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Puzzled about reasons why there seems to be no shortage of used planner speakers

All the over the top reviews of the Magnepan LRS has awakened the old puzzlement of how good are my DIY speakers and is it worth it to make a change?

I am very satisfied with my current system as far as my analog sources go.  I have a Denon direct drive turntable in a custom plinth, a Jelco tone arm  and a Transfiguration Temper Supreme cartridge. The phono pre is the octal version of the Hagerman Coronet with Lundahl step up transformers. I'm using a Toshiba HD DVD player for playing CD's. I'm using a Rotel RSP-1098 in analogue bypass for all sources. My amp is a VTL 50/50 tube amp.

My speakers are transmission line and utilizing parts from North Creek including hand wound coils and Harmony capacitors. Any one who has heard them has been impressed with them and with one being brought to tears of joy having never heard his favorite song played through a system such as mine.

That leaves me with a dilemma. If I go with the LRS, I will have to sell the VTL amp to get a used amp that can power the LRS. 

What is troubling me is seeing so many used planar speakers for sale on Ebay and Audiogon. Is that because they grow tired of them, or feel a need to try something new? Or are they upgrading to another planar speaker, or all of these reasons?
 
I'd like to hear from those that sold or are selling their planar speakers. 

I've only ever heard one planar speaker in my life and that was for about 5 minutes when I was taking my daughter through one of Seattle's high end stores to let her hear the differences between between differing levels of quality speakers as she was planning to get a her own system in the near future.  I've never heard a Maggie.

I don't want to get in the position of having sold my VTL to make this change and winding up with probably an amplifier that really doesn't come up to the same level quality and would most likely be a SS amp.

My goal here is to try get the best information I can from those that felt the need make similar decisions. I am retired now and living on a fixed income in a town in New Mexico (Las Cruses) that has no real Hi-end stores.

Any offers from anyone locally to let me hear their system would be most appreciated.  
rogue_angel
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,492 posts
 
Hey Don, nice to see you here at Audiogon! (Don and I are familiar names to each other from the Rythmik AVS Forum. We both use Rythmik subs with our Maggies)---Eric.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
6,506 posts
 
Planar speakers delaminate over a few years. ...limited life

Yeah, maybe 30 years ago, but not any longer.
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Getting planar speakers to sing is more difficult than with most point source designs. Positioning is more critical as is acoustic management of the space around them. They require a lot of power and yet do deep bass poorly and are best served by integrating them with subwoofers. Done correctly there is no comparison particularly with electrostatic planar speakers. Magnepans can do an excellent job given enough power and an array of top notch subwoofers. 
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millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
It was the Magnolia HiFi in the university district. We also went over to Hawthorn after Magnolia so she could get a feel for how different used gear was selling for. It just happened that we went there directly after listening a $ 100K system. With in a month she was buying some used speakers in LA. From the reviews I was able to find, she made a good choice.

Yeah on Roosevelt, to be precise. The $100k system had to have been Definitive Audio, although that would be cheap for them even years ago. Definitive holds the world record for the most years of the worst sounding most expensive system in a state. At last visit they are up to $1.3M and sucking strong! My best audio bud for years made a good living just off of Microsoft millionaires who would ditch their entire Definitive systems when they heard a real music system.

Once you get to the point where you’ve built not only your own satisfying system but your own satisfying speakers, your whole system is so tuned to where you want it, its very hard to imagine going into any shop and finding anything any good. The $1.3M at Definitive sounds to me like absolute dreck. But probably not because its all truly dreck. In reality only some of it is crap. Some is dreck. Some of it might even be good. But in a store? Where they don’t know the first thing about how to set it up? Warm it up? Tune it up? Where they plug components together because this is what they want to sell, or this is what some customer wants to buy, but NEVER because this is what sounds good??? Or, worse, what some guy is selling on some website? Anyone can post on those sites, you know. Even clowns like me.

Sorry, I don’t know you from Adam, but based on what I do know its hard to see you doing that. Or if you do then swallowing hard like I would have to do.

Are you sure you wouldn’t rather patiently tweak away with what you have?





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