Moving from Magnepan MGIIIA to 3.6

There was this thread over at the audio asylum just the other day, its on a similar topic so it may be of assitance to you. I have the 3.6's and have heavily modified them and I liked them a lot stock but now I am enamoured with what they are capable of! I have not done a lot of comparison's with the older models so I have no basis for comparison.

I replaced both the internal and external crossover with a HUGE custom made crossover- which is functional and the leap in performance was unbelievable. I am still testing and trying differnt caps but the overall layout is finished and when I make my final selection on caps I will apply a dampening layer to everything on the inside of the crossovers. I also replaced all the wire internally with Jena Labs wire run in parrallel's, which is now soldered directly to each driver via cardas quadeutectic solder. The termination on everything is cardas, I used cardas best rhodium plated spades on the leads coming from the speakers, and cardas best binding posts for the input of the crossover and the cardas binding posts that use those big black knobs to tighten both leads, for ease of use(seeing as there were so many required). I am also working on designing stands for them, as much as I think the Mye stands are good, I feel that Grant had to make some compromises to keep costs reasonible, seeing as reasonible cost doesn't interest me I am aiming for something better. Also the inner "sock" has been removed and I have been listening for the last few months with no grille's, I do, however plan on putting the outer trim piece/grill back on the front of the speaker after my stand project is complete. Needless to say the speaker is hardly the same speaker it was when it was new and of course there are no fuses or magnepan binding posts from hell on my speakers any more! If you are looking for more performance the gains you get are amazing, these speaker rival the BEST and I do mean the best speakers in the world.

Jim- I have about $1200 into the crossover's using less expensive caps from Solen, with the pricer caps I am going to test with it will be around $2k+. I wanted to start with caps that didn't cost a ton, make sure it worked before I spent a LOT of money on caps- I realize the solen's aren't the best by any means but they are a nice place to start and they are available in any value you could think of! I am told they have impart a tin like sound when used in passive crossovers, so I am looking forward to trying auricaps or something more "high end".

Bass goes lower and is much more natural sounding- its faster(if you can believe that!), more articulate, linear, deeper; it is so much better I wasn't expecting this level of performance gain to be honest. And the mid and tweeter with the goertz coils and new caps is stunning- I am going to try different gauge coils and cryo treat them to see what happens :)

Gmood1- I am just out side of Albany, NY; and they are finished and operational- though I am doing more testing with different components. I have one request try not to break any window's, glass is such a mess to clean up :)

Slipknot1- Let us know how the Maggie's get along with one another :) Congratulations on the purchase, the gift that will keep on giving- aka man's best friend :) Enjoy the new speakers, and if/when your ready to tweak'em let me know!