilding the maggies over the swap. Then you can compare both before selling the maggies ....

[martyh]

Thanks guys,

I think you are right, I will rebuild the tweeters on the magnepans. it is inexpensive enough to do and will make a good project for the weekend.

The ribbons do sound sweet and maybe should be saved for another project. They are currently installed in a pair of centaur minors and while the transition between woofer and tweeter is done well the woofers are not that great...actually.... I think they suck