Well, watching a friend of our's dog gave me the impetus needed to FINALLY tweak out my Maggies after he used one of the speakers as a fire hydrant. Luckily it was just on the very bottom away from the drivers, but enough to require removing the sock in order to give it a good cleaning. A hundred-some staples later and that was done, not difficult just a little tedious.
Here's the Maggie in the nude... surprisingly, my wife doesn't mind theJm like this and didn't bat an eye when I said I was going to do the other speaker and leave them this way for awhile. Soundwise, they seem a little more open and sharper on the top end. Enjoyed it initially, but then started finding some of the highs and details a bit distracting (verging on annoying) at times. A raspiness and highlighting of high frequency nuances a bit much.
Below is a shot of the stock xover... I'm using DH Labs Q10 speaker cables internally bi-wired with inexpensive but seemingly good bananas from Parts Express that get the job done. I was surprised by how many connections there are from binding post to driver and back again! Let's just take the tweeter for example (note that I bypassed my fuse some time ago but left it in this flow):
>Post+ >soldertab >yellowwire >soldertab >capacitors >soldertab >bluewire >disconnect >terminal >driver >terminal >disconnect >brownwire >soldertab >fuseholder >fuse >fuseholder >soldertab >wire >soldertab >Post-
And that's if you bi-wire. Single wire you have another two soldertabs and the jumper bar in the mix as well.
Last night I got around to bypassing the stock xover with new components. I wired these to the driver tabs, though still using cheap disconnects for this... I'll wire directly without disconnects at a later date once I get the xover mounting finalized. Components include Obbligato film oil tweeter cap, Erse Super Q woofer inductor and Dayton woofer cap with an eye to keeping the connections as few, short and direct as possible. Didn't have better binding posts on hand so just used what was lying around in my parts bin. New signal flow on tweeter is down to:
>Post+ >capacitor >disconnect >terminal >driver >terminal >disconnect >wire >Post-
Not pretty, but it definitely works. Too early to make any definitive claims, but I'm liking what I'm hearing thus far. Whether that's because of the new components, reduced connections or both I cannot say (should probably have done this in stepped changes, but I've got to take advantage of motivation when it strikes). The concerns I had about the sockless Maggies seem to be alleviated as they sound much smoother but not lacking any of the details and nuance, perhaps even more so in this regard. Bass also seems to have taken a step up in control and impact. Time will tell...
