Magnepan Owners

The best way to improve Maggies is to bi-amp them with an external x/o, filtering the bass out of the amp driving the m/t drivers. But that can NOT be done on the .7 models, only the .6 and earlier. The old Maggies had parallel x/o designs and dual binding posts, the .7 x/o’s are series designs with single posts.

The new 30.7 does what the old Tympani models did---use separate panels for the bass and the m/t drivers. The Tympani’s were provided with external x/o boxes, but those did not automatically provide bi-amping (the x/o boxes were inserted between the power amp and the Tympanis, not between the pre-amp and dual power amps). Serious Tympani owners use a serious active x/o (the Pass is great, but not cheap. Nelson offered a nice little 2-way with his First Watt B4, currently out-of-production).

@polarin, go to the Planar Speaker Asylum Forum, go into the Magnepan section, and do a thread search for modifications. There are detailed discussions of what members have done to their Maggies, with pics.

Disconnecting the fuse holder and installing Cardas binding posts is very simple, easy, and completely reversible. The Cardas posts fit right in the holes the Magnepan ones are in, no modifications necessary. The wires going to the rear of the stock connectors have "O" rings on the ends, so there in no soldering involved---the O rings are just slid off the old, and onto the new. Couldn't be easier.

Likewise, the fuse block requires no cutting or soldering of wires. They just get disconnected, removed from the signal path. Boom, done. Reinstall the plate, connect your speaker cables, and enjoy the new, improved sound quality!

Head over to the Planar Speaker Asylum forum. There are some serious, long-term Maggie owners who have posted all kinds of ways to upgrade Maggies, from the simple to the extreme.

Replacing the jumpers and fuses with good wire is fine, but it ignores a serious problem---the ferrous parts Magnepan uses in the connectors themselves! I took a magnet to find the steel (steel!) parts in my Tympani-IVa’s; there were a couple---the fuse holder and speaker wire/banana plug receptacles both contain steel. Unacceptable.

You can do what other Maggie owners have done---bypass the fuse holder altogether, and install Cardas binding posts in place of the horrid Magnapan wire/banana plug receptacle. The Cardas post fits into the stock hole without modification.