My McInotsh has to go in for some service so I decided to pull some old gear out of strorage.
First up was the Rogue Audio Sphinx V2 on the Magnepan 1.7’s… The sphinx has more than enough power to make the maggies sing, I was impressed.
This morning I decided to change it up even more. I pulled out my Kenny Russell-built Dynaco ST 70 and Pas-M preamp. I’ll run this rig for a while and have old-school fun with tubes and horns.
Back in 1996 I nearly bought a pair of Maggie's like those in Gray. I was placing an order for a mirage 5.1 system and while he was writing it up me and my GF wandered through the rather large shop and found a room that was huge with 2 huge monolithic looking speakers were set up about 1/3 of the way from one wall and there was a sort of church like looking 1 step stage in front of that wall.
The room was about 25' x 50' and we asked if we could enter and they put in the eagles live. All though I wasn't an eagles fan I appreciated that they put a live album on just because their notoriously poorly recorded (typically).
I was expecting to hear imbalances and weird hoots hst sound like tin cans and shifting vocals . But they sounded like I was right there and as I walked around the speakers the sound stayed right in the center of that stage area. You could hear when the guitar was carried across the stage and where others had moved during the song.
They were marked 50% off that set as the floor models. Just under $7k, I immediately wanted them and wanted to cancel my order. My GF talked me back to earth with s lot of valid points, all having to do with space available and the type of people we hung out with, meaning expect to be fixing them after they end up knocked over or spilt on, etc..
I forgot about them until I discovered JansZen panels, didn't care much for the entire speaker but I could see making my own with better bass drivers and integration and if have something.
I created a pair of these during COVID-19.
Still in the testing stage I eventually got s frame on them and moved the middle 2 panels flush with the sides. They were fabulous, until a small fire in my living room melted them, what wasn't ruined by heat was finished with water and wet insulation and smoke soot.
It was a sad evening. Luckily all my amps were fine but I had stacks of speakers in my place as I was getting ready to sell them all off since my creations were so much better sounding that I had no use for any of them.
The biggest ones took the most damage from water and axes when the firemen went in (pretty much after the fire went out on its own) to neutralize it completely and tore out all the ceiling drywall and insulation then soaked it all down with more water.the weird thing is on all speakers that had cones of plastic, the cone was melted away but the foam surrounds were all in perfect shape, paper cone drivers were unaffected and the only damage was water stains and soot but they worked. The cabinets were all ruined if they touched the floor and big stacks were blown over with the hoses, so they were pretty much all in poor shape.
That's what led me to Martin Logan's afterward, first the Aerius (modded them) then the Prodigy, (fixed one side, then, modded them). The gain in bass from the mod was dramatic and very easy to do, on the Prodigy's, only a few hour job with no extra parts neded, but mine needed the terminal post/tinsel leads fixed on one woofer so that took more time.
Anyone that's considering pulling out the bottom drawer thing on the bottom front of the cab to access the wiring needs to be very careful not to pull the wires hard and break off the cardboard ears and/or the tinsel wires. Mine came pre broken with a bunch of screws missing from the last attempt to fix the panel noise, the ripped wires must have been the reason they quit the repair.
I can't say the prodigy sound better than the Maggie's since it was a 20 minute listen, 30 years ago, but I know the Prodigy bass I'm hearing is probably as good as any quality subwoofer made. 2 scan speak 10's in each sealed cabinet covers tones so low that I feel the bad "floor noise" in crappy local commercials that don't filter out the rumble, and that's at normal TV show levels. They sound as good at a whisper level as they do with 500wpc driving them.
