magnepan mmgs-buy zero autoformers or stands 1st?

Cooch...Your tube amp already has an output rransformer. Why add another one? Put your $ into a better amp.

Rather than listen to all these opinions, I suggest that you beg, borrow, or steal a higher powered SS amp and listen to what it does with the MMGs. Then decide for yourself. But don't decide on your small tube amp without even listening to anything else.

Going back to autotransformers...presumably you would use them to make the 4 ohm MMG look like an 8 ohm load. If you had a solid state amplifier this would reduce the power delivery of the amp. (Macintosh used autotransformers the other way around in their ss amps so as to make 8 ohm loads look like 4). However, since you have a tube amp the output transformer already has a 4 ohm winding. Its 8 ohm output is just more windings in the transformer. If you used an autotransformer it would simply amount to replacing these windings with ones in an external device.

The most sensible application of these autotransformers would be as part of a crossover network so as to use less costly values of inductors and capacitors when the drivers are 4 ohms.

Tvad...The manual for MG1.6 does talk about break in. What is says is that the LF extension will gradually increase until it meets spec. That is exactly what happened (and I can tell because I have a spectrum analyser that shows me the frequency response). My MG1.6 started out 3dB down at about 45+ Hz, and ended up at 40Hz, which is exactly per the Maggie specs.