Dahlquist DQM-7 vs Magnat All Ribbon 5

[Manitoulin]

Good day all. Please excuse the long winded post, but I am not the most knowledgeable wrt speakers and need some good advice. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am the original owner of a pair of Dahlquist DQM-7's. As expected the woofers and mids have rotten surrounds and bad cones (ex wife let the cats jump up them), the tweeters are perfect. I saw a pair of Magnat All Ribbon 5's on eBay and before I bought them asked the seller the part numbers. The woofers and mids seemed to coincide with the DQM-7's. The tweeters are a bit different, but same physical size. Comparing the two seems to indicate the DQM-7's were made by Magnat and rebadged as Dahlquist. The Magnat's sound appreciably better than my Dynaco A40 XL's or my A30 II's, so I am still better off than before. I have the choice of a Citation 17S Pre-Amp and Citation 19 Amp or my H/K 730 receiver to drive them, so power is not an issue. I mostly listen to Jazz music.

Questions: will I realise any appreciable improvement in sound by swapping the mids and woofers from the Magnat to the Dahlquist cabinets? The DQM-7 cabinets are larger, dual ported as opposed to the single port on the Magnat enclosure.

If the crossovers are using over 20 year old bipolar electrolytic capacitors, should they be replaced with newer capacitors?

All the wiring to and from the crossover looks like 20 or 22 gauge wire and is overly long for what is needed. Would increasing wire gauge and using shorter runs be beneficial?

Thanks, Joe

 

[Don C]

I agree that the Dahlquists are really just rebadged Magnats, from what I have seen. I think that the designers at Magnat know what they are doing. I would not try swap parts at home, unless I had an anechoic chamber and lots of test equipment to work with, like the designers did. I have Magnat MSP-110s, and the midrange is very good, just about the best that I have heard.
Shortining the wires or replacing with thicker wires is not a bad idea, it certainly will not hurt the sound. I llike to have enough extra wire to pull out the driver and lay it on the baffle, without stressing anything. Once I pulled out a driver that had short wires and accidentally pulled the terminal right off of the speaker frame.

 

[Manitoulin]

Thanks.

If the part numbers match, would there be a reason for test equipment? Should a swap not be a reasonable idea?

Any comments on replacing the caps?

 

[Don C]

If the part numbers are the same, then it would be alright to swap. That part was not clear in your first post.
A lot of people do like to replace the caps with film type, or add bypass caps to the caps that are there. It depends on what caps it has now though. Maybe they are already good caps?. Check to see what you have.