Many years ago I went to The Listening Room down in Maryland and they had a Mini Maggie System playing and I was just astonished at how good it sounded.
He was using a laptop, a Cambridge integrated amp and a small REL sub with everything set up on/under a table. The sound filled the whole room, it was really impressive.
The idea got shelved but I never forgot about it and I kept some components in reserve just for a future Mini Maggie System.
I decided it's now or never so found a set on USAudiomart from a gentleman who is retiring and had them sent up.
While they were en route I found a cabinet on Facebook which was made by an Amish carpenter and cut the majority of the back out for some air flow and I purchased a used REL T7 subwoofer.
The speakers showed up and I hooked them up to a Rega Apollo-R CD player, a Sonic Frontiers SFL-2 preamp, a Conrad-johnson MF2275 amplifier, an APC H-15 power conditioner and made some additional Supra LoRad power cords. The speakers are hooked up with Kimber 8TC speaker wire and after some futzing around, I replaced the silver interconnects with some inexpensive Blue Jeans cables as the sound was just too bright.
To give myself some room, I removed a leaf from the table, got some small speaker stands and stuck them up on some small boxes.
One speaker kept cutting out which drove me crazy for two days.
After eliminating every possibility, out to the garage for some surgery.
It turned out to be a bad crimp on a connector on the fuse plate so I soldered on a new connector and problem solved.
I had to laugh, when the sub showed up I had to play with all of the settings (of course). I wound up putting them right back to where the previous owner had them.
REL never got back to me on which sub to use with the Mini Maggies but the T7 I picked worked out just right. Not too small, not too overpowering and it just blends in perfectly.
It all came together really well. I've got a small quilt and a Frank Zappa tote bag in the mail so I'll throw them up on the walls to deaden the sound a little bit more. As it is, it's not annoyingly bright sounding and there's great detail from these little guys. Songs with heavy bass tracks are a lot of fun.
If you spend a lot of time at a desk, these are worth looking into.
One evening it struck me that they're like sitting inside of a giant pair of headphones.
