Growing old together with my Martin Logans
Hi Bill,
I guess I fall into this category having run SMGa and 1's for 15 years before moving to ML's.
Truth be known, I miss them and sometimes I wonder if I should put a pair of 1.7's back into the dining room to replace a pair of ML Ascent i's, just to keep an old love alive.
However, most of the time compromises need to occur somewhere; - money, room size, bass response etc etc. On the Maggies, I loved the 'air' that they have around instruments and voice, but I did not like the two dimensionality of the bass. Further, having repaired and rewound the treble wiring myself because the original had aged, I found I had less time in my life with a young family to do it yet again. Also, exposure to UV and sunlight had not been kind to the Mylar being evenly tensioned across the panel.
Enter the MLs, the bass is there, the 'air' is not. I can pull the speaker part inside 20 minutes and replace the stator myself and be back listening to music. The son of a good friend recently toasted a one year pair of Maggie 1.6's that I help sell to replace the earlier pair I also helped sell (failed treble wiring), the problem being, it was cheaper to replace the near new speakers outright than replace each blown panel! I find this annoying putting it mildly.
So time and money do not seem to favour the Maggies, the modular approach of Martin Logan ensures an 'evergreen' product. Check out how many old pairs are still running in this forum and how affordable and easy it is the replace panels. A sign of thoughtful engineering and architecting IMHO.
My 5c worth of experience.
Jeff