New amp in the house

[cubdog]

Just got this one yesterday. A Maggie 9304. She not the best looking girl in the room but she sings pretty sweetly. Testing her out with a Schiit passive and music via Amazon. Sorry for the crappy pics.

 

[Bonkers60]

Looks pretty good to me. Enjoy!

 

[MannyE]

Nice! Call it "The Susan Boyle"

 

[primosounds]

Ah another pup for your litter! very nice little amp. Those amps sound very good, especially for the price. I wonder if its because the transformers are wound with made in USA pure, not recycled, copper? It seems to me that vintage trannys sound better, but that just might be nostalgia.

 

[cubdog]

Ah another pup for your litter! very nice little amp. Those amps sound very good, especially for the price. I wonder if its because the transformers are wound with made in USA pure, not recycled, copper? It seems to me that vintage trannys sound better, but that just might be nostalgia.

I've never heard one of these Maggies before. Well, except the one I grew up with in a console. I expected it to sound good but so far it's exceeding my expectations. Nothing special tube wise going on. Kind of a mishmash of Magnavox, Baldwin and others. So whatever the magic ingredient is I'm glad it's in there.

 

[Lavane]

I got lucky with mine. It still had a full set of Mullards. I kept the 15" woofers and horns from the console. Now that my jeep is back together I have room in my shop to build some OB's with them to use with the 9303 I rebuilt. Dang nice sounding amps. Congrats!

 

[cubdog]

Thanks Paul. My original idea, with my original amp, was to power my Audio Nirvana FR speakers in my open baffles. That scenario got blown up of course. I might still go that route but I'm not sure. I'm using then with Klipsch CF3 right now but I plan on selling those soon.

 

[Poultrygeist]

Ross,

Glad to see you with the Maggie. FWIW my Dennis Had Maggie came with these premium EL-84's from the tube store and they're the best sounding EL-84 I've heard. They're select NOS Russian 6P14P-EV but much pricier. From everything I've read the Russians are they way to go and they're quite affordable on the auction site. Does your Maggie have the 12AX7 preamp tubes?

http://www.thetubestore.com/Tubes/EL84-6BQ5-Tube-Types/Preferred-Series-7189-Premium-EL84

 

[cubdog]

My amp uses 3 6eu7 tubes. The chassis has a spot for a fourth tube. I don't know enough about these amps to understand why a fourth tube isn't used here. Now I'm curious if my original amp has 3 or 4 preamp tubes and what they are. I'm not sure if I have a picture that shows its tube compliment. Does yours use 3 or 4 pre tubes Paul?

 

[primosounds]

It is not unusual, especially for console amps to have some unused parts. Sometimes the chassis was also used in a different model and a different tube line up. Sometimes the tube socket was also used as a receptacle for an umbilical cord to a different chassis. Or if your amp has been rebuilt the circuit might have been altered

 

[gadget73]

I've never seen a Magnavox 9300 with that extra socket installed from the factory. I suspect it may have been for a future provision for phono-only consoles, kind of like they did with the amp-175 and amp-185.

Mine has a tube in that spot, but its for a buffer stage added as part of some modifications heavily inspired by Dave Gillespie's rework of the 9300. Mine is basically a copy of his work, but using different transformers.

 

[cubdog]

I meant to say my amp has 2 preamp tube with a third empty socket. Sorry for confusing what I meant to say. It has, of course 4 6BQ5 sockets. This amp was pulled from a console by the previous owner who I bought it from. It had been unaltered until he worked on it for me.

Can anyone explain to me the difference in the last two numbers of this model? Mine is a 9304-10. Others end in 20 and I suspect there may be others. What are the differences and are any more or less desirable?

 

[Poultrygeist]

My amp uses 3 6eu7 tubes. The chassis has a spot for a fourth tube. I don't know enough about these amps to understand why a fourth tube isn't used here. Now I'm curious if my original amp has 3 or 4 preamp tubes and what they are. I'm not sure if I have a picture that shows its tube compliment. Does yours use 3 or 4 pre tubes Paul?

My Maggie is a flea watt amp and probably makes all of 3 or 4 watts per channel but that's more than enough for my Zenith OB speakers. It has two EL-84's ( aka 6BQ4 ) , a single 6DJ8 Bugle Boy preamp tube and a rectifier tube. It's single ended and since the EL-84 is a pentode you can call it a SEP.

 

[cubdog]

Do you know what it's original Magnavox number was?

I don't pay much attention to watts anymore. I always seem to have more than enough whatever amp I'm using. I'm guessing my Maggie puts out 10-12? I'm sure others know. Whatever it is they sound fine.

 

[Dswankey]

[QUOTE="cubdog, post: 10689724, member: 5057"Can anyone explain to me the difference in the last two numbers of this model? Mine is a 9304-10. Others end in 20 and I suspect there may be others. What are the differences and are any more or less desirable?[/QUOTE]

This might help, something to do with balance control.

 

[Lavane]

10 to12wpc is about right.

 

[gadget73]

The different model numbers relate to balance configuration and feedback level, and sometimes HF stability changes (those little caps off the 6EU7). Guessing the feedback is related to the speakers it used, but perhaps there was something more to it. I've not seen a full breakdown as to what speaker and control setup (phono only controls or tuner) went with what model number to see if there was something that could be determined from that info. I bet there is, but considering most folks run these out of the console it doesn't much matter. Also very easy to make any model into any other model with a couple of component changes.

 

[cubdog]

Thanks, that's a good explanation gadget. And thanks for the service info Dswank. Way over my head unfortunately but appreciated none-the-less.